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The Alexander Technique: A Skill for Life
To live is to face problems and to find solutions for them. We do so consciously or unconsciously, using intuition, reason, imagination, and many other faculties. We notice a situation, we draw conclusions from what we see, hear and feel, and we act on our conclusions in a constant process of observation, analysis, and remedy. "My shoulders are tight because I am under a lot of stress, I need a good massage." We observe a problem (tight shoulders), analyze the cause (stress), and seek a remedy for it (the massage). But what if we have misunderstood the problem? What if our description of the problem is based on false perceptions, or our analysis on false assumptions? What if the solution aggravates the problem? This book is about our suppositions, habits, and behaviors. It is about posture and attitude, tension and relaxation, movement and rest. It is about interpersonal relationships, sports, and performing arts. Above all, it is about embodied emotions and the body that thinks and feels. In this fully revised new edition, Pedro de Alcantara invites you to redefine the meaning of health and wellbeing, using the insights and tools developed by a man of genius: F.M Alexander.
144 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 1, 1999
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About the author
Pedro De Alcantara
26 books9 followersMy books include the children's novels "Befiddled" and "Backtracked" and works of non-fiction for adults, including "Indirect Procedures: A Musician's Guide to the Alexander Technique" and "The Alexander Technique: A Skill for Life" (published by Crowood). I travel the world giving seminars and master classes for all creative people. I'm currently finishing two new books -- a new novel for young readers titled "The Divine Computer" and a book for musicians titled "Integrated Practice." I'm also putting together a selection of my original improvisations and compositions for performance and recording.
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June 2, 2017
I have never thought of the teachings of Buddhism and Taoism as the esoteric observations of a few ancient teachers. I think of them as the truth about life. The first canto of the Tao Te Ching, for instance, comes as close to stating my understanding of theology as anything I’ve ever read—I was astonished when I first read it—and the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, especially the basic truth of suffering, seem as obvious as the law of gravity, though no one else had formulated them before. That teaching states a fundamental fact of human existence. You can ignore it, but I don’t see how you can disagree with it.
We shouldn’t be surprised when someone else discovers the same truth independently. It seems to me, for instance that Wilhelm Reich, especially if you combine him with his disciple Alexander Lowen, saw something about the way the body was important in getting at psychological truth and eliminating neurosis. The perfect orgasm wasn’t the only way, but it’s certainly worth a try[1]. Gestalt Therapy, as I remember it from many years ago, understood the importance of the present moment, and of living mindfully. It seemed an overly self-conscious method of meditation. The elusive system called Sensory Awareness, invented by a woman who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis and decided to isolate herself and observe the functioning of her body, creates a practice that is very much like what the Buddha describes in the Satipatthana Sutta. Observe your body in everything it does, in its simplest movements.
But I have never discovered anything so much like my practice of Soto Zen—which I have been doing for over twenty years—as the Alexander Technique, at least as it is expressed in this book by Pedro de Alcantara. I’m a complete novice at the technique itself, having taken only three lessons. I was deliberately trying not to read about it, because I tend to over-read, with anything I do. But my teacher recommended this book as a succinct introduction to the whole technique. And I have to say, I don’t know if de Alcantara has ever studied or practiced Buddhism, but this is a great dharma book. It expresses what I see as the essence of Buddhist practice. It doesn’t mention sitting, but you couldn’t read a better book about true Buddhist practice.
One central thing, for instance, is that Alexander made no distinction between the body and mind. They are considered one entity, which he refers to as the self, and how you use the self, how you handle the body, is vital to the practice. Our normal ways of handling the body, the bad habits we have developed over a lifetime, tend not to be the best ways; the technique makes a distinction between “normal” (the way we usually do things) and “natural” (the way the body is handled in nature. The way, for instance, that an animal inhabits its body). The key to everything for Alexander was the way we handle the head, neck, and shoulders, the Primary Control: “Let your neck be free, to let your head to forward and up, to let the back lengthen and widen, all together, one after the other.” Everything in the Alexander Technique follows from that.
