Why must you do semi-supine if you want to improve quickly?
The person who does semi-supine eighteen times a day can progress nineteen times as fast as the person who doesn’t. They will progress even faster than that if they do it even more often. And you can speed your progress like that even though you only lie down for one single minute each time. You can see the math at the end of the article.
What is this semi-supine? Semi-supine is the Alexander Technique lying down procedure, also known as “Constructive Rest”.
When you learn the Alexander Technique, you learn that your existing bad habits of movement overuse many muscles and under-use others. You learn how to stop overusing tense, over-used muscles and you start putting the muscles you haven’t been using back to work.
Even sportsmen have under-used muscles
What happens to a muscle when you don’t use it? It becomes weak, it wastes away. Convalescent people who have been bed-ridden through illness for three months are doing very well if they manage to sit up for as long as ten minutes at first. That’s because their muscles have grown so weak from disuse.
Even very physically active people such as professional sportsmen have the same problem when they start to bring under-used muscles back into play. They may have the stamina to keep going all day when moving in their old less-efficient way. Still, when they bring muscles they normally don’t use into play, those under-used muscles tire just as easily as the convalescent’s. Their wonderful stamina counts for nothing. Their under-used muscle don’t have that same stamina.
More efficient movement uses those under-used muscles
When those sportsmen start to practise moving in the better way they will learn through Alexander Technique lessons, they will need those under-used muscles.
- They can fall back into their old patterns of movement and allow their strong muscles to take over again. This is the default option, the option people usually take. It has four undesirable effects:-
- They revert to their bad old ways of moving
- As a result, their weak muscles continue to get very little exercise and basically remain weak forever.
- Not getting in much practice moving in the new way, they don’t progress well with learning the Alexander Technique. You can’t progress well with any skill just by learning the skill: you have to practise it as well.
- The better option is to give tired muscles the rest they need — as often as they need it. Only a very short rest each time will revitalise thos muscle and enable you to go back and use them again.
Maximising your potential
Every moment of your waking life could be an opportunity to practise and perfect your new better movement. But only if your unused muscles are not too tired. Semi-supine makes that possible and it does so simply by giving them the necessary rest.
Lets do the math
Say for three hours you lie down for a minute every ten minutes in between normal activity. During this activity you’re tuning in from time to time and giving attention to your Alexander technique. Over those three hours, that’s eighteen mini-rests using semi-supine. That’s eighteen times you get to allow yourself to move as well as you currently know how. Now let’s say you never do the semi-supine exercise. Now you have only that one first ten minutes when you can move as well as you know how.
If two people learn the Alexander Technique and practise it regularly, the person who follows that lying down routine will get nineteen times as much practice moving well compared with the person who doesn’t do the lying down. Why nineteen? That’s once when they’re fresh out of bed plus the eighteen more times when they’ve just done the lying down.
The person who does the semi-supine is able to use their Alexander Technique to progress nineteen times as fast as the person who doesn’t.
Go here to learn how to do semi-supine.
