How Alexander Technique can help you to Juggle

Whether its juggling balls you want to do or juggling your life, it's always best approached from a balanced perspective.  Kim Cant tell how Alexander Technique can help you acheive that balance...

One of the main principles of the Alexander Technique is learning to stop “end gaining” which means not trying too hard to reach a goal (the end) and to attend to the means whereby ie how we do things.

I was recently giving lessons to someone who told me he was learning to juggle when I asked him how it was going he said that he couldn’t get past seven catches.

I then told him how to apply the technique so he could improve his juggling. The main problem was that he was trying to go past seven and every time he missed a catch he would become more frustrated.

I advised him that he needed to forget the idea of his goal and to practice dropping the balls and not be bothered about it. He was particularly to avoid trying to make catches that were nearly out of his reach and just let them fall to the ground and he definitely wasn’t to count. 

To improve his fluidity in throwing he should make sure he was nicely balanced being aware of his feet on the ground, notice if he was over tightening any part of his body and let this go and then start throwing the juggling balls, catching them when he could but letting them fall to the ground if they were difficult to catch.  

 He then went away and practiced his juggling. Next time I saw him he said his juggling had improved, he wasn’t sure how many catches he was now achieving but he was sure it was more as he was less bothered about counting them. 

 This is a lesson that all of us can apply to other things that we do be it hitting a golf ball, playing tennis or even walking. Try to be more mindful of how we do things rather than concentrating on the end goal.

Remember it's not the balls we're trying to control, they always do what we lead them to do.  it's ourselves we need to trust so that we can instruct the balls more successfully.

 If you would like to find out more about how the Alexander Technique can help you get more out of daily activities with less effort why not book a half price introductory lesson with Kim.