About Missy Vineyard |
I discovered the Alexander Technique during my senior year in college. At the time I was suffering from severe back pain due to years of dancing and horseback riding. Although I was only twenty at the time, I sensed the writing on the wall—if I didn't learn to move my body with less effort and strain, my future would be one of pain and increasing disability.
Soon after beginning lessons I learned that I was moving my body in ways that were causing me pain and injury, and preventing me from improving my dance and riding skills no matter how hard I practiced. A few months later, my chronic pain was gone, my dancing had become more relaxed and expressive, and I was riding with better balance and contact. A new world was opening to me—a world of greater self-understanding and skill—as I learned to be aware of my unconscious and inefficient ways of moving, thinking, and judging myself. After college I decided to train to become an Alexander teacher to help others along their own path of increasing self-knowledge and mastery. In 1987 I helped to found the American Society for the Alexander Technique, a professional society for Alexander teachers (AmSAT.ws) and served as its first chairman. Weaving together true stories of my students in their lessons, insights from neuroscience, and original self-experiments designed to teach you the central skills of the method, How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live shares with you what I have learned from more than thirty years of teaching the Alexander Technique. |