FM Alexander - The Founder
The Alexander Technique was developed by Mr Frederick Matthias Alexander from the late eighteen hundreds until 1955 when he died. It has continued to be developed by teachers around the world.
The technique was born out of Alexander's own dysfunction (he was an actor that kept losing his voice on stage). He resolved his problem by an hypothesis that it was something he must be 'doing' to cause the problem. Self-observation, experimentation and a lot of perserverance when at first he did not seem to be able to overcome his patterns of tightening were what led him to eradicate his dysfunction for good and develop a method to teach to others.
A Universal Principle
Through this he discovered a universal principle about how the human body is organised and a new way of developing consciousness in the realm of movement that is available to us all. He saw his work on a much grander scheme that just pain prevention (although he helped many, many people with pain and had Harley Street doctors referring patients to him). You can see this when you reflect on the titles of his four books:
They are not easy reads for a modern reader - and not necessarily ones I would recommending starting with but of course they are the closest thing we have to the technique as he understood it.
The technique was born out of Alexander's own dysfunction (he was an actor that kept losing his voice on stage). He resolved his problem by an hypothesis that it was something he must be 'doing' to cause the problem. Self-observation, experimentation and a lot of perserverance when at first he did not seem to be able to overcome his patterns of tightening were what led him to eradicate his dysfunction for good and develop a method to teach to others.
A Universal Principle
Through this he discovered a universal principle about how the human body is organised and a new way of developing consciousness in the realm of movement that is available to us all. He saw his work on a much grander scheme that just pain prevention (although he helped many, many people with pain and had Harley Street doctors referring patients to him). You can see this when you reflect on the titles of his four books:
- Man's Supreme Inheritance
- Constructive, Conscious Control of the Individual
- The Use of the Self
- Universal Constant in Living
They are not easy reads for a modern reader - and not necessarily ones I would recommending starting with but of course they are the closest thing we have to the technique as he understood it.