Alexander Technique

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The Alexander Technique teaches how to recognize and overcome habituated limitations within a person's intentions and manner of movement.

The Alexander Technique is usually learned from an Alexander Technique teacher in one-on-one sessions by an Alexander student, using specialized hand contact and verbal instructions. Alexander Technique is also taught in groups, often using short individual lessons in turn as examples to the rest of the class.

The name denotes both the educational methods taught by Alexander teachers and the individual method practiced by teachers and students of the technique. It takes its name from F. Matthias Alexander (1869–1955), a former Shakespearean recitalist, who first observed and formulated its principles between 1890 and 1900.

Contents

[edit] History

Alexander was a Shakespearean orator who developed problems with his voice. After doctors informed him there was no physical cause, he carefully observed himself in multiple mirrors. This revealed that he was needlessly stiffening his whole body in preparation to recite or speak. It took eight years to successfully apply his empirical observations on himself to solve his own voice problems.

Alexander regarded the empirical scientific method to be the foundation of his work. He used self-observation and reasoning to make the physical performance of any movement easier: sitting, standing, walking, using the hands and speaking. He designed his methods to make experimentation and training deliberately repeatable, and to learn in a way that would allow continuing improvement from any starting point. F.M. Alexander trained educators of his technique mainly while living in London, UK from 1931 until his death in 1955, except for the wartime period between 1941 to 1943 which were spent teaching with his brother Albert Redden Alexander (1874–1947) in Massachusetts, USA.

During his lifetime, F.M. Alexander gained considerable support for his work from many contemporaries including John Dewey, Aldous Huxley, George Bernard Shaw, and scientists Raymond Dart, George E. Coghill, Charles Sherrington, and Nikolaas Tinbergen. Additional notable students are included in footnote.

[edit] The Technique

[edit] Basic Premises

The Alexander Technique teaches the ability to make a new choice in spite of established habitual patterns, by studying the kinesthetic evidence of how thinking is expressed in movement. The values of efficiency and effortlessness are the preferred criteria used to evaluate the often unfamiliar results of progress gained through guided experimentation. Established forms of structural anatomy, characteristics of proprioception, practical self-observation and the strategic use of empirical reasoning are among the methods taught. This study may also demand a re-evaluation of self-limiting assumptions and conclusions that Alexander Technique teachers believe have gradually led to what they term misuse.

Alexander Technique teachers believe that humans have a naturally conditioned blind spot: repetition encourages habits to form. Repeating circumstances lead people to create habits as they adapt to circumstances. These habits contain both deliberate and non-deliberate responses that include physical movement patterns, as well as coping and learning strategies.

The advantage of adapting by creating habits is that behavior and learning becomes simplified; it becomes possible to meet a given stimulus or interpretation of circumstances with a ready-made reaction. Alexander teachers believe that as a person adds one habit onto another, the disadvantage is they may train themselves to also repeat unintentional side effects from answering more than one master. The Alexander Technique addresses over-compensation and cumulative stress by teaching how to avoid and prevent them from happening.

Adapting has a further self-deceptive drawback: using habits diminishes sensation. Using the habit decreases the importance of paying attention to seemingly unrelated perceptual differences, because they do not match expectations. From disuse or too much use, perceptual sensitivity will eventually become dull and untrustworthy, just as skin becomes numb if the same spot is repeatedly rubbed. Sensory systems can flood from accommodating too many contradicting habits or intentions. Because habits tend to become automatic, the sensation of doing a fully formed habit will disappear and become innate. This drawback encourages people to feel convinced that whatever efforts or ways they now use are necessary, even when it is far from normal. Forgetting what has been trained to be done automatically, people mistakenly often train new opposing habits instead of stopping what what they are doing that is interferring. Loss of perceptual awareness encourages mistaken conclusions for a call to action, and can be driven by the necessity for any response. In a panic, all opposing habits can fire off at once, pulling in all directions, sometimes without the person noticing they are doing it except by the immoblity it can cause.

How our kinesthetic sense becomes untrustworthy from adapting to needless over-compensating is built into many innocent situations. People create habits for themselves that are driven by goals that seem useful at the time. For instance, if a person often carries a bag on their forearm, he will later find himself holding up his arm when the bag is not on it. Misunderstanding a teacher's directions, a student may repeat what the teacher knows is unnecessary, but the teacher forgivingly allows the mistake to go by; this causes the student to unknowingly adopt useless or later problematic mannerisms. If someone is afraid while learning, adapting can mean he will most likely continue doing the skill fearfully. If someone has healed from a temporary injury, a habit of wincing in anticipation of pain can be automatically continued indefinitely, despite pain being healed. Due to rapid growth, teenagers often move their own bodies based on inaccurate assumptions of their size and structure, ie: a rapidly growing 13-year-old may think 'I'm getting too tall' and stoop to shorten herself.

