Why do we need the Alexander Technique?

 The human form is an elegant result of millions of years of evolution, perfectly adapted to Earth's gravity and capable of carrying out an astounding array of different activities with ease, power and finesse. We have our highly evolved brains to thank for the vastness of our possibilities. However, all that brainpower also allows us to impose unnatural and damaging patterns on our movements.

Bad ideas about movement have many sources. As children, we may get them from well-intentioned but not fully-informed adults, who give us simplistic and piecemeal postural advice, like telling us to pull our shoulders back or lift our chins. We may imitate other people with unnatural movements, such as soldiers, fashion models, or our own family members. Sometimes, changes in movement patterns may be the result of emotional or social conditions, such as the awkwardness experienced by the girl who develops faster than her peers and learns to round her shoulders to hide that fact. Perhaps the most insidious bad ideas of all are the pervasive notions in modern society that more is better, rest is for sissies, and quality of life is measured in dollars. In order to live up to these ideals, we often shut ourselves off from physical sensation, so that we don't know when we are doing something unhealthy until it reaches a critical point.

As these externally-imposed movement patterns become habitual, we forget how to be easy, graceful and light, and we may even forget that we ever knew. Performance suffers, as does our ability to find delight in being embodied. We struggle with aches and pains, and we injure ourselves too often.

Consciousness is the synonym for mobility of mind.
- F.M. Alexander

What is a lesson like?

A teacher of the Alexander Technique, with gentle verbal and hands-on assistance, can show you the way home. Over a course of weekly 45-minute lessons, you can learn what unnatural patterns you have been imposing on your form, and you can learn to undo them. The process is active, engaging, often surprising, and fun.

Dressed in comfortable clothing, you will explore simple everyday movements. With verbal and hands-on assistance from the teacher, you wil llearn to observe and change habits that interfere with optimum functioning.

Part of the lesson usually takes place on a table, where you can begin to change some of these habits without the interference that often comes with being upright.

After you learn to inhibit destructive habits in simple activities, your teacher can show you how to apply the principles to more complex mind-body problems, such as how to sit a trot, play a challenging passage of music, weed your garden, or pay your bills with a minimum of strain and tension. With continued practice, your kinesthetic feedback system will become more accurate, and you will be able to apply the principles to new activities on your own.

As you incorporate the technique into your life, you will find that you are more poised and confident, and readier to meet the unknown.

...Not being the slave of habits but master of your own mind and body, thus realizing the wonderful inheritance which is yours by right of the fact that you were born a reasoning, intelligent man or woman.
- F.M. Alexander

Who was F.M. Alexander?

F.M. Alexander (1869-1955) was a young Shakespearean actor touring in Australia and Tasmania, when a recurring hoarse voice threatened to put an end to his burgeoning career. After unfruitful consultations with several doctors and voice teachers, he began to consider his approach to speaking and reciting. Through years of rigorous self-observation and experimentation, he solved his problem, developed a full, rich voice, and developed the Alexander Technique.

How is the Alexander Technique different from . . .

Chiropractic and Osteopathy

The Alexander Technique shares with these methods an interest in the bones being in right relationship to each other, so that they can effectively transfer the weight of the body and meet the earth's force. However, lessons in the Alexander Technique do not include "adjustments". Instead, students learn how to prevent the wrong ways of thinking, holding themselves, and moving that led them to want or need adjustments in the first place. When the wrong thing is prevented, the right thing often does itself.

Yoga and Tai Chi

Although the Alexander Technique shares with these practices a goal of reaching a balanced, centered state with fluid movement and easy breath, the method is very different. Instead of focusing on a particular set of movements to do every day, the Alexander Technique gives the student the skill to analyze any movement - from simple walking to a challenging yoga pose - and figure out how to execute it with greater ease.

Massage

Although students usually find the brief "table-work" segment of an Alexander Technique lesson pleasant and relaxing, it is quite different from massage. It is done fully clothed, and it does not include any of the stroking, kneading or tapping that generally characterize massage. Rather, it is another way to practice being aware of movements and tensions and making conscious choices about them.

A person who learns to work to a principle in doing one exercise will have learned to do all exercises, but the person who learns just to 'do an exercise' will most assuredly have to go on learning to 'do exercises' AD INFINITUM.
- F.M. Alexander

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