Whether we sit, stand, work, or play, we all tend to pull our limbs in toward our torsos. Release them for a moment and in the next you find yourself pulling them in. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, yet we do it all the time. Every movement we make, every keystroke, we first have to overcome our resistance. We push through and work too hard.

Comes now the Alexander Technique and its blessing: your torso doesn’t own your limbs, nor your limbs your torso. You can live more openly, more centrifugally than concentrically. Pushing through, pushing on, pushing back, are far too costly.

Think this gesture, your arm arising from your side to come to the shoulder of a trusted friend, an arm’s length away. Think. Wait. Let the arm arise from your back—no biceps, no triceps—a levitation, an outward expression of an inward grace, the blessing of Alexander Technique.

Now, if you would like to bring this blessing to your work, your practice, and your playing, you know what to do. Call a teacher of Alexander Technique. You could be living in the gesture of expansion by the end of the day. That’s my plan.