AUSTAT

Continuing the Ascent of Man

Restoring your full stature as a person

The Alexander Technique restores you to your full stature as a person.

The Alexander Technique restores you to your full stature as a person. F. Matthias Alexander (1869-1955) declared unequivocally that his work was a means of controlling human reaction. He was a man ahead of his time. In our time - the technological age - we are bombarded by stimuli at a rate unprecedented in human history.

Reacting to these stimuli can lead to all kinds of modern ills: ADD, chronic fatigue, anxiety, depression, and so on. It has been stated by neurologists that the technologically driven change in the brain is the biggest modification in the last 200,000 years.

As you begin lessons in the Technique, you will discover a way to usefully integrate the faculties you were born with. You will learn about the critical head-neck-back relationship (what Alexander termed "primary control"); and this leads to an efficient use of your whole self in all situations.

Context is everything

If there is a secret to this Alexander work it is in the breathing. While we are multi-skilled and capable of handling sophisticated gadgetry, the ancient preverbal part of our brains, the sector involved with breathing and movement, has never been superseded.

Alexander first gained a reputation as a breath teacher. The profession has never departed from this principle, because if you can liberate your breath you are well on the way to full integration. Well over ninety percent of illnesses are breath related.

Over a course of Alexander lessons, posture will improve and many pupils report an improvement in their overall health and emotional lives. But these benefits accrue as a result of breath. Breathing places us quite naturally and effortlessly in the right context.

The most important lesson you will learn is how to stop reacting. Alexander termed this stopping "inhibition." This is perhaps the most radical and far-reaching aspect of Alexander's work, and the one least understood.

When we react on impulse, we shorten our stature and hold our breath; we diminish ourselves and in so doing disconnect ourselves from our in-built support system - we get taken out of context.

The best way to learn the Alexander Technique is to take lessons with a qualified teacher. This website will assist you in locating a teacher. It is true that our members are spread rather thinly over the country, but there is a very good reason for this.

The Hands of Alexander

Alexander's technique (or principle) is on a different level or order of significance from other so-called "growth" systems. The American educational philosopher John Dewey likened Alexander's discovery to the advances made in the Renaissance - discoveries that caused men to change their ideas of external nature.

Another great American, Frank Pierce Jones, believed that if this new Alexander means of communication were properly formulated, "it would do for the field of psychology what Newton did for physics, transform it into a unified science."

These may seem extravagant claims for an ordinary Australian layman. As fate would have it, Alexander made this extraordinary discovery through misusing his voice. Had his trouble appeared somewhere else in his body he may never have come to prominence.

The next major step for him was to discover a way of conveying this intrinsic knowledge by the use of his hands.

Aristotle characterized the hand as "an instrument that represents many instruments". A modern writer, John Napier (Hands 1980), describes the hand as "the chief organ of the fifth sense". That sense - touch - is special in Alexander terms.

The profound consequences for self-awareness and self-understanding through touch have not been fully appreciated; and it is in this domain that Alexander teachers are qualified.

In a very real sense, Alexander's discovery helps to complete Charles Darwin's program. By inhibiting the habitual gestures and movements, we are bound to take the next evolutionary step.

The Distinguishing Factor

Alexander Technique looks at movement pattern itself. The technique is not concerned with three-dimensional but with four-dimensional posture, in other words, with movement. And when movement is unimpeded, the breathing is free.

We can all agree on what "poor posture" looks like; but we will disagree about what constitutes "good posture." The trouble is we are usually looking at static shots of people when we make these judgments.

In a three-dimensional photograph of a champion athlete he may exhibit good posture. But wait; immediately after the snapshot was taken, he may have collapsed into a slump. Pictures, like words, can be misleading. Conversely, a slouching adolescent may move quite easily, and as she moves her posture may improve. A person's dour expression may be transformed in an instant by a sunny smile.

In every moment of our lives there is exists the possibility of change, and that is why Alexander teachers are wary of attempting to define what is good or bad posture. Life is not a series of snapshots but a continuum. Each lesson brings you more in touch with your breath.

Alexander Technique is a complete and all-inclusive method that refuses to have the last word. Simple awareness of our breath brings change, and this has been borne out by discoveries in quantum mechanics.

Anti-gravity reflexes

When you take a lesson with an Alexander teacher, you will learn how to lengthen upward correctly. The teacher's non-invasive, non-manipulative hands will inform you in a way that ordinary words cannot. This is the distinguishing factor of the Alexander work, the use of the hands and the degree of attention the teacher applies to his/her own use and movement.

We all have to be careful that we don't hamper the body's own well-judged responses to natural and man-made surfaces. We get glimpses of this faculty when we are step onto a moving platform such as an escalator or lift. The way the head and torso interact with each other and with our limbs will determine our centre of gravity.

