thE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE    

Yew Street Studio

            Lene C. Kroll

The Technique                                                    

Frederick Matthias Alexander was born in Tasmania in 1869.  He developed his technique in the last decade of the 19^th century, and continued it’s evolution after moving to England in 1904.   His reputation and practice quickly grew, as did the need for more 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 has been in use for over 100 years.  It is notoriously difficult to put into words, since it focuses largely on kinesthetic experiences which are impossible to describe fully.  One really needs a series of lessons to gain some understanding of it.  It is not a therapy, cure or healing art.  Nor is it a religion, set of exercises, or form of alternative medicine.  

It is a practical technique, where a teacher helps the student to change maladaptive habitual response patterns, to healthier more rational ones.   Instead of showing a student what to do in order to fix a symptom, the teacher focuses on what is going wrong and on learning how to stop it.   The "Work" begins at the pre-motor level,  in that space between stimulus and response.  It is here that old neural pathways can be abandoned, and the new organizing stimuli, coming from the teacher, can be received in a calm objective way. 

New experiences are then gained that lead to constructive changes in the overall use of the student.  Each lesson builds on the last, to promote the skill to act in a more conscious, reorganizing way to the stimuli of life.  Whether you are in pain, (back problems, rsi, arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome), wanting to improve performance, (sports, writing, horseback riding), or just wanting to move with more grace, the technique can help.  The links on the resources page will give you more information about the Alexander Technique, and it's application to specific interests or needs you may have.