According to Alexander teachers, few adults in Western culture retain their ability to move freely without needless interference. As adults grow older and given an unceasing cumulative cultural demand of pressure to perform and without a working knowledge of the body’s structural design, the cost to health can range from feelings of resignation to very real physical problems. Alexander teachers believe that many of these psychological and physical stresses could be avoided or mitigated by learning to stop outdated habits; useless habits that stand in the way of flexibility, insight and problem solving.

According to those who teach Alexander Technique, most of the time, giving up a certain activity isn't necessary if a learner is ready to free specific habits that work against the body's structural design and ongoing education.

[edit] Benefits

Some regard the Alexander Technique as a first-hand experience of the reality of body/mind unity. Proponents believe that its practice results in improved awareness and descriptive ability, as well as improved ease of movement, improved balance, stamina and less muscular tension. Additionally, those who practice it often report that Alexander Technique gives them an enhanced ability to clarify their thinking, gain objectivity about themselves and free themselves from unintentional self-imposed limitations. Further, proponents see Alexander Technique as a way to use less effort for movement and thus perform more efficiently, feeling younger and moving gracefully.

It is curriculum in performance schools of dance, acting, circus, music, voice and some Olympic sports. Suitable for those starting at any fitness level, it is also used as remedial movement education to complete recovery and provide pain management.

Although the Alexander Technique is considered by those in its field to be primarily educational — taught in a student/teacher relationship as compared to being a treatment regimen between client and practitioner — it is regarded by the United Kingdom National Health Service to offer an alternative and complementary management for many medical complaints. A partial list is: back problems, unlearning and avoiding Repetitive Strain Injury, improving ergonomics, stuttering, speech training and voice loss, coping with mobility for those with Parkinson's disease, posture or balance problems, or to complete recovery from injury as an adjunct to Physical therapy.

Alexander Technique has also been known to help performers with getting past the plateau effect (despite trying, no improvement), performance anxiety, getting beyond a supposed "lack of talent" and to sharpen discrimination and descriptive ability. It has also helped people control unwanted reactions, phobias and depression.

Of course, applications are very subjective and personal by nature; many testimonies exist on the Internet. Note that Alexander Technique is regarded to be a helpful adjunct to traditional medical treatment regimens and not as a substitute for them.

[edit] Reported Effects

Alexander teachers have been educated to perceive, observe and articulate very subtle but crucial differences influencing motion. They offer this education and feedback to their students. Students learn to change small crucial differences that they learn will influence long-term effects if repeated over time.

Evidence of change is sought in verifiable outside feedback; using a mirror; by noting, comparing, or describing differences of the relative location of one's eyes, balance or weight changes; a change in the sound of one's voice or the effects on one’s objectives, props or environment.

Students often describe the immediate effect of an Alexander lesson as being an odd feeling. During hands-on lessons, most pupils report an immediate result of feeling less weighted down, despite their inability to evoke or sustain this state by themselves. Other reported experiences include altered perception of their voice or environment, noticing a change in self image, or having temporary disorientations of where their body is located spatially.

Though most students experience these perceptual paradoxes as desirable, students are often admonished by teachers to regard their sensations as not worth trying to repeat by favored means. Students learn to avoid end-gaining, meaning, to resist going directly for results that usually activates habitual ways. Instead students are to allow themselves the room to use the deliberate new processes of experimenting prescribed by the Technique, termed means whereby. For this reason students are advised they must continue practice of Alexander Technique without expectation or reinforcement of feeling themselves changing. Teachers say this is because a student's senses may not yet be awake enough to register the crucial subtle adjustments, which cannot be done piecemeal. Improved sensitivity can be reawakened by sustained practice over time. The learner may at different times still paradoxically experience both states: the unusual sensory effects described above during a progressive leap ahead and a sense of nothing happening when gradual progress is, in fact, taking place.

Depending on the causes of limitations, structural posture may or may not improve, but freedom of motion should always improve during the lesson with a teacher. To take improvements away from the class, the dedication of later remembering to attentively experiment is required on the part of the learner.

