The Alexander Technique's main objective is a psychophysical re-education, teaching how the body and mind can work together while performing all of the daily activities and helping to detect and reduce excess tension by promoting harmony and well being.
The Alexander Technique answers to a demand that exists in everyone: to live with less tension and more freedom in movement as well as in your thought patterns.
It is a practical and simple method of re-education applied in several countries around the world for over 100 years. It is not a treatment and should not be compared to relaxation techniques, massage or body work methods.
The result of this practice is to become aware of the natural functioning of the body's reflexes. It brings about several benefits to the individual's health: prevention of postural problems and muscular strain, greater freedom of movement through the improvement of coordination and balance of the body, easier breathing and physical and mental well-being.
The article: "Randomised controlled trial of Alexander Technique lessons, exercise, and massage (ATEAM) for chronic and recurrent back pain: economic evaluation" was published in the British Medical Journal in 2008.
According to the conclusions of the article, "an exercise prescription and six lessons in Alexander Technique alone were both more than 85% likely to be cost effective at values above £20 000 per QALY, but the Alexander Technique performed better than exercise on the full range of outcomes. A combination of six lessons in Alexander Technique lessons followed by exercise was the most effective and cost effective option."
The BMJ article includes a brilliant video. To read the full article and see the video, please follow the link below:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/337/dec11_2/a2656
The awareness of the natural functioning of the body's reflexes is gained by the release of tension and is encouraged by the teacher while the student is gently oriented through daily routines such as speaking, walking, sitting down and geting up from a chair.
In this way, balance can be found between muscular tonus and release giving the body the proper support for movement.
Breathing and circulation become freer thus awarding the student conditions to answer to problems of everyday life with less stress and greater freedom of choice.
There are no side effects or limitation of age.
"A maioria das pessoas cai em um hábito mecânico de pensamento tão facilmente como elas caem em um hábito mecânico corporal que é a conseqüência imediata" F. M. Alexander
Matthias Alexander (1869-1955) was a man ahead of his time. In the end of the 19th century, he designed a revolutionary method that concerned the human being's development that, along those years, attracted several personalities in the fields of science, education and arts. It can be said that Alexander was a pioneer in western culture and developed a method in which the man is seen as a psycho-physic unit. Alexander believed that his work would benefit future generations as an instrument for the human being's improvement, through an integral education in which the physical, emotional and mental aspects are all involved.
This work began in his youth, when Alexander became a renowned Shakespearean actor in Australia and New Zealand and his recitals became popular. His health, that was already fragile since childhood, worsened due to his frequent theatrical presentations: breathing problems and hoarseness became constant problems. Without any success with doctors and without knowing how to solve these problems, Alexander began a research using himself as the object of observation and study. He noticed that the way he used his body and mind directly affected the general functioning of his organism - his voice and breathing problems were merely consequences of a dysfunctional body. Since then, he developed a method based in Man's psycho-physical unit, named The Alexander Technique.
Advised by several Australian doctors, Alexander moved to England in 1904 where he would have more chances of expanding the potential of his findings. Along those years, he obtained support from several personalities of his time like: writer Aldous Huxley, playwright George Bernard Shaw, Nobel Prize winner of physiology Sir Charles Sherrington, anthropologist Raymond Dart and the philosopher and educator John Dewey, amongst others.
1930 he began the first teachers training course, in what later became known as The Alexander Technique and continued teaching his technique up to 1955, year of his passing.
Along his life he wrote four books:
- Man's Supreme Inheritance, 1910
- Constructive Concious Control of the Individual, 1923
- The Use of the Self ,1932
- The Universal Constant in Living,1943
"The Alexander Technique gives us all things we have been looking for in a system of physical education: relief from strain due to maladjustment, and constant improvement in physical and mental health. We cannot ask for more from any system; nor, if we seriously desire to alter human beings in a desirable direction, can we ask any less." Aldous Huxley, author
Nowadays, even though unknown to the general public in Brazil, his work is being applied in different teaching institutions around of the world. The principles developed by Alexander influenced several therapies, self-knowledge processes and body work existing today. When one enters in contact with this technique it is very common to e surprised by how original, simple and modern it actually is.
"This story of perceptiveness, of intelligence and of persistence, shown by a man without medical training, is one of the true epics of medical research and practice(...) this basic scientific method is still too often looked down on by those blinded by the glamour of apparatus. A little more attention to the body as a whole and to the unit of body and mind could substantially enrich the field of medical research."
Extracts of the speech given by Prof. Nikolaas Tinbergen, on the work of F.M.Alexander, when receiving The Nobel Prize of Medicine in 1973.
"Alexander established not only the beginnings of a far reaching science of the apparently involuntary movements we call reflexes, but a technique of correction and self-control which forms a substantial addition to our very slender resources in personal education." GEORGE BERNARD SWAW, playwright
"Together with improved physical and mental health I have found that the Alexander Tehcnique has brought about a general heightening of consciousness on all levels." ALDOUS HUXLEY
"Mr. Alexander has done a service to the subject by insistently treating each act as involving the whole integrated individual, the whole psycho-physical man. To take a step is an affair not of this or that limb solely, but of the total neuromuscular activity of the moment - not the least of the head and neck." SIR CHARLES SHERRNGTON, Nobel Prize winner in medicine 1932
"Alexander's work is of first class importance and investigation by the medical profession is imperative." British Medical Journal (Article entitled Instinct and Functioning in Health and Disease, Dec 1926)
"I submit that Alexander demonstrated a principle of supreme importance for a holistic world-view. He made a breakthrough which is nothing less than an evolutionary step forward, when a single human being learned to take constructive, conscious control of the direction of his own use of himself. He discovered man's supreme inheritance and the universal constant in living. He overcame the reliance on faulty sensory register and taught himself a central general habit of use of his entire body working as an indivisible psycho-physical unity." SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN, the "grandfather" of the movement for spiritual regeneration in Britain
"There is no such thing as a right position, but there is such thing as a right direction" F.M.ALEXANDER
"You get away from all your old preconceived ideas because you are getting away from your old habits" F.M.ALEXANDER
"You can’t do something you don’t know, if you keep on doing what you do know." F.M.ALEXANDER
"Everyone is always teaching one what to do, leaving us still doing the things we shouldn’t do." F.M.ALEXANDER
"To know when we are wrong is all that we shall ever know in this world." F.M.ALEXANDER
"Everyone wants to be right, but no one stops to consider if their idea of right is right." F.M.ALEXANDER
