the Alexander Technique

The Technique

Frederick Matthias Alexander was born in Tasmania in 1869.  He developed his technique during the last decade of the 19th century and continued it's evolution after moving to London, England in 1904.  His reputation and practice quickly grew as did the need for teachers.  In 1931 he opened his first training course.  Alexander continued teaching until his death in 1955.  There are now over 2,500 qualified teachers worldwide.

The Alexander Technique is notoriously difficult to describe since it focuses largely on kinesthetic experiences which are difficult to put into words.  

It is a practical technique where a teacher helps the student to change maladaptive habitual response patterns to healthier more appropriate ones.  Instead of showing a student what to do in order to fix a symptom, the teacher focuses on what is going wrong and how to stop it.

The "Work" begins at the pre-motor level, in the space between stimulus and response.  It is here that old neural pathways can be abandoned and the new organizing stimuli from the teacher can be received in a calm objective way. 

Each lesson builds upon the last to promote the skill to act in a more conscious, reorganizing way to the stimuli of life.  New experiences are then gained that lead to constructive changes in the overall Use of the Self.

 

In that quiet space between stimulus and response, a more objective, reasoned and appropriate response becomes a possibility.