The Alexander Technique
“All our efforts in the way of education should be to create conditions in which growth will continue through life, conditions in which the stagnation which accompanied fixed habit, will be impossible.” (F.M. Alexander)
The Alexander Technique is a method of kinesthetic re-education that teaches students how to unlearn habits of undue stress, strain and automaticity and come into conscious coordination with human design. Much more than a means of correcting specific habits, it aims to give constructive conscious control over habitual activity in general. Every waking moment of every single day we are in a constant state of response to internal and external stimuli, most of which operates beyond our more normal conscious awareness and sensitivity. Through the practice of the technique one can learn to change the fixed habits and conditioning of a lifetime, to act more freely, creatively and spontaneously, and to function with a reliable and profound sense of clarity, poise and ease.
The technique is taught through private lessons in which the teacher guides the student through simple activities that highlight patterns of unconscious, reflexive neuromuscular tension. Through the teacher’s hands-on guidance the student learns how to bring these patterns under conscious control and to function without self-interference. The technique differs from most, if not all other self-improvement techniques and exercises in that it does not teach the student how to move, how to sit or stand or breath, but rather how to stop interfering with one’s self as they move, sit, stand, breathe or perform any more specialized skill or activity. Another unique feature of the technique is that it does not approach human functioning from the perspective of having various parts that need connecting, ie. “body and mind,” but rather as a unified psycho-physical whole. Fixed habits are fixed beliefs in action. The unlearning and undoing of conditioned tension and interference is not in and of itself sufficient in producing a free and fully responsive state however. The technique employs a pro-active means-whereby process in which clarity of intent actualizes demonstrably efficient and free bearing and coordination, in which perfect stability and ready mobility are features of the same state. Through the process of practicing the technique, the student’s kinesthetic sense becomes less distorted, more refined and reliable, such that they become able to reproduce the positive effects of the lessons through their own self-directed process.
The Alexander Technique is a genuine art form that transcends, encompasses and integrates all categories of activity. It enhances the development of any artistic or educational pursuit and makes and art of the most simple acts of living. I work with students who’s interests range from seeking peak performance in music, dance, acting, martial arts, yoga, sports and meditation to those seeking relief from chronic pain and chronic illness to children and anyone else with curiosity and interest in learning new ways of thinking and being. I am an AmSAT certified Alexander Technique teacher. I teach primarily through one-on-one lessons but also offer introductory group seminars and training intensives.
“If our habitual judgements of ourselves are warped because they are based on vitiated sense material - as they must be if our habits of managing ourselves are already wrong - then the more complex the social conditions under which we live, the more disastrous the outcome. Every additional complication of outward instrumentalities is likely to be a step nearer destruction: a fact which the present state of the world tragically exemplifies. There are certain basic, central organic habits and attitudes which condition every act we perform, every use we make of ourselves. Hence a conditioned reflex is not just a matter of an arbitrarily established connection, such as that between the sound of a bell and the eating-reaction in a dog, but goes back to central conditions within the organism itself. This discovery corrects the ordinary conception of a conditioned reflex. The latter as usually understood renders the individual to a passive puppet to be played upon by external manipulations. The discovery of a central control which conditions all other reactions brings the conditioning factor under conscious direction and enables the individual through his own coordinated activities to take possession of his own potentialities. It converts the fact of conditioned reflexes from a principle of external enslavement into a means of vital freedom. Without knowledge of what constitutes a truly normal and healthy psycho-physical life, our professed education is likley to be miseducation.”
~ John Dewey