The key to practice the technique involves “inhibition,” a word with bad connotations for Freud but one that is key for Alexander: you inhibit the normal response in order to discover the natural one. That requires a constant relaxed attention; it is essentially a mindfulness practice.[2] But the most fascinating thing in the book is the relationship that it describes between the mind, and the body, between thoughts and feelings. I’d thought these things for a long time, but had never really expressed them, and never heard anyone else quite say them either.
For many years I’ve thought that the primary function of meditation practice, of mindfulness practice in general, is to bring the mind and body together, to make them one (as the Alexander Technique says they actually are). We tend to think that an event happens in the world, we have some feeling about it, and then our physical state reflects that feeling. We feel fear and we tighten our stomach, our hearts begin to pound, our palms begin to sweat. But Alexander says that those physical symptoms are the fear; they come first, and we then give them names like fear, or anger. In order to deal with a feeling, we can do so strictly physiologically. We feel fear, but if we use our body differently, the feeling disappears.
(I learned that years ago, on my own, when I was dealing with stage fright. The feeling in stage fright is that we can’t get our breath; we keep trying to inhale and get more air, but can’t seem to do that, and get more and more panicky. What has actually happened is that we have tightened our body in the abdomen, so we’re not exhaling properly, and old air is staying in our lungs. We can’t “get any air” because our lungs are already full. Instead of trying to inhale, we need to fully exhale. Once we do that, we can get air again, and our symptoms of stage fright disappear. The whole thing is physical, rather than psychological.)
The ultimate goal of the Alexander technique—as of spiritual practice—is freedom from being jerked around by our reactions. For many years I have sensed, for instance, that when someone speaks to me harshly, or flips me the bird in traffic, my immediate response is physical; it happens automatically, after long years of responding that way (it is, in other words, “normal”). But through years of spiritual practice, long days sitting on sesshin, I’ve learned to sit with physical feelings and not react to them; if I don’t immediately react, I can wait, and respond more intelligently. I’m acting out of freedom rather than habit. That kind of freedom is the goal of the Alexander Technique as well.
“For most people,” de Alcantara says, “every perception leads automatically to a more or less pre-set (that is, habitual) reaction. The person who reacts in this way is often unaware of the reaction taking place, and of its quality as a bodily reality and emotion. . . . Alexandrian inhibition makes it possible for you to wait before reacting, and to choose your reaction. . . . The greatest benefit of this approach is that it allows you not to react at all, if you so desire or if the situation does not warrant a reaction from you. . . .
“The Alexander Technique is not the only method of dealing with your choices and the emotions that animate them and that are in turn fed by them. It does not matter how you acquire the twin abilities not to react and to choose your reactions, but you will not be a free, healthy, and happy person until you do so.”
I think that the Alexander Technique is fundamentally a spiritual practice, and that this is a dharma book.
I also think that zazen is a fine way to practice the Alexander Technique.
[1] And sitting in the Orgone box was a fine way to engage with the energy of the universe, except that you could forget the box and just sit down.
[2] I asked my teacher if the “natural practice” ever becomes “normal,” that is, if it becomes the thing we normally do. She said yes, but said that by the time that would happen, after five or ten years, you realize that the mindfulness itself, the constantly paying attention, has its own value, and you want to do that for its own sake.
www.davidguy.org
We shouldn’t be surprised when someone else discovers the same truth independently. It seems to me, for instance that Wilhelm Reich, especially if you combine him with his disciple Alexander Lowen, saw something about the way the body was important in getting at psychological truth and eliminating neurosis. The perfect orgasm wasn’t the only way, but it’s certainly worth a try[1]. Gestalt Therapy, as I remember it from many years ago, understood the importance of the present moment, and of living mindfully. It seemed an overly self-conscious method of meditation. The elusive system called Sensory Awareness, invented by a woman who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis and decided to isolate herself and observe the functioning of her body, creates a practice that is very much like what the Buddha describes in the Satipatthana Sutta. Observe your body in everything it does, in its simplest movements.
