If the Alexander Technique is so easy to learn, why do I need lessons?

 

Most of our habits become so ingrained we are no longer aware of them. An Alexander Technique teacher will help you recognise your own unhelpful habit patterns, which contribute to your stress, tension and pain, thereby allowing you to move with more freedom. 

 

What happens in a lesson?

 

An Alexander Technique teacher has been trained full-time for three years to use their hands in a very unique and subtle way, which is always very gentle. Using touch and explanation, the teacher will help you become aware of your habits and how you can change them. Using everyday movements such as sitting and standing, you will explore where you are holding tension and learn to release it.

 

For part of the lesson you may be lying down, which gives the body further opportunity to release muscle tension.

 

It is advisable to book an introductory lesson because the Alexander Technique is not easy to describe in words, it is better to experience it.

 

The Alexander Technique may help in the following areas:

• chronic joint pain
• backache/neck pain
• headaches/migraines
• tension, stress and anxiety
• RSI (repetitive strain injury)
• breathing disorders
• digestive problems
• whiplash
• asthma
• sports and other injuries
• post-operative recovery
• Parkinson’s disease
• posture and appearance
• general health, fitness and well-being
• confidence and poise
• acting
• music and singing
• horse riding

• Alongside the physical benefits, many people find additional psychological and philosophical benefits of mind body unity which is intrinsic to the Alexander Technique.

You translate everything, whether physical, mental or spiritual, into muscular tension.

F.M. Alexander Teaching Aphorisms, Articles and Lectures pg. 207

 

F.M. Alexander 1869-1955

 

“You are not here to do exercises or to learn to do something right, but to get able to meet a stimulus that always puts you wrong and to learn to deal with it."

F.M. Alexander 

F.M. Alexander with John Dewey

Born in Tasmania in 1869, Alexander was a successful actor whose career was cut short by loss of voice during performance.

Exasperated by the doctors’ failure to solve his problem, he undertook an intensive examination of himself in action, using mirrors. He found that his problems originated from his poor postural habits while reciting.                                  

With this knowledge he cured his own voice problems and found that he could also help others. More importantly, the principles he had discovered affected mind/body coordination and could be applied not just to voice problems, but to every kind of mental and physical activity. At this point teaching his method became the main focus of his life.

 

Alexander arrived in England in 1904 and during the next 25 years built up a practice in London and the USA. He had many influential supporters including Sir Henry Irving, George Bernard Shaw, John Dewey, Aldous Huxley and

Sir Stafford Cripps.

 

In 1931 he began training others to teach the Technique and continued both his private practice and his training school right up until his death at the age of 86.