Alexander Technique
Photo Donald Greenwood | Body Learning, 2nd UK edition, Aurum Press, 1987
What I learned
I learned so much and benefitted so deeply from this work – as a student (for 4 years), and as an Alexander teacher and a trainer of Alexander teachers (for 18 years). I am full of amazement and gratitude.
I learned how the teacher connects with the learner – through their presence, words and hands – in a non-judgmental, non-imposing way. I experienced the peace of listening 'non-doing' hands, that offer a subtle invitation into a more expanded, freer, more poised way to be, that transports the learner into a new experience of their body, and their being.
I found out how the learner can take responsibility to re-create this poise within themselves, including knowing how to make an embodied pause between stimulus and response, to choose how to be.
What is it?
It is very hard to describe the Alexander Technique. There are many things it is not. It is…
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not a right/wrong postural education
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not massage or physical therapy
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not yoga or Pilates
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not a set of exercises
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not bodily manipulation
So, what is it?
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A non-doing, non-judgmental space in which the learner grows into themselves
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A unique hands-on education for increased psycho-physical awareness and well-being
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A set of principles applied to embodied living that have a direct effect on lived experience
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An approach that turns up the volume knob on your experience of sensation, allowing you to self-monitor, and adjust into better alignment and minimal muscular tension, for any task
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A new – and much more easeful – way to live in your body, in every moment, long after you have completed a course of lessons
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A mystery – even though we can now say much scientifically about the physical aspect
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Mindfulness de luxe!
Photo Donald Greenwood | Body Learning, 2nd edition, Aurum Press 1987
How I got into it
In 1968, age 15, my entire back – from neck to tail bone – went into very painful spasm. For eight years I was treated at a top London hospital by a top back doctor, while the spasms continued – sometimes more often, sometimes less, but unrelentingly. Eventually he said they could not help me. I would have to live with it.
The mind-body-spirit explosion had not happened yet, and no one I knew was involved in - or knew about - 'alternative' approaches to well being.
So when in 1974 a friend randomly spotted a book that mentioned back pain on the cover, and bought it for me, I recognised this was something quite different – and read it in one sitting. That book was about the Alexander Technique.
After three weeks it occurred to me that perhaps there were people who actually did this! I found them. Living not far from me was a seemingly slightly eccentric, but clearly kind and caring, couple, Dick and Elizabeth Walker – who had trained with F.M. Alexander himself, in the 1950s.
In my first Alexander lesson with Dick I felt as thought he was drinking the tension out of my shoulders. I went back – twice a week for a year.
With a very light, subtle touch, that I could often hardly feel, he stimulated changes that became embedded in my being. This was not a quick fix. This was gradual, gentle, total change.
Month by month by back spasms reduced until, eventually – after also receiving intensive Alexander work during the teacher training course – they never returned. My body became strong and resilient. My social fears slipped away. And much more.
Along the way I found how much was packed into my bodily tension and misalignment. Emotions I had stuffed into my body as I grew up, frozen traumatic moments, a couple of physical injuries, a lostness in my spiritual life. The Alexander Technique opened the door for me to discover so much more of myself.
What a liberation, on so many levels. I am profoundly grateful.