“About 10 million working days a year are lost to stress” in the UK, according to this article in the Guardian. They don’t say how many involved bears.

There’s a bear in there

You hear a noise to your left, and you quickly look up. There’s a bear, looking at you. What happens next? You immediately go into the fight-or-flight response, preparing you to deal with the threat. Some muscles in your body tense, to provide you with the extra speed and strength you may require. These muscles require more blood flow, so you heart rate increases and your lungs breathe quicker. Blood flow to other parts of your body is diverted, so it can be sent where it is most needed; your vision may narrow; you may begin to sweat; there will be more adrenalin pumping through your body.

All of this is very useful in this situation – it is a good reaction to have, it will help you.

What if there’s no bear?

Now you’re calm again, muscles relaxed, and breathing and heart rate are back to normal. Then you open your diary, look at your emails, or maybe just think about how much you have to do today. You might be right back in fight-or-flight mode again – increased heart and lung action, muscle tension, adrenalin running through the body. But this time, none of that will help you deal with the situation. There is no bear this time to fight or run from. The fight-or-flight response is unhelpful in this situation – now it is not a useful reaction to have.

How do you react?

Alexander wrote a lot about this. We rely on instinctive reactions, honed by millennia of evolution, to be appropriate to our environment. And they are appropriate to the environment we humans spent most of our history living in – the one with lions, tigers and bears. But we have changed our environment in the last 10,000 years or so, very rapidly in regard to evolution, yet we haven’t changed our reactions to perceived threats which aren’t life threatening.

So when you perceive something as a threat – an email from your boss, perhaps, or playing a hard piece at your flute recital, or making a speech – you will probably react as though there is a bear in the room. And this will not help you write a calm response to your boss, or play your flute at your best, or speak well.

Alexander taught people to change their responses to the situations they encountered, so they weren’t relying on old reactions and habits where they were no longer appropriate. He developed a technique to replace old, unwanted habits and reactions with new, considered ones. And he knew well from his personal and teaching experience that such a change was possible, with time and practice.

Can the response be changed?

I believe it can, and it is something you learn when you study the Alexander Technique. As with any learning it takes practice, patience, time, and thought. But any lessening of the stress response is surely a good thing. If you’re in a situation where the stress response kicks in less than it used to, then you will be less stressed. And if it doesn’t kick in at all, then you won’t be stressed. It’s your reaction, and not the situation, that defines whether it’s a stressful situation or not.

But please remained stressed when there are bears in the room. I’m sure you will.