The Position of Mechanical Advantage
This is a way to prepare for movement.
The Position of Mechanical Advantage is a term F.M. Alexander used to describe a way of organizing your body so that you are ready and able to change direction at a moment’s notice. It is actually not a static position, but a way to be relaxed and poised as you respond to a stimulus.
For example, you can use the Position of Mechanical Advantage when you are moving in and out of a chair. Imagine you are halfway towards sitting and your phone rings. It’s across the room and now you have the option to pause and then return to standing in order to move toward your phone. You were able to do this because you were balanced. Without the POMA, you might have plopped into the chair and then used smaller muscles (like your neck) to quickly pull yourself back up to standing. There isn’t anything wrong with this, yet, life might be a whole lot more comfortable if you don’t use more force than is required. The POMA helps you do that.
By letting your legs bear the weight of your body, your upper body lightens. When your feet are slightly wider apart, making full contact with the floor, you will be in balance. The POMA gives you the gift of being able to change your mind.
Athletes of every sport use it and most of them have probably never heard of the Alexander Technique. How is this possible?
F. M. Alexander didn’t create the POMA, he just gave it a name. The POMA comes naturally to us all. It’s how we first began to stand and learn to be upright. It helped us prepare to walk. What was an ideal way for us to move then is still good for us today!
Here’s how to use the POMA:
Notice your breathing and let your feet sense the floor.
Pause and do nothing but notice where you are in space and the tension you are currently using to remain standing. Can you do less?
When you are ready, move your feet so they are slightly wider than hip-width apart.
Pause and notice what’s changed--if anything.
Allow your knees to bend slightly as your tailbone points behind you and your nose drops slightly.
Breathe into your back and try moving forward, backward, and side to side. Try bending your knees more and then less. Do you find that it’s easier to move this way?
It may feel strange if this is not how you usually move. It may help to look in a mirror since sometimes we are not moving the way we think we are. It’s most useful to learn this from an Alexander teacher. The POMA can improve your life.
Sitting in School
Is there anything we can do for a child who sits all day at school?
Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash
When my daughter was in first grade, her teacher told me she wasn’t paying attention. My sweet girl who had gotten in trouble once during Kindergarten was now regularly getting in trouble for being inattentive. She had a wonderful teacher who liked her very much but she still struggled. There were many probable causes for her distraction:
First Grade was more serious than Kindergarten and class sizes had increased
There was less free time and more time spent sitting in chairs and on the floor learning lessons
Recess was 15 minutes
My daughter was small for her age and therefore her feet didn’t touch the floor when she sat in her chair
I could not do much about most of the things on that list, but I could help with the chair! I sent her to school with a yoga block and a sitting disk.
My daughter sat on the disk and put her feet on the yoga block. Within a day her teacher noticed a difference. Was she attentive all the time? Of course not, but there was an improvement. My daughter appreciated the change, too.
What happened?
Since her feet couldn’t reach the floor when she sat in her chair, she felt ungrounded. She did not have stability and she was constantly fighting the sensation sliding down in her seat. That alone would make it difficult to concentrate!
The sitting disk is an air-filled cushion that allows for mobility while sitting on a flat surface or chair. The disk helped my daughter get vestibular input by balancing and rebalancing in her seat. Even though she needed to remain seated for long stretches of time, she could still have a small amount of movement on the disk. The ability to move was subtle enough to not be a distraction to her teacher or her peers. We talk about this in the Alexander Technique: Having openness and freedom in your joints so that you move slightly even in stillness. We call it the “standing dance.” In this case it was a sitting dance.
The nice thing about the sitting disk was that my daughter could take it to the floor with her when the teacher was reading or teaching a lesson while the class sat on the rug. This is something Alexander teachers fret over--children sitting on the floor while the teacher sits in a chair or stands to use the board. This is because it can be difficult to have poise while sitting on the floor. Children will kneel to combat slouching but the teacher will ask them to sit “criss-cross-applesauce” so that the students behind them can see. So the students’ backs grow more rounded the longer they sit and their necks shorten as they look up from their hunched positions. A sitting disk raises their hips and gives them the support they need to have a lengthened posture for the duration of their time on the floor. Enabling them to maintain the length of their spines will allow them to breathe and move and be more open to learning.
It would be better if children were allowed to move more in school. Until that happens, they can use a sitting disk and study the Alexander Technique.
Is your child having difficulty sitting in school? Is desk too big or too small? Does the chair slant back? Is the seat curved and slippery? Is the chair connected to the desk? Is your left-handed child sitting in a right-handed desk? Is your child straining to see the board? There might be a simple solution. An Alexander lesson can be a helpful and quick way to solve your child’s discomfort.