BACK pain can be crippling for millions of people across the globe but a horserider in Chipping Sodbury believes she has the answer to the perfect poise. Ali Dent was given a quick guide to the Alexander Technique with practitioner Christine English.

"IT is not just back pain that I can help," claims Christine English. "The Alexander Technique can help sportsmen, actors, singers and public speakers and improves posture as well as confidence."

Sceptics might think this miraculous cure is just more mystic madness without any medical evidence.

But the Alexander Technique is a well-established practice which boasts its own training school in Bristol, supportive research published in the British Medical Journal and some famous followers.

Christine, from Emersons Green, has been teaching the technique to clients at the Bank Chambers in Broad Street, Chipping Sodbury for the past 15 months.

She said: "It is a verbal and hands on session. You cannot separate the mental, emotional and physical aspects of a person and the technique is about bringing those things into the conscious awareness.

"I teach people to discover that what they are thinking is reflected in the way they are moving. Basically, people cause their own pain."

Christine assesses everyone she sees individually and develops their own programme of exercise and postures to practice.

"People get into bad habits and they think they just have to learn to live with it," said Christine, who first investigated the technique after finding horseriding difficult.

"It is not a sudden cure but about teaching people to use themselves to make themselves better."

The Alexander Technique was developed by Australian actor F M Alexander, who kept losing his voice on stage.

Doctors could find nothing wrong with him, sparking a journey of discovery which involved watching himself perform in front a mirror.

F M Alexander cured himself and then set up the first Alexander Technique training school in England.

Since then, stars including Sting, Sir Paul McCartney, author Roald Dahl and actors William Hurt and John Cleese have adopted the practice to help improve their ailments.

Christine completed a three-year course into the practice at the Bristol Alexander Technique Training School Association in Long Ashton and is a member of the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique. One of her pupils, Katherine Brooke, a colonic hydroptherapist, said: "When I started Alexander Technique lessons I had a chronic problem in my left shoulder which, after five lessons, completely disappeared.

"I have more ease of movement and more overall awareness of my body.

"I found the work enormously empowering in that I could take responsibility for my health."

Added Christine: "The biggest change in me since learning the technique is my self confidence and now I see it as my job to teach other people their inner poise."

Christine is offering half price taster sessions during International Alexander Awareness Week between October 4 and 12.

For more information call Christine English on 01454 320088.