Alexander Technique Interweaves and Deep Brain Reorienting: Supporting the Body’s Natural Healing Process

One of the things I have come to appreciate through many years of trauma work is that sometimes doing less allows more to happen.

This is particularly important in Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR), where we are trying to follow processes that arise naturally within the nervous system rather than directing the person towards a particular emotional experience or outcome.

Alexander Technique (AT) interweaves can sometimes be helpful within this process. But their usefulness is not simply in knowing how to use them. Just as important is knowing when not to use them.

What are Alexander Technique interweaves?

The Alexander Technique has a long history of paying careful attention to the relationship between the head, neck and body, including habitual patterns of tension and bracing.

Martin Warner, an experienced Alexander Technique teacher, has worked with Dr Frank Corrigan, the developer of Deep Brain Reorienting, to explore how some of these principles can be applied within DBR.

This work has led to the development of specialised Alexander Technique interweaves for the DBR process.

AT interweaves are not a separate trauma therapy, nor are they a required part of DBR. Rather, they are advanced interventions that a sufficiently trained DBR therapist may occasionally draw upon when something happening in the body appears to be getting in the way of the processing that is already trying to occur.

Why the head–body relationship matters in DBR

DBR works with a very early sequence in the nervous system's response to something significant or threatening.

Before we have fully understood what has happened—and often before we experience what we would ordinarily call an emotion—the brain has already begun to orient.

The superior colliculus, an evolutionarily old structure within the midbrain, is involved in this rapid orienting response. Among other things, it helps prepare the eyes and head to turn towards, or away from, something important.

This is one reason that orienting tension, often noticed around the eyes, forehead, face, neck or base of the skull, is so important in DBR.

By locating and maintaining awareness of this subtle tension, we can begin processing close to the beginning of the brain's response, before the later shock and emotional responses become dominant.

This is quite different from beginning with the story of what happened and working downwards.

When the body has learned to brace

When something is frightening, painful or overwhelming, we may pull back, stiffen, collapse, brace ourselves or prepare to protect against what is coming.

Sometimes those responses are obvious. Often they are remarkably subtle.

A slight pulling backwards through the head. A tightening at the base of the skull. The shoulders becoming fixed. A jaw that grips. A chest that seems unable to soften.

These patterns can make a great deal of sense when we understand them in the context in which they developed.

They may also become part of the way the nervous system continues to organise itself long after the original experience is over.

The observational skills developed through Alexander Technique training can help a DBR therapist become more sensitive to some of these head–body relationships and to patterns of bracing or armouring that may emerge during processing.

Where an AT interweave may help

Occasionally during DBR, a physical pattern appears to be interfering with the natural progression of processing.

An AT interweave may then be used to gently work with that obstruction.

The intention is not to tell the client's body what it should do. It is not to manufacture relaxation, push someone through a block, or get rid of an uncomfortable feeling.

Instead, the intervention may create an opportunity for an unnecessary pattern of holding to soften so that the underlying DBR process can continue.

That distinction matters.

Sometimes the best intervention is no intervention

This is probably the most important part.

AT interweaves need to be used judiciously.

DBR is based, in part, on respecting the nervous system's inherent capacity to process and heal. If shock is moving, affect is changing, or the system is finding its own way through an experience, there may be absolutely no reason to intervene.

In fact, intervening simply because we can risks interrupting something the nervous system is already doing very well on its own.

Frank Corrigan has been explicit about this. AT interweaves can facilitate processing in particular circumstances, but they are not an essential component of the DBR sequence. Used incorrectly, they may interfere with the natural flow of the healing process.

That is why I think of an interweave as something available to me—not something I need to use.

The question is not, “Which intervention should I do next?”

It is more often, “Does anything need to be done at all?”

Quite frequently, the answer is no.

Not another way of overriding the nervous system

There can be a temptation in trauma therapy to see something that looks like a “block” and immediately try to remove it.

From a DBR perspective, that can be problematic.

A protective response developed for a reason. Moving past it too quickly can expose a person to more shock, pain or affect than their system is ready to process.

The aim is therefore not to overcome resistance or make processing happen faster.

It is to remain curious about what the nervous system is doing and why.

When an AT interweave is appropriate, it should support the processing that is trying to emerge—not impose a therapist's idea of what that processing ought to look like.

An advanced addition to DBR—not a replacement for DBR training

AT interweaves are specialised interventions intended for therapists who already have substantial training in Deep Brain Reorienting.

They do not replace learning the DBR sequence itself: orienting tension, shock and affect, and the careful clinical tracking required to work with these processes without overwhelming the person.

Dr Corrigan recommends that AT interweaves be used by practitioners with at least DBR Level 2 training, and preferably Level 3, working within their own competence and training.

This distinction is particularly important because Alexander Technique interweaves have not yet been independently established as an evidence-based component of DBR. The published randomised controlled trial of DBR did not use AT interweaves.

They are better understood at this point as a specialised clinical development within advanced DBR practice.

My training in AT interweaves

I began training in Alexander Technique interweaves with Martin Warner in 2023, relatively early in the development and teaching of this work.

That training added another layer to how I observe what is happening during DBR—not only what a client reports internally, but the very small changes that can occur in the relationship between the head, neck and body as processing unfolds.

I have continued to deepen my DBR training through advanced work in areas including the Where-Self, dissociation, and developments in the clinical application and neuroscience of DBR.

What I value about the AT work is not that it gives me more things to do in a session.

In some ways, it has done the opposite.

It has reinforced the importance of observing carefully, waiting, and trusting the system enough to allow processing to unfold without unnecessary interference.

What might this look like in a DBR session?

For a client, much of this may be barely noticeable.

You don't need to understand the Alexander Technique, remember particular instructions, or make your body behave in a certain way.

The focus remains on your internal experience and the DBR process.

Your therapist may notice a subtle change in your head or neck, a pattern of bracing, or another physical response that seems relevant. Most of the time, we simply continue to follow what your nervous system is already doing.

At other times, a carefully chosen interweave may help create a little more freedom within a pattern that has become fixed.

And then we return to listening.

Because ultimately, the goal is not to make the nervous system heal.

It is to create the conditions in which its natural capacity for healing has room to emerge.

Learn more

You can learn more about Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) and how we use this approach in trauma therapy.

Learn more about how we work with the deeper processes underlying trauma, emotional distress, and repeating patterns on our Healing Root Causes page.

Dr Karma Guindon provides trauma therapy using Deep Brain Reorienting in Aurora and Bolton, Ontario, and online where clinically and professionally appropriate.