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What is the Alexander Technique for?
The six members of the Interpersonal Special Interest Group recently met via Zoom to consider the above question. What follows is a summary of their views. What seemed to emerge was a striking consensus of opinion that the Technique is about much more than musculoskeletal integrity. The contributors (in order of appearance, below) were: Richard Casebow, Kathy Hick, Doris Prugel-Bennett, Penny Spawforth, Polly Waterfield and David Harrowes. Richard Alexander Technique - a technique for what? My standard answer, based on the title of Alexander’s second book, is that it is for the development of constructive conscious control by an individual. This raises similar questions: what does that mean and what purpose does it serve? Self-experimentation is at the heart of Alexander’s story, a story of someone taking personal responsibility for his difficulties. He finds his way forward by becoming conscious of the habits that were creating the problems he had with his voice. His discovery of a means to inhibit non-constructive habits was his way forward and something extended to all his actions. I have spent more than half my life pursuing this and teaching it to others. If I go back far enough to my own beginnings with the Technique, it allowed me to function physically and mentally. If I didn’t stop, and forgot about Alexander’s technique, I would cease to function both physically from chronic pain and mentally from episodes of depression. Both are now distant parts of my past. The work that I have done using Alexander’s technique has been foundational in developing an understanding of the way I contributed to and created my difficulties. More importantly, through the power of inhibition I learned to stop trying to control my reactions using habits acquired in the first few weeks of life: and to replace them with a set supportive of exploration, curiosity and experimentation. From numerous readings of Alexander’s books, this is what I think he hoped people would take from them. I can’t say I enjoy reading his books; for many years I read them as detective fiction, to make them readable and to avoid getting exasperated and throwing them away. This way of reading has allowed me to have a dialogue with Alexander and find ways to test out in my own life what he is saying. We are all actors, in our own and other people’s stories. As such we are all capable of losing our shape to fit other people’s stories of ourselves, rather than finding our shape and fit in our own story. Conscious control, which is constructive, allows us to shapeshift, to find our fit, which is what freedom in thought and action allow, in unfolding stories within the great unfolding that is the universe.
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Kathy For me, the Alexander Technique is a means of opening myself up to choice. It equips me with a lens of choice, openness and possibility through which I can view the world, and a connection through which I can meet the world more wholly and deeply. It reminds me that I have choice in each and every moment, and fosters in me a mindset of choice. This choice initially presents itself through the principle of inhibition, as I pause and allow the possibility of a response different from my usual habitual one. I started this connection with choice on the physical level, beginning Alexander lessons nearly 30 years ago to help me address my chronic low-back pain. As I began to explore the possibility of choice on a physical level, the concept gradually migrated to other levels of my interaction with the world. For example, in my relationships with others if I chose to release a jaw tightened in anger during a conversation, the anger could move through me and open up a space for something new and different to arise. I might feel the initial habitual surge of anger and then, in my pause of inhibition, realise I wanted to respond with compassion, curiosity or patience rather than with anger. I consider this level of choice to be on the micro level of stimulus and response in the moment, which I experienced in my first years of practising the Technique. Over time, the practice of inhibition facilitating choice began to affect my responses to life at a more macro level, with a deeper, yet also broader, response. This led me to such insights as, not only did I have a choice within the moment of a conversation, but also in the direction of an entire relationship. My deeper patterns of conditioning and the habits in which they mired me became more apparent to me. I gained clarity on the distinction between ‘what I’ve always done’ and ‘what I really want right now’. It became easier to shift situations or let go of relationships that were no longer beneficial to me. What started as my last-ditch attempt to reduce my back pain has evolved into a lifelong journey of discovery and of embracing conscious choice: a journey infused with resonance, authenticity and intuition. Doris FM Alexander’s work is clearly rooted in the Enlightenment
