Testimonials

What some well known people and performers say
about the Alexander Technique

Jeremy Irons, Actor:

"For all of us, not just actors, life puts great stress and strain on our bodies. The Alexander Technique has given me a self-help method by teaching me to relax and adjust my posture so that my body, which for an actor is an instrument, can work as well as possible."

Emma Kirkby, Singer

One of the world's finest sopranos, she has studied and benefited from the Alexander Technique:

"I find it invaluable on and off the platform."

Alec McCowen C.B.E., Actor:

"The Alexander Technique has been of inestimable value to me for the last 20 years. Without it, I might well be crippled with bad posture and arthritis. I cannot recommend it too highly."

Barry Tuckwell, horn player:

"I would be delighted to be mentioned as someone who has studied the Alexander Technique. I was fortunate to have studied with the late Dr Wilfred Barlow in London. He helped me with my back problems, and his teachings have enabled me to correct my posture."

Kevin Kline, Actor:

"The many obvious benefits that the technique afforded us as actors included minimized tension, centerdeness, vocal relaxation and responsiveness, mind/body connection, and about an inch and a half of additional height. In addition, I have found in the ensuing years great benefits in my day-to-day living. By balancing and neutralizing tensions, I've learned to relieve as well as to avoid the aches and pain caused by the thousands of natural shocks that flesh is heir to."


Aldous Huxley, Author

In his influential book Ends and Means (1937), writes:

"Complete understanding of the system can only come with the practice of it. All I need say in this place is that I am sure, as a matter of personal experience and observation, that is gives us all the things we have been looking for in a system of physical education: relief from strain due to maladjustment, and consequent improvement in physical and mental health; increased consciousness of the physical means employed to gain the ends proposed by the will and, along with this, a general heightening of consciousness on all levels; a technique of inhibition, working on the physical level to prevent the body from slipping back, under the influence of greedy 'end-gaining,' into its old habits of malco-ordination, and working (by a kind of organic analogy) to inhibit undesirable impulses and irrelevance on the emotional and intellectual levels respectively. We cannot ask more from any system of physical education; nor, if we seriously desire to alter human beings in a desirable direction, can we ask any less."


Mary Steenburgen, Actress

Delivered a talk to the 2nd International Congress on the F.M. Alexander Technique in Brighton, England, in 1988. Here is a fragment of her talk as published in the journal Direction:

"Actors are constantly under some kind of stress – just the mere act, as Alexander found, of stepping out onto a stage is terrifying to some degree, for some of us more than for others. The question in terms of acting and the Alexander Technique for me was to be able to have some control over the tension. When you are playing a character that is pulled down, there is a way of being pulled down that is not necessarily in a slump. You can free your neck, allow your head to move forward and up and your whole body to follow, and still give the illusion of your character's physical tension or collapse. It just requires experimenting and playing with it. An actor can learn to be hunched over without putting stress on his or her vocal mechanism. This is a very useful thing for a performer to know."

Institutions using the Alexander Technique

Arts Academy, University of Ballarat
West Australian Academy of Performing Arts
Australian National Academy of Music
Victorian College of the Arts
National Institute of Dramatic Art
Sydney Conservatorium of Music
London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Royal National Theatre
Central School of Speech and Drama
Guildford Drama School
Mountview Theatre School
Royal Academy of Music
Royal College of Music
Royal Northern College of Music
Purnell School
Eton College
Westminster Public School
British Association for Performing Arts Medicine
The Menuhin School
Juilliard School
New York University
Metropolitan Opera
Mannes College of Music
The Actor's Studio
The American Academy of Dramatic Arts
Northwestern University School of Music and School of Speech
Indiana University
The Aspen Music Festival and School
New England Conservatory of Music
The Eastman School of Music