Stand Tall to Ease Back Pain: Alexander Technique Works

FitSugar — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:00:00 PDT

I have spent many a Pilates session teaching clients with severe back pain how to stand, sit, and walk. In these sessions, I have borrowed elements from the Alexander Technique. Learning basic body mechanics while unlearning bad postural habits seemed to help these clients out of pain, and now I have science backing me up on this.

New research from the UK found that patients with chronic back pain treated with the Alexander Technique had many more pain-free days than back patients treated with pain medication or massage.

Alexander patients experienced just three days of back pain a month compared to 14 days a month of pain experienced by patients who received massage, or 21 days of pain experience by patients using pain medication. The Alexander patients had 24 sessions to create this reduction in back pain, but retraining your body does come at a price. Private Alexander sessions come at a high price, upward of $80 for an hour lesson.

If you are interested in trying Alexander, you can find a teacher here. If you are in chronic pain, it might be worth investigating. Some practitioners offer group classes, which are considerably less expensive, or you can buy packages of classes for a reduced price.

Source

Diane Kruger and Karolina Kurkova Do Skirts Over Dresses - Is It Wearable?

Hannah Weil — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:27:29 PST

It's not unlike Diane Kruger to be among the first to start a fashion-forward trend. The style setter joined Karolina Kurkova to take skirts over dresses off the runways and into reality. While Karolina opted for Alexander Wang's Pre-Fall '12 look at a Jay-Z concert, Diane Kruger embraced the trend in her 10 Crosby by Derek Lam florals and stripes at the Berlin International Film Festival. Every season, we're introduced to new styling techniques and while fashion is all about experimentation, we're wondering: do you think the designers' new layering techniques translate well into real-life fashion? Would you ever do the skirt-over-dress thing?