Alexander Technique – A technique for what?

The question of what Alexander Technique is a technique for is something I often introduce at the beginning of a first lesson or a workshop. People often find it difficult to answer and I usually go on to suggest an answer in the form of how Alexander might have answered it. The suggestion I give is that it is a technique for developing Constructive Conscious Control and I might add of the Individual, which would give us the title of Alexander’s second book. That leads to a second question, or perhaps set of questions, regarding what is Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, what would it look like and what difference would it make? Well, keeping it short and simple, an answer might go something like this. We all have patterns of moving in the world which are deeply tied up with how we experience and think about the world and ourselves. Those patterns of moving in the world are not something that our bodies do separately from ourselves; they are us, involving our attitudes and everything else that we are. They exist at the core of our being and are so familiar to us that we are unaware of them, they are part of the background – a background we can only see when we move differently. The difference creates a gap we can cross over and, like a bridge once we are over it, we can look back and see where we have come from, where we have been, while holding out the prospect and possibilities of where we have come to be now. The Alexander Technique is a way of crossing over, a bridge to the possibilities and potentialities of a freer way of moving in life, an easier way of being. It helps us become aware, become conscious of the ways we habitually control movement, attitudes and emotions by stiffening our frame, carrying ourselves tightly, suppressing our emotion, rushing at things and generally making too much effort. It invites us to suspend these habits and explore what it would be like to move freely. It offers a choice in how we control ourselves in thought and action, a choice that leads to freedom in movement, and allows us to explore and develop those habits that allow this and which lead to the improvements in posture, back and neck pain that often bring people first to Alexander’s work. These improvements are what make conscious control constructive and follow on from learning to be free of our own habits and reactions, with which we stiffen and tighten – so that in the end, we are, for Alexander, free IN thought and action.