The Alexander Technique
F M Alexander
The Alexander Technique was developed originally by Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869-1955), who was born in Tasmania and moved to London, England in 1904.
Over many years Alexander developed his Technique and taught it to others. He found that a wide range of health and life problems - from back pain to stuttering - could be solved through the Technique.
He trained a number of his pupils to become teachers, and they trained others. Today there are over 2500 Alexander teachers all over the world. Most of these teachers are members of regulatory bodies, the main one in the UK being STAT (the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique), of which Philippa is a member.
The undivided self
Alexander recognised that our mind and body are inseparable and work together as an undivided unity, which he called the 'self'. Thoughts and emotions both affect and arise from changes in the body.
He found that the way we move and react - our 'use of ourselves' - influences our health and well-being, in other words how we function. It follows that by improving our use, we function better. But how can we improve our use?
The Primary Control
Alexander discovered that the head-neck-back relationship is of fundamental importance to the way we use ourselves. He called this crucial relationship 'the primary control'.
The primary control occurs naturally in all of us, and in other animals. It can be described as a free and flowing relationship between the head, neck and back, and is the support for how we are and how we move.
It is the centre around which all other parts of ourselves are organised and is essential to how we orient ourselves in our environment and in contact with the earth.
Good use results from the optimal working of the primary control, when all parts of the person are working in harmony as one efficient, free, flexible whole, aligned in gravity.
Strong habits
We all have ingrained habitual muscular reactions and patterns of tension. These may have become fixed, they can be triggered by thoughts and emotions or simply have become associated with particular movements or positions.
The way that a person uses him or herself is the sum of these habitual reactions and patterns, and affects they way they carry out all activities eg standing, walking, talking, breathing, eating, sitting in a chair, playing a musical instrument, tying shoelaces. If these reactions and patterns interfere with the primary control it can be said that they constitute 'poor use' of the self - they tend to pull us down, narrowing and restricting us, leading to a multitude of problems.
However, if this poor use can be corrected and unnecessary tension released, the primary control can be allowed to function naturally and optimally, with corresponding increased ease of movement and improved health and well-being.
What's wrong feels right and what's right feels wrong
Unfortunately, it is not easy to correct poor use! In most cases our habits have been ingrained over a long time and are very strong. They are also reinforced continuously by our day-to-day activities.
The situation is made more complicated by the fact that how we use ourselves is associated with how we see ourselves and how we think and feel. Habitual poor use seems normal or 'right'. Similarly, a less harmful way of being and moving will feel 'wrong'. There can be a lot of resistance to change.
The Alexander Technique lesson
This is where an Alexander Technique teacher comes in! Through the use of her hands and verbal instruction, the teacher will encourage the optimal working of the primary control in order to give the pupil the experience of having better use, in standing, sitting, lying down and in movement.
At the same time the pupil is taught how to use his/her thinking process both to avoid reacting according to old habitual patterns, which interfere with the primary control, and to positively enhance the working of the primary control, releasing it to work optimally.
The whole mind-body system then re-organises itself around its central support, so that the pupil discovers new ways of being and moving, freely and easily. Instead of being pulled down, narrow and restricted, the pupil experiences the opposite - being up, expanded and free.
Gradually the pupil becomes able to use the Alexander Technique without the presence of the teacher, to enhance day-to-day life and all activities.
Choice
An essential element of the Alexander Technique is choice. Because of our ingrained habits we tend to feel we have no choice in life, which is understandable because the habits are very strong. A person may have become stooped over, feeling 'down', and cannot see how she could be otherwise; another finds he always reacts the same way to certain events, for instance with anger or anxiety, and that he is unable to control these reactions. Both are in traps of their own unconscious making.
The Alexander Technique brings choice back in to our lives - we can decide how to respond to any stimulus, for instance the invitation to sit down, the ring of a telephone, the pressure of speaking in public, the lure of the computer screen or someone doing something we dislike. Having the choice of how to respond opens us up to new experiences and releases us from the self-made traps we have found ourselves in. We are no longer victims of our habits.
End-gaining and the 'means whereby'
It is a human tendency to try to achieve an outcome quickly and with the minimum of effort. Unfortunately this tendency, which Alexander called 'end-gaining', often leads to a less-than-perfect outcome with by no means the minimum of effort! End-gaining is often unconscious and can be non-productive, harmful and even injurious.
Obvious examples of end-gaining are:
- Crossing a road without looking out for traffic
- Speeding up in tempo when playing music
- Picking up a heavy object by bending at the waist instead of at the hips and knees
Actually, as you have probably guessed, whenever someone does something habitually which adversely affects the primary control, end-gaining is involved.
Use of the Alexander Technique really allows one to use the minimum of effort to do something; the way to do this is by what Alexander termed the 'means whereby': consciously, step by step, with choice at every step. With practice this need not be a long-winded process. Desired outcomes will still happen! Using the means-whereby is an integral part of the Technique; it is the natural result of letting the primary control work at its best and allowing oneself the freedom to respond to events in a non-habitual way.
Mental well-being and the undivided self
As mentioned above, from years of observing himself and others Alexander did not find a division between mind and body. Mental well-being affects physical well-being and vice versa, in fact one could say they are the same thing. (This model is nothing new now but interestingly many health practitioners still view the mind and body as separate entities.)
Learning the Alexander Technique allows one to discover empirically that the 'undivided self' model indeed applies - that an emotion is always manifested in the body, and that emotions and thoughts affect muscles, breathing, digestion etc. It is no surprise then that practice of the Alexander Technique results in increased well-being, self-confidence, calmness and emotional balance.
In brief...
The Alexander Technique allows you to overcome your habitual reactions and release yourself from unnecessary tension, resulting in an enhancing of the central head-neck-back relationship, which in turn leads to increased co-ordination, balance and poise, ease of movement and freedom of choice. If you learn and use the Alexander Technique your life will never be the same again!
