At the commercial kitchen where I’ve recently started working, we served 137 meals yesterday in less than 8 hours of opening. Each of these meals includes a number of sequences or steps to complete to turn out the meal in a matter of minutes.
It can be a big challenge, but one thing that has helped me adapt to the new environment is a skill I learned many years ago from a builder I met in Melbourne.
This builder was retired when I met him, but at a late stage in his career he suffered from a debilitating injury. His return to work was difficult, and his first job was to work on constructing an apartment by himself next to another one that was being built by a team of three builders.
His injury stopped him from working in his normal way. Instead, he had to take a very slow, conscious and deliberate approach to his construction pattern, which involved thinking through and planning out every individual step before he executed it. This, in a nutshell, is what the Alexander Technique teaches you to do.
In the Alexander Technique, one focuses on several simple principles. Rather than moving one’s muscles in the normal way, one essentially uses one’s mind to visualise the activity. This helps one to form a clear intention of the act before one commences. Next, one ‘inhibits’ the action – deliberately defers the commencement of the action until one’s body is ready. The result is often a very slow, precise, clarified set of movements that delivers the intended result with a greater level of efficiency and safety than would be achieved otherwise.
The interesting thing to me about the Alexander Technique is that it achieves a more efficient process merely by thinking of your direction. There are three core ‘instructions’ that are very regularly used in this process – I would go so far as to say that learning these three core instructions, and the principles behind them, comprises 80% of the benefit of the approach.
1. Let the neck be free
The neck is an area that collects a lot of tension from body movements and other stresses. If one focuses on the neck, and merely concentrates on it becoming free, this dissipates some of the stress and allows your mind to clarify and refocus.
2. Think of allowing the head to go forward and up
The technique was originally composed as a response to an illness that prevented Matthias Alexander from being able to speak. Once he decided these steps, he found that his speech resumed with a greater volume and capacity than before he suffered from the illness. This command for me was very interesting, because it directed me to realise that one could simply use one’s mind as a sort of control centre; and that by merely thinking of the activity, the body quietly charts a course to that activity’s completion.
3. Think of the back lengthening and widening
My whole adult life I’ve suffered from back problems. People who work in kitchens for many years also suffer from a host of complaints resulting from long hours and poor posture. This third and final command simply allows one to assume a better, more even spread of weight and balance across the back, deferring the spread of aches and pains and refocusing one before one commences a complex procedure.
There are many, many more steps involved in the Alexander Technique, but merely learning and applying these three teaches one a very basic appreciation of the principles: namely that there is a link between forming an intention in one’s mind, visualising it, and then seeing it carried through by the actions of one’s body.
Of course, the commercial kitchen requires a wide range of rapid movements and intentional application of these steps is not always practical. But you’d be surprised just how many times in a day I succeed in getting it done.
After all, the completion of the three steps above takes literally a few seconds.
And in the case of the builder I mentioned above – he found that a more measured, more delayed, more intentional approach to his work not only allowed him to complete his contract safely, but that he also completed his apartment in less time than the competing team of three builders.
