What It’s Like to Take Lessons in the Alexander Technique

There is never a time in your life when you stop moving. When you stop moving, you are officially dead.

As a baby, you learned to crawl and walk, and, unless you were born with a significant disability, you used a minimum of effort to get anywhere. At the age of two, you were a picture of bodily poise. It was only later, after several years of imitating your father’s walk, your mother’s breathing, or sitting slumped over your school desk for hours, that tension became a habit.

Habits are formed over a lifetime, and movements tend to be habitual. And ways of moving change, many times for the worse, after emotional or physical trauma.

There will always be a few blessed individuals who never lose that fine sense of kinesthetic awareness, regardless of what they sense from their environment. For example, people like Fred Astaire, and Muhammad Ali, in his prime boxing years. These two individuals were the personification of light, incredibly easy movement.

I had the adventure of my life when I learned to release a lot of that typical tension. It’s been about 18 years, and though I don’t know where my notes are, I can still recall as if it were yesterday my first lesson in the Alexander Technique

It is a method of neuromuscular reeducation. All of us have habits of movement that were developed over many years, and which contribute greatly to body maladies and physical pain. We are stressed by modern life, and because most of carry too much tension in our bodies, we react to stimuli in predictable ways.

The goal of a series of lessons in the Alexander Technique is to help our bodies give up some of that familiar tension, thereby improving our performance in any activity of life.

The Alexander Technique was developed during the late 19^th century by F. Matthias Alexander (F. M. to his friends), who was a Tasmanian actor. Alexander specialized in one-man recitals, and eventually, to his dismay, he developed serious vocal problems. He consulted physicians and tried various remedies to no avail.

At that point, Alexander decided that the problem with his vocal chords was caused by something he was doing, and so he determined to find out what that was. Without going into details, let’s just say that he observed that he was interfering with the proper relationship between the head, neck, and back. When he was able to inhibit his habitual response just before he uttered a word, he permanently solved his vocal problems. Eventually he developed a system of teaching for his technique.

It’s important to state that the Technique is not about a form of rigid posture  -- not about the military bearing we’ve all come to think of as correct – shoulders back, stomach sucked in, legs locked.  The Technique is about so much more than how I am standing at any given moment.

People have various reasons for taking Alexander Technique lessons. Some are musicians like the violinist with neck problems, or perhaps serious athletes like the tennis player who wants to prevent tendinitis. Others are ordinary people not in the performance field who suffer from pain and stress-related illness.

My reasons for taking lessons are fairly unimportant, but I did suffer from some peculiar physical problems, which developed over time. I am now convinced that a particularly stressful period in my life led to a permanent change in my breathing, a change I could not reverse without help. And the results of the Alexander Technique exceeded my expectations.

Once you have met with a teacher, you hopefully will decide to try a lesson with him/her. Go to your first lesson dressed in very comfortable clothing.  Go with an open mind.

During the lesson, the teacher will, using her hands, guide you through simple movements, especially getting in and out of a chair. When you’re seated in the chair, your teacher will say to you, “Now, I want you to think about getting up, but don’t do it.” And she will guide you up out of that chair, and back down again.

During the second half of the lesson, you will typically lie in the semi-supine position on a table, with your head supported on a large book. The reason for the semi-supine position is it gives the student a much better opportunity to let go of tension. Your teacher will take your arms or legs through gentle movements in this position.

Every observation I will report about the lesson is purely subjective, because no two people will experience a lesson in the same way.

While getting out of the chair, I felt a sense of lightness and ease, as if I could do this motion all day.

I was in the moment, and just temporarily, forgot about all my distracting bodily symptoms.

But the best part was what occurred after the lesson. My teacher was a faculty member in the fine arts department of a local university. Following the lesson, as I walked down the sidewalks of the campus on that fine spring day, I was amazed that my breathing was so loud – at least to me it sounded loud! Due to the lesson, I was breathing deeply. Also, I felt a little bit taller than before the lesson (eventually, after 20 lessons, I had gained one inch in height).

I recall I went home, then for some undetermined reason, I went to a fabric store. I remember feeling an incredible release of creativity about a project I was working on.

The next day I was talking on the phone with my cousin. As I stood at the kitchen bar with the receiver to my ear, I noticed that my chin went down, my head tried to get more level, and my toes kept lifting off the floor, causing my weight to shift back to my heels.  This happened a lot whenever I stood still.

The body truly has muscle memory, and once it is shown the absence of tension, it keeps trying to return to that condition. No, better than that, it wants to get back to that state of balance.  Frankly, it’s a bit disconcerting! But I did grow accustomed to the fact that when I was thinking the directions – neck free, head forward and up, back lengthen and widen, my body responded.

You may be wondering what you do between lessons. Nothing much. With the Alexander Technique, you practice not doing. Your teacher will instruct you to lie on the floor or on an exercise mat for 10 minutes a day with a book under your head. Could anything be more simple?

As lessons go on, some experiences like deep breathing won’t be quite so noticeable, but the nervous system does get confused about what is happening. Because most people have a bad habit of sucking in their abdominals, which creates lots of tension and tightness in that area, it is common to feel that your abdomen is becoming slack and sticking out more. But really it isn’t – your body is beginning to let go of tension, and eventually everything comes into the right alignment. Once you’ve had lessons, you will never again listen to an exercise instructor who tells you to “tighten those abs!”

Another thing you need to be prepared for is that the Alexander Technique works both by positive and negative reinforcement. Positive qualities include deeper breathing, a feeling of relaxed concentration, and general lightness and buoyancy, especially when walking.

The negative aspects are completely unique to each individual. For instance, you may notice that when you laugh at a joke in a staff meeting, you feel a twinge of pain across your tight jaw. As you are beginning to walk with a greater sense of lightness, you may feel a slight pain in your ankle. None of this is bad. It happens because your body is now developing a greater kinesthetic awareness than it had before, and it notices where the tension is. Believe me, once you notice that a certain movement brings pain, you will stop doing it.

After the seventh lesson, I was sitting at my desk at work, and suddenly, no doubt due to muscles that were finally ready to release, I noticed one of my symptoms starting to wane quite a bit. At that point, I knew that my nervous system was going to unlearn very successfully some bad habits.

After 30 lessons, I was completely free of two of the three symptoms which had troubled me for two years. The third symptom is still around to this day, and I have learned to cope with it.

One day, after a series of lessons, you will be able to stand comfortably for long periods of time with equal weight placed on both legs (most people shift their weight uncomfortably from one leg to the other), and this will benefit your sacroiliac joints more than you know.

One day, even if you’ve become a slacker about your cardio exercise routine, you’ll notice that it takes no effort at all to climb a hill – that’s because you have learned to breathe more deeply and use less effort to reach a goal.

One day, and best of all, the muscles in your lumbar spine will be much more relaxed. You will be able to lie on the floor and not have a gap between your lower back and the floor. As far as I am concerned , the permanent relaxation of the lower back is one of the best reasons to take lessons.

If you’ve ever been on a diet where you got rid of certain foods like processed foods, sugar, and artificial sweeteners, and then slipped up and ate a packaged cheese wafer cracker with peanut butter layers, how did that snack taste? Most likely, it tasted awful. You didn’t know how synthetic processed foods tasted until you got rid of them.

So it is with bodily tension. With time, 20-30 Alexander Technique lessons, and continual self-monitoring and patience, you will gain many lasting mental and physical benefits.

To know when we are wrong is all that we shall ever know in this world. -- F. M. Alexander