us to move with less effort. As I'm waiting in the reception area, I flip through some brochures. "Imagine your skeleton without any muscles...The head, between 10 and 12 pounds, should feel weightless on top of the spine." The Institute's cofounder, Marek Wyszynski, observes my walk, then ushers me into a dimly lit room and onto a table. "I'm not working directly with the muscles," he says, moving my limbs and head this way and that, his touch so light it barely resembles massage, "but with signals the brain sends to the muscles." It's a sensory-motor loop, he says: The body talks to the brain, which in turn talks back to the body. When I get up, I feel relaxed and limber, and Wyszynski says my gait is better. But the next day I'm back to slumping. I return for a group class, which is like taking yoga on sedatives?we lie on our sides and barely move, much too slow and sleepy for me. I'd heard that dancers and actors study what's called the Alexander Technique, another posture-perfecting approach, to improve their stage presence. If it helps them, why not me? At Manhattan's New York Center for the Alexander Technique, my therapist, Michael Ostrow, gets pushy, literally, gently pressing my chest down while I stand facing him. He cups my forward-jutting chin and repositions my head on top of my spine. Although each Alexander Technique session includes a bit of table work, similar to the Feldenkrais style, with AT, the