Alexander technique

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The Alexander technique (AT), named after Frederick Matthias Alexander, is an educational
process that teaches people how to avoid unnecessary muscular and mental tension. It is based
on Alexander's idea that a person's self awareness may be inaccurate, resulting in muscles being
used in ways that unnecessarily cause tension. Examples of this include standing or sitting with
weight unevenly distributed, holding one's head incorrectly, walking or running inefficiently, or
responding to stressful stimuli in an exaggerated way. Alexander said that people who habitually
"misused" their muscles in such ways could not trust their feelings (sensory appreciation) when
carrying out activities or responding to situations emotionally.[1]
The purpose of AT is to help people unlearn maladaptive psychophysical habits and return to a
balanced state of rest and poise in which one's musculature is functioning as an integrated whole.
[2]

Alexander developed the technique's principles in the 1890s [3] as a personal tool to alleviate
breathing problems and hoarseness during public speaking. He credited the technique with
allowing him to pursue his passion for Shakespearean acting.[4]
There is little good medical evidence that the Alexander technique confers any health benefit. [5]
Contents
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1History
1.1Influence

2Process

3Uses

4Method

5Effectiveness

6See also

7References

8Further reading

History[edit]
Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869-1955) was a Shakespearean orator who developed voice
loss during his performances. After doctors found no physical cause, Alexander reasoned that he
was inadvertently doing something to himself while speaking to cause his problem. His selfobservation in multiple mirrors revealed that he was contracting his entire stature prior
to phonation in preparation for all verbal response. He developed the hypothesis that this habitual
pattern of pulling the head backwards and downwards needlessly disrupted the normal working of
the total postural, breathing and vocal mechanisms. After experimenting to develop his ability to
stop the unnecessary and habitual contracting in his neck, displacement of his head, and
shortening his stature, he found that his problem with recurrent voice loss was resolved. While on
a recital tour in New Zealand (1895) he began to realise the wider significance of head carriage
for overall physical functioning.[citation needed] Further, Alexander observed that many individuals

commonly tightened their musculature in the same pattern as he had done, in anticipation of
many other activities besides speech.
Alexander believed his work could be applied to improve individual health and well being. He
further refined his technique of self-observation and re-training to teach his discoveries to others.
As part of his teaching method, he also developed a unique way of imparting the improved
kinesthetic and proprioceptive experience to his students. This approach to using the hands also
allowed him to re-arrange the working of a person's entire supportive musculature as it functions
in relation to gravity from moment to moment. He explained his reasoning in four books published
in 1918, 1923, 1931 (1932 in the UK) and 1942. He also trained teachers to teach his work and to
use their hands in this unique way from 1930 until his death in 1955. Teacher training was
continued during World War II between 1941 and 1943, when Alexander accompanied children
and teachers of the Little School to Stow, Massachusetts to join his brother, A. R. Alexander, who
also taught his brother's technique. The American teacher training course included Frank Pierce
Jones,[6] who went on to conduct research work to explore aspects of the Alexander Technique at
the Tufts Institute for Psychological Research, and he published many of his studies in
professional journals.
Since the 1960s, numerous training schools for teachers of the Alexander Technique have started
up in the United Statessome based upon the standards of training laid down by the Society of
Teachers of the Alexander Technique established in England after Alexander's death in 1955 and
others established by those who had not undergone the required length of training. In 1987, The
North American Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique was established to maintain high
teaching standards. It is now called The American Society of Teachers of the Alexander
Technique and is affiliated with the original Alexander society in London.

Influence[edit]
The American philosopher and educator John Dewey became impressed with the Alexander
technique after his headaches, neck pains, blurred vision, and stress symptoms largely improved
during the time he used Alexander's advice to change his posture. [7] In 1923, Dewey wrote the
introduction to Alexander's Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual.[8]
Aldous Huxley had transformative lessons with Alexander, and continued doing so with other
teachers after moving to the US. He rated Alexander's work highly enough to base the character
of the doctor who saves the protagonist in 'Eyeless in Gaza' (an experimental form of
autobiographical work) on F.M. Alexander, putting many of his phrases into the character's mouth.
[9]
Huxley's work 'The Art of Seeing' also discusses his views on the technique.
Sir Stafford Cripps, George Bernard Shaw, Henry Irving and other stage grandees, Lord
Lytton and other eminent people of the era also wrote positive appreciations of his work after
taking lessons with Alexander.
Since Alexander's work in the field came at the start of the 20th century, his ideas influenced
many originators in the field of mind-body improvement. Fritz Perls, who
originatedGestalt therapy, credited Alexander as an inspiration for his psychological work.
[10]
The Feldenkrais Method and the Mitzvah Technique were both influenced by the Alexander
technique.