[edit] Effective under what circumstances

Alexander Technique can be practiced while doing any other activity. Remembering to use Alexander Technique to get its benefits is required, but not a special practice activity; merely an experimental, thinking moment while doing any other action. Of course, the longer these moments of awareness can be sustained, the greater the effect over time. Practice at any time while awake will result in its benefits. Curiosity, a willingness to experiment and recognition of gradual improvement are the attitudes that most effectively bring attention to possible choices of responding differently.

Which motions, actions and criteria someone might apply for an activity that could benefit from practice will range from the most simple and mundane motions to the most strenuously demanding physical challenges.

[edit] Disadvantages

Alexander Technique may not be effective for everyone. Most teachers consider twenty to forty lessons to be required. Learning requires the student to work at a somewhat paradoxical goal that is, at first, based on the teacher's (or classmates') perception of success. Learning to value the feedback of others is invaluable, because it's difficult to change that which cannot yet be perceived. Habits are often tied to self-image, emotions and cultural assumptions. The student must be willing and able to challenge the validity and criteria of their assumptions, judgments, and motives. Because of this, the road of learning can be rocky.

In rare occasions, undoing old habits may trigger possibly unpleasant "unresolved" emotions that originally justified the habitual remedies, perhaps requiring additional professional help. Some ingrained habit patterns seem to have a sense of self-preservation that objects to its possible lack of importance.

There can be a time during mid-learning when the student can't yet reliably sustain the new ways of moving he prefers. What used to feel comfortable instead becomes experienced as an unpleasantly heavy, pressured sagging sensation. It's a stage where every posture the student can assume seems to have something wrong with it. Often the student constantly notices other people around them are always stiff and slumping. It seems that once the door to perception is open, there is no going back to unselfconsciousness. If the student feels he cannot continue lessons at this point, perhaps sampling a number of teachers from different teaching styles is advisable rather than quitting altogether.

Practicing Alexander Technique cannot affect structural deformities, (such as caused by arthritis or other bone problems,) or other diseases, (such as caused by Parkinson's, etc.) In these cases, Alexander Technique can only mitigate how the person compensates for these difficulties, which can be significant for them.

Many healthy adult students have reported a gaining up to an inch in height after a few months of regular lessons.

[edit] Scientific Proof

The effectiveness of the Alexander Technique has not been thoroughly verified in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Lengthy learning time seems to be a drawback in testing for short term results.

In 2005 Cacciatore et al. found the technique improved a single patient's posture thereby reducing their lower back pain. [1]

In 2004 Maher concluded that "Physical treatments, such as (list with many others)... Alexander technique ... are either of unknown value or ineffective and so should not be considered" when treating lower back pain with an evidence-based approach. [2]

In 2002, Stalibrass et al. published the results of a significant controlled study into the effectiveness of the technique in treating Parkinson's disease. Four different measures were used to assess the change in severity of the disease. By all four measures, Alexander Technique was better than no treatment, to a statistically significant degree (both P-values < 0.04). However, when compared to a control group given massage sessions, Alexander technique was only significantly better by two of the measures. The other two measures gave statisticially insignificant improvements (P-values of approximately 0.1 and 0.6). This appears to lend some weight to the effectiveness of the Technique, but more studies and data are required. [3]

Frank Pierce Jones' articles detailing his research have been collected in a 1997 edition, detailed in references below.

Results for Alexander Technique in neuroscience and current gait lab research on the effects and function of body motion have yet to locate funding. (See additional current research at the UK STAT online website.) While the UK medical communities are convinced of the effectiveness of the Alexander Technique, it is still often classified as pseudo-scientific in other countries.

[edit] Learning and Teaching

Teachers train “pupils” in a personalized, living anatomy lesson. Most use a specialized hands-on technique of guided modeling to show what they mean. Even if only briefly during group classes, movement is guided with very light, one-on-one hand contact, usually about the student's head, neck and back. The value of effortlessness is advocated. Coaching the substitution of more appropriate, specific ways to detour limitations are also suggested. As anyone knows who has tried substitution strategies against a habit, there are often more complex paradoxes involved, because habits can be tricky. Alexander Technique teacher tailors how to establish personally constructive experimentation uniquely for each student's challenges.

Most commonly at the beginning of lessons, teachers may suggest activities that are routine, such as walking or sitting. For part of the lesson, some teachers have learners lie on a table, so the student can experience the principles in action without having to pay attention to maintaining balance, called table work. Also, Working on oneself while lying semi-supine with knees up is taught to be used for refresh during the student's workday. Depending on the student's purposes, the teacher might later suggest simulating a particularly stressful situation for using Alexander Technique under pressure, such as acting, public speaking, shouting or other demands.

