Welcome to Alexander Technique Education

Losing awareness
The demands of modern life often require our attention to be on things other than our selves. Cars, televisions and computers have made us more sedentary. The television and computer, in particular, lure our attention into a virtual world where we gradually lose awareness of our posture, our breathing and our relationship to the ground. When we lose awareness in this way, we are at the mercy of gravity, which does what it has done since time immemorial: pulls us downwards. Because we are so distracted, ‘not home’, so to speak, we fail to notice what is happening.

When we slump and stiffen, we subject ourselves to great strain and the intricate postural mechanisms with which we are equipped to counteract the downward pull of gravity cease to operate properly. To add to our woes, we become accustomed to this distortion as though it were normal and comfortable. Our weight-bearing joints begin to wear under the load, our respiratory function becomes impaired and there are consequences for the quality of our emotional and mental well-being. Alexander’s term for this catalogue of errors was ‘misuse’.

Use affects Function
F.M. Alexander perceived that, for better or worse, the way we use our organism as a whole, directly affects our functioning.

When we slump, for example, our hip and knee joints are compressed, producing wear and tear of the joint surfaces and continual pressure on our intervertebral discs. Our spinal curves become exaggerated and the tone of our back muscles changes. There is increased muscular tension and pressure within the abdomen which can constrict blood flow to the organs. This in turn can lead to pooling of fluids in our lower limbs and the development of varicose veins, haemorrhoids, spastic colon and related disorders. The musculature of the ribcage tends to tighten restricting our breathing and preventing an adequate supply of oxygen for physical, emotional and mental functioning.

When we get used to living in a body like this, we waste our energy merely feeding the unnecessary tension. Our posture suffers and vitality is diminished – with consequences for our mental and emotional health. Down in body, means emotionally down, and down in spirit.

Misuse is endemic in the modern Western world – as are depression and the need for knee and hip replacement. Is this mere coincidence? We need to understand that when we use ourselves poorly, we are harming our general functioning. Misuse begins early but is not recognized. It has become so commonplace that we barely notice it. It is inadvertently encouraged as part of a result-oriented lifestyle which tends to regard the body as a machine, something separate from the rest of us. The devastating effects of misuse show clearly after decades, in midlife and old age, but they are becoming increasingly more evident in the young.

Indivisible unity
After a decade of pragmatic research, long before the notion of an holistic approach to wellbeing became popularised, Alexander was convinced that the integrity crucial to our wellbeing can only be restored by addressing the psycho-physical whole and that treating wayward parts in isolation does nothing to improve, even exacerbates, the underlying condition. To that effect he said that to classify and deal with human ills and shortcomings as purely ‘physical’ or purely ‘mental’ has not been and will not be successful. All endeavours to improve the human condition must be founded upon the indivisible unity of the human organism.

When we consider that he was able to bring about a radical improvement in his own general functioning, including the restoration of his vocal and respiratory mechanisms to full working order, it might pay us to heed his advice and to be immensely grateful that he went on to develop a means of facilitating the restoration of psycho-physical integrity in others.