Process[edit]
Alexander's approach emphasizes mindful action. The technique is applied dynamically to
everyday movements, as well as actions selected by students.
Actions such as sitting, squatting, lunging or walking are often selected by the teacher. Other
actions may be selected by the student, tailored to their interests or work activities such as
hobbies, computer use, lifting, driving or performance in acting, sports, speech or music.
Alexander teachers often use themselves as examples. They demonstrate, explain, and analyze
a student's moment to moment responses as well as using mirrors, video feedback or classmate
observations. Guided modelling with a highly skilled hand contact is the primary tool for detecting
and guiding the student into a more coordinated state in movement and at rest. Suggestions for
improvements are often student-specific.[11]

Exercise as a teaching tool is deliberately omitted because of a common mistaken assumption

that there exists a "correct" position. There are only two specific procedures that are practiced by
the student; the first is lying semi-supine; resting in this way uses "mechanical advantage" as a
means of redirecting long-term and short-term accumulated muscular tension into a more
integrated and balanced state. This position is sometimes referred to as "constructive rest", or
"the balanced resting state". It's also a specific time to practice Alexander's principle
of conscious "directing" without "doing." The second exercise is the "Whispered Ah," which is
used to co-ordinate and free breathing & vocal production.
Freedom, efficiency and patience are the prescribed values. Proscribed are unnecessary effort,
self-limiting habits as well as mistaken perceptual assumptions. Students are led to change their
largely automatic routines that are interpreted by the teacher to currently or cumulatively be
physically limiting, inefficient, or not in keeping with best use of themselves as a whole. The
Alexander teacher provides verbal coaching while monitoring, guiding and preventing
unnecessary habits at their source with a specialized hands-on assistance. This specialized
hands-on skill also allows Alexander teachers to bring about a balanced working of the student's
supportive musculature as it relates to gravity's downward pull from moment to moment. Often,
students require a great deal of hands-on work in order to experience a fully poised relation to
gravity in both movement and at rest as they react to all life's stimuli. The hands-on skill requires
Alexander teachers to maintain in themselves from moment to moment the improved psychophysical co-ordination they are communicating to the student.[12]
Alexander developed terminology to describe his methods, outlined in his four books that explain
the sometimes paradoxical experience of learning and substituting new improvements.
Constructive Conscious Control
Alexander insisted on the need for strategic reasoning
because kinesthetic and proprioceptive sensory awarenesses are relative senses, not
truthful indicators of a person's factual relationships within him/herself or within the
environment. A person's habitual neuro-muscular relation to gravity is often sensed
internally as normal, however inefficient. Alexander's term, "debauched sensory
appreciation" describes how the repetition of an action or response encourages the
formation of habits as a person adapts to various circumstances or builds skills. Once
trained and forgotten, completed habits may be activated without feedback sensations
that these habits are in effect, even when only thinking about the situations that elicit
them.[13] Short-sighted habits that have become harmfully exaggerated over time, such as
restricted breathing or other habitually assumed adaptations to past circumstances, will
stop after learning to perceive and prevent them.
End-gaining
Another example is the term "end-gaining". This term means to focus on a goal so as to
lose sight of the "means-whereby"[14] the goal could be most appropriately achieved.
According to Alexander teachers, "end-gaining" increases the likelihood of selecting older
or multiple conflicting coping strategies. End-gaining is usually carried out because an
imperative priority of impatience or frustration justifies it. Excessive speed in thinking and
acting often facilitates end-gaining.
Inhibition
In the Alexander technique lexicon, the principle of "inhibition" is considered by teachers
to be the most important to gaining improved "use." F.M. Alexander's selection of this
word predates the meaning of the word originated by Sigmund Freud. Inhibition, or
'intentional inhibition', is the act of refraining from responding in one's habitual manner - in
particular, imposed tension in neck muscles (see Primary Control). Inhibition describes a
moment of conscious awareness of a choice to interrupt, stop or entirely prevent an
unnecessary habitual "misuse". As unnecessary habits are prevented or interrupted, a
freer capacity and range of motion resumes and a more spontaneous choice of action or
behavior can be discovered, which is experienced by the student as a state of "nondoing" or "allowing."
Primary control