[edit] Learning Environments

Teaching methods vary; all have in common guided discovery of easier, more positive ways to carry intention into physical action and how to recognize and prevent outdated habits from derailing intended results. To begin lessons, there is no prerequisite level of fitness or movement ability. Alexander Technique is most often taught in private lessons. Group, shared lessons and workshops are recently becoming more common - especially as an adjunct to a specialized art, sport or skill and as required curriculum in music & drama colleges.

Because the Alexander Technique can be taught and practiced during any activity, some teachers leave the choice of activity up to the student. Many Alexander teachers also have additional specialties; such as teaching children in grade school, Repetitive strain injury or pain management. Some teach Alexander Technique with an additional professional skill, such as being a dancer, speech or physical therapist or yoga teacher. Alexander Technique may also be included as an adjunct to improve a sport, as in horsemanship, running or golf.

[edit] Teacher Training

Training for being a teacher of Alexander Technique requires more than 1600+ hours of classes over at least a three-year period. Most AT professional teaching associations require continuing development courses. It is also possible to qualify for membership by peer review. Professional teaching organizations advise checking peer references against unqualified misrepresentation, since the term Alexander Technique is not protected by trademark.

F.M. Alexander himself often stressed that his work could not be learned without the help of a suitably qualified instructor trained in his hands-on technique. Many Alexander teachers today agree, but F.M. Alexander and his brother taught themselves. So theoretically it is possible to learn AT without a teacher. A few AT teachers believe it is entirely possible to learn and continue to experiment with the basic principles entirely on one's own. Free online study courses exist for Alexander's books, and some teachers offer free introductory lessons. The help of a teacher for at least a few lessons avoids many common pitfalls.

Easier ways to learn these principles have come a long way since Alexander's death in 1953. Differences in teaching style evolved as various teachers originated what they believed constituted more effective teaching. Usually, a style of teaching is not just an imitation of training methods passed on in training, but integrates many personal lifetime discoveries based on Alexander's principles.

[edit] In-depth principles

As has been mentioned previously, human senses are built to adapt to continuous messages sent by the brain. Repetition makes perceptual sensation disappear. Keeping muscles contracted when unnecessary is a waste of energy. This was later referred to as sensory adaptation by behavioral scientists. This principle describing how habits disappear from sensing was originally called debauchery by F.M. Alexander. Few AT teachers currently use that term, preferring the more general term of suspending end-gaining for familiar results. To unlearn conflicted habits, Alexander teachers advise that a prerequisite is a willingness to welcome experimentation and unfamiliarity. This is because what is entirely new will feel odd.

Another unique concept is a specialized use of the word Inhibition. Many Alexander teachers believe this concept to be the foundation of Alexander Technique. It is possible to learn to recognize a habitual patterned reaction and choose differently to stop it, usually by preventing it entirely. As a carnivore stalking prey inhibits its natural urges in order to choose a deliberate leap for an effective attack, an unwanted habitual urge can be deliberately stopped or strategically prevented with inhibition techniques. Suggested practical means to effectively subvert a particular unwanted habit vary with each Alexander teacher's experience. Side-stepping, stalling, tricking, boring the old habitual solution - any tactic is fair game to get the old habit to disengage or entirely prevent it, leaving the freedom to try something different, something easier.

A stiffening of the neck in a startle response, chin tipped up, head back and pulled down into the neck was observed by Alexander to be the source of his self-imposed limitations. To address these challenges indirectly rather than fight them, Alexander originated an action called Direction which is an ingredient of his principle of Primary Control. Directing is a codified expression of a student's understanding of the governing characteristics of easier movement, substituted to prevent and replace ongoing habitual misuse. These directions are phrases of a thought that are repeatedly suggested to practice refusing a direct reaction of extremes. People who direct themselves mentally attend to how they apply thinking and force through their body. Rather than gunning the motor and muscling their way through an activity, people who direct use their mind to oversee their own coordinated dynamic expansion during activity. By doing so, the body's reflexive coordination seems to spontaneously recover from habit to gracefully handle the action, as if by itself.

