What is the Alexander Technique?

The pace and pressure of modern life can be unrelenting.Our attention is constantly drawn outside of ourselves, into dealing with the external world.

But how much do we consider and care for the element which is constant: ourselves? How do we actually apply ourselves in our activities and relationships?

The Alexander Technique provides a way to work kindly and easily with ourselves, to optimise our performance of the everyday, as well as of special skills.

When an investigation comes to be made, it will be found that every single thing we are doing in this work is exactly what is being done in Nature where the conditions are right, the difference being that we are learning to do it consciously.

F.M. Alexander

What is it for?

We all know about the desirability of relaxation, flexibility, good posture and the absence of tension.

And yet despite our best intentions, despite relaxation classes, fitness classes and Eastern disciplines, we're still tense and uncomfortable in our bodies, susceptible to stress, and often suffer miscellaneous aches and pains.

The Alexander Technique helps us to organise body awareness in a way that is useful to ourselves. It provides us with the knowledge we need in order to implement our good intentions.

The Alexander Technique helps us to take care of ourselves .....

. movement becomes lighter and easier
. breathing becomes freer
. margins for dealing with life's pressures and demands become wider
. we feel more in control of ourselves


You can do something you don't know if you keep on doing what you do know.

F.M. Alexander

How does it work?

The technique is directly concerned with the working of the "postural reflexes", i.e. the processes that enable us to support and balance ourselves against the ever-present pull of gravity while we go about our daily activities.

Over the years most of us build tensions and distortions into our habitual way of being, which slip below the level of our conscious awareness. These produce ongoing restrictions to the working of our natural postural reflexes.

The role of the Alexander teacher is to use gentle manual guidance to help unravel distortions and encourage the natural reflexes to work again. As well, the teacher uses verbal instruction to help students become aware of their own pattern of interference and how to deal with it for themselves.

Hence the work can be described as educative.

Instead of feeling one's body to be an aggregation of ill-fitting parts full of friction and dead weights pulling this way and that, so as to render mere existence in itself exhausting, the body becomes a co-ordinated and living whole, composed of well-fitting and truly articulated parts.

Sir Stafford Cripps Former Chancellor of the Exchequer

Who is it For?

Anybody with the interest to pursue it, can benefit... many,experiencing a loss of poise, want help with physical ailments, e.g. musculo-skeletal problems such as joint problems, bad backs, breathing difficulties or else stress and tension problems. Others come simply because having Alexander lessons makes them feel better, gaining greater control over their movement and actions. Sportspeople, musicians and other performers come in search of greater freedom and poise, recognising the benefits to their technique, fitness and resistance to injury.

Change involves carrying out an activity against the habit of life.

F.M. Alexander

I recommend the Alexander Technique as an extremely sophisticated form of rehabilitation... many types of underperformance and even ailments, both mental and physical, can be alleviated, sometimes to a surprising degree, by teaching the body musculature to function differently.

Prof. N. Tinbergen
Nobel Prize for Medicine/Physiology, 1973

How do I start?

Lessons are individual (one to one). Most people book an initial lesson where they can gain direct experience of the Technique and discuss their particular situation with a teacher.

Author Details: Michael Stenning
Copyright: Michael Stenning
Permissions: Michael Stenning and Leonie John have between them over twenty-seven years of full-time experience teaching the Alexander Technique. They are qualified members of AUSTAT and its U.K. affiliate,STAT.