Positive Health Online

Bodywork Specialties Alexander/Mezieres Technique

Joël Carbonnel has been a teacher of the Alexander Technique and the Mézières Method for the past 20 years, which he believes are the best available tools to restore or preserve a healthy musculo-skeletal system. He is also a qualified Sport and Remedial Massage Therapist.

Joël Carbonnel first became interested in the body-mind connection whilst in his teens and began his investigations by studying Morpho-psychology in 1984 with Dr. Corman, the originator of a novel and scientific approach to face-reading. Intrigued by what he found, he went on to train in the Alexander Technique, gaining his diploma in 1987. He then gained a Certificate in ‘Chaines et Postures Musculaires’ with the Association des Mézièristes d’Europe in 1988, completing his study of the Mézières Method with the Centre Mézièriste de l’Ouest in 2000.

His experience and understanding of all these disciplines has led him to develop ORTHOMORPHY (orthos: right/straight; morphe: form) which is based around the close relationship between use, form and function. The aim of ORTHOMORPHY is to investigate all the factors that affect the human form, and to apply a combination of complementary elements of the Alexander Technique and the Mézières Method in order to achieve for his clients a right and natural shape, which is the primary requirement for health and fitness.

His approach is original and truly holistic, interpreting disease and dysfunction as the result of misuse of the way the body was intended to operate. ORTHOMORPHY does not set out to effect a cure for a specific condition but is a process of re-education in the proper use of the Self, giving Joël's clients the knowledge they need to maintain lifelong health.

By removing the factors which contribute to disease, the body is encouraged to repair and heal itself to achieve its maximum potential.

Joël is the author of a number of articles in both French and English, as well as a regular columnist for the magazine Positive Health since June 1998. He is also the author of Le Bon Geste, Le Manuel du Jardinier, Actes Sud, 2000, a book about the Alexander technique as applied to gardening which has now been translated into English.

Joël is in private practice in London and, one day a week, he also conducts a clinic in Burgess Hill, Mid-Sussex.

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