The more inclusive principle of Primary Control shows how easily the head can move in the lightest initiation of movement is its structural balancing act, cradled at the top of the spine. By integrating attention, using direction and refusing habit, the whole body can follow the smallest initiation of head movement. To the extent the learner can also pay attention to what they are doing, their suspended goal or intention improves. Occasionally the result is a significant practical insight, as taking the interference off refreshed senses will give new sensory information.

[edit] Sample lesson

The principles may be put together in any sequence, not necessarily in this order. Here is an example lesson using procedures that have come to be called the application approach that was originated by Marj Barstow, 1899-1995, the first graduate of F.M. Alexander's first teacher training course in 1933.

First, choosing some sort of movement to practice with can be done by the student or teacher. Sitting down or walking is a commonly selected activity. Skills or arts are also commonly selected. The teacher prompts the student how to observe him or herself during the sample action. Students are asked to describe their observations without value judgments. Teachers may also experiment alongside students; modeling the process they would prefer the student to emulate.

Once a sample activity is observed and described, the teacher guides the experimenting to avoid habitual interference, usually by slowing down reaction time with a light hand contact. Intercepting unnecessary habits might also be made easier by creating an arbitrary beginning moment of starting. In keeping with the sensory adaptation principle, customary kinesthetic orientation and preparation assumed necessary is repeatedly noted to be unnecessary. Toward leaving out habit, the goal of the chosen action or motion is temporarily suspended, so motivation for immediate results does not encourage the habit to jump in to helpfully answer the urge to respond. Habitual interference is identified and stopped, but no replacement is offered. This lack of substitution is often indicated manually by the teacher so a freer capacity to respond can reassert itself while moving.

As interference is removed, the teacher shows how the head, neck and back together can lengthen, increasing a capacity for freedom of movement from intention. The teacher may use their hands as "training wheels" to help the student perceive exactly when their habit is interfering and pulling them back down. The effect of this prevention of habit provided by the teacher often feels immediately strange or disorienting to the student. The teacher steadies and encourages the student to resist a need to go back down into the familiar habit and to tolerate additional unfamiliarity for longer periods of time.

A result coined by Alexander of Do-less-ness can be used as the new measure of success. Some teachers bring a student's attention to pivotal timing issues and specific qualities of directing movement in this unfamiliar way. Just as often seeking any results is also suspended, because the ability to sense subtle perceptual differences may have become dulled from sensory adaptation.

Usually, this is all that is required to be practiced in the lesson. Sometimes habits are trickier and remedies to detour habit are needed. Some of these strategies are directly prescribed by F.M. Alexander's historic examples, but many may be invented on the spot by the teacher.

Now that the student's senses are not being dampened by habit, an insight or discovery about the suspended goal of the activity may occur. These discoveries are noted and integrated into repeated experimentation to make them more reliable. It is important that judging for results and possible insight comes after doing the preventing and moving, not before; otherwise the unwanted habits can take back control.

When additional results, insights or discoveries are desired, a similar process of questioning, experimenting and observing possible results is again used. These principles can be recombined in other sequences, tailored for a student's needs. According to proponents of Alexander Technique, a learner's tolerance for unfamiliarity and their ability to observe is directly related to learning speed.

[edit] Students of the Alexander Technique

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Improvement in automatic postural coordination following Alexander Technique lessons in a person with low back pain, Cacciatore TW, Horak FB, Henry SM, Phys Ther. 2005 Jun;85(6):565-78.
  2. ^ Effective physical treatment for chronic low back pain, Maher CG., Orthop Clin North Am. 2004 Jan;35(1):57-64.
  3. ^ Randomized controlled trial of the Alexander technique for idiopathic Parkinson's disease, Stallibrass C, Sissons P, Chalmers C, Clin Rehabil. 2002 Nov;16(7):695-708.

[edit] References

  • Alexander, F. Matthias The Use of the Self, Its conscious direction in relation to diagnosis, functioning and the control of reaction. 1932 hb (1985, 2001, pb), 123 pages, Methuen, (Gollancz, Orion.) ISBN 0-575-03720-2.
  • Frank Pierce Jones, Freedom to Change; The Development and Science of the Alexander Technique Third edition published May 1997 by Mouritz ISBN 0-9525574-7-9.
  • Collected Writings on the Alexander Technique, research on the Alexander Technique at the Institute for Experimental Psychology conducted by Frank Pierce Jones at Tufts University from 1949 until his death in 1975. Edited by Theodore Dimon, Jr. and Richard Brown. Forty research papers, 92 photos and illustrations. Boston (Alexander Technique Archives, Inc.), 1999.

[edit] External Links

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