When the head is well poised the pull of gravity actually elicits postural reflexes that keep the curves of the spine heading skyward. This creates the line of least resistance - we go up. Once this lengthening starts to happen, our breath is unimpeded and we can sit, stand, and walk with a relaxed but upright carriage.

Alexander's Directions

Alexander devised a set of subtle yet powerful directions ("Let my neck be free, to let my head go forward and up, to let my back lengthen and widen") that are thought but not done. We think these directions and trust that the central nervous system will know how to execute them. Alexander lessons will help you to foster this trust.

Alexander teachers undergo a particularly exacting three-year training course; and they then go on refining their work through the course of their lives. There is no room for the complacent in the Alexander profession. Alexander teacher training is not for the faint-hearted, and that is why there are so few skilled practitioners.

Resisting the urge to get it right

The teacher is not there to tell you what is wrong or where you must improve; there is no formulaic approach to this work.

Alexander teachers tend to adopt the wisdom that you cannot teach anybody anything; but you can teach him or her how to learn.

What you gain in the course of lessons is an expanded field of consciousness. You become more attentive to yourself and to others - you gain an efficient self-monitoring capability.

Your breathing and posture will change for the better, and many specific faults will be reduced or fade away. You begin to cope better with modern life.

Portability

Once you have developed good self-monitoring skills, there is no turning back. This "thinking in activity" (John Dewey's phrase) is what gives this the edge over other modalities and systems. Another way of saying it would be "reality in action." When things are going well for us, there is a harmony of our intentions and movement.

We had this brilliant capacity in our golden age as children: when we are young the only place that exists for us is this place, and the only time that really exists is the moment of the present. One writer on the Alexander Technique describes it as "The Sacred Portable Now."

So, while adults place great value on the faculty of abstract thought, they may become estranged from the physical world (out of context). We may even begin to think of ourselves as three-dimensional or flattened figures in cyberspace. Through Alexander lessons you can regain the experience of reality in action, and with that knowledge you begin to take better care of yourself.

The primary control never perishes. It is our evolutionary inheritance; and the beauty of it is you take it with you wherever you go. There is no age, gender, shape, or creed barrier to learning the Technique - it is applicable to any human being on the globe.

Once you get your bearings, you can navigate the stream of life with admirable carriage, courage, and curiosity.

' What a piece of work is a man!'

There is nothing fanciful or mystical about Alexander Technique. As a boy, F.M. Alexander was blessed with an insatiable curiosity. He was born in Wynyard, Tasmania, and aside from his love of nature he was drawn to classical literature. He decided at quite a young age to travel around giving solo recitals of Shakespeare.

Friends and associates who witnessed his first attempts commented on the audible gasping that accompanied his efforts. In fact, he reached a point where vocal strain forced him to withdraw from performance. In the course of solving this dilemma he discovered something that was so fundamental, so basic, and yet so profound that the throat specialists who examined him had overlooked it.

Alexander realized that everything within his own self worked perfectly well so long as he didn't interfere. In normal conversation with his friends and colleagues his voice was fine. But once he was on the stage he adopted a number of contortions that all but wrecked his breathing. He was reacting to the stimulus to give a performance.

After years of experimenting and watching himself in mirrors he realized that it wasn't that he had to do something; rather he realized that he had to stop doing the things that were blocking him.

Once Alexander learned to ignore the stimulus of performance his voice was restored to full vigour.

Alexander then identified the directional and controlling forces of the living human person; but it is not just theoretical - he found a way of liberating the breath by the use of his hands. He stumbled upon a way to heal the split between "mind" and "body". Instead of playing Hamlet, Frederick Matthias Alexander was gaining plaudits for his off-stage role as 'The Breathing Man'. A new career had begun.

While it is true that Alexander Technique has been a boon to actors, singers, and musicians, the work has a much wider application.

Breath and pulse, nature's time-keepers

The capacity to be more present and more consciously directed in our everyday lives brings out the deeper wisdom of the human organism. By continually lengthening and freeing the torso into volume we permit a supple and serene breathing rhythm. This in turn allows the body's own self-healing system to go about its task.

F.M. Alexander did not claim to have the final answer to life's riddle, instead he left us with a vital question (and a challenge): Can we respond to stimuli without resorting to the habits of a lifetime?

In the daily round we are continually facing stimuli, and the breath is the first casualty when we are frightened, angry, overworked, or upset. As Professor Jacob Bronowski put it: "We are nature's unique experiment to make the rational intelligence prove sounder than the reflex. Success or failure of this experiment depends on the basic human ability to impose a delay between the stimulus and the response."

Once you have learned the Alexander principles of inhibition/direction you have a tool for maintaining your composure under any circumstances.