But I have never discovered anything so much like my practice of Soto Zen—which I have been doing for over twenty years—as the Alexander Technique, at least as it is expressed in this book by Pedro de Alcantara. I’m a complete novice at the technique itself, having taken only three lessons. I was deliberately trying not to read about it, because I tend to over-read, with anything I do. But my teacher recommended this book as a succinct introduction to the whole technique. And I have to say, I don’t know if de Alcantara has ever studied or practiced Buddhism, but this is a great dharma book. It expresses what I see as the essence of Buddhist practice. It doesn’t mention sitting, but you couldn’t read a better book about true Buddhist practice.
One central thing, for instance, is that Alexander made no distinction between the body and mind. They are considered one entity, which he refers to as the self, and how you use the self, how you handle the body, is vital to the practice. Our normal ways of handling the body, the bad habits we have developed over a lifetime, tend not to be the best ways; the technique makes a distinction between “normal” (the way we usually do things) and “natural” (the way the body is handled in nature. The way, for instance, that an animal inhabits its body). The key to everything for Alexander was the way we handle the head, neck, and shoulders, the Primary Control: “Let your neck be free, to let your head to forward and up, to let the back lengthen and widen, all together, one after the other.” Everything in the Alexander Technique follows from that.
The key to practice the technique involves “inhibition,” a word with bad connotations for Freud but one that is key for Alexander: you inhibit the normal response in order to discover the natural one. That requires a constant relaxed attention; it is essentially a mindfulness practice.[2] But the most fascinating thing in the book is the relationship that it describes between the mind, and the body, between thoughts and feelings. I’d thought these things for a long time, but had never really expressed them, and never heard anyone else quite say them either.
For many years I’ve thought that the primary function of meditation practice, of mindfulness practice in general, is to bring the mind and body together, to make them one (as the Alexander Technique says they actually are). We tend to think that an event happens in the world, we have some feeling about it, and then our physical state reflects that feeling. We feel fear and we tighten our stomach, our hearts begin to pound, our palms begin to sweat. But Alexander says that those physical symptoms are the fear; they come first, and we then give them names like fear, or anger. In order to deal with a feeling, we can do so strictly physiologically. We feel fear, but if we use our body differently, the feeling disappears.
(I learned that years ago, on my own, when I was dealing with stage fright. The feeling in stage fright is that we can’t get our breath; we keep trying to inhale and get more air, but can’t seem to do that, and get more and more panicky. What has actually happened is that we have tightened our body in the abdomen, so we’re not exhaling properly, and old air is staying in our lungs. We can’t “get any air” because our lungs are already full. Instead of trying to inhale, we need to fully exhale. Once we do that, we can get air again, and our symptoms of stage fright disappear. The whole thing is physical, rather than psychological.)
The ultimate goal of the Alexander technique—as of spiritual practice—is freedom from being jerked around by our reactions. For many years I have sensed, for instance, that when someone speaks to me harshly, or flips me the bird in traffic, my immediate response is physical; it happens automatically, after long years of responding that way (it is, in other words, “normal”). But through years of spiritual practice, long days sitting on sesshin, I’ve learned to sit with physical feelings and not react to them; if I don’t immediately react, I can wait, and respond more intelligently. I’m acting out of freedom rather than habit. That kind of freedom is the goal of the Alexander Technique as well.
“For most people,” de Alcantara says, “every perception leads automatically to a more or less pre-set (that is, habitual) reaction. The person who reacts in this way is often unaware of the reaction taking place, and of its quality as a bodily reality and emotion. . . . Alexandrian inhibition makes it possible for you to wait before reacting, and to choose your reaction. . . . The greatest benefit of this approach is that it allows you not to react at all, if you so desire or if the situation does not warrant a reaction from you. . . .
“The Alexander Technique is not the only method of dealing with your choices and the emotions that animate them and that are in turn fed by them. It does not matter how you acquire the twin abilities not to react and to choose your reactions, but you will not be a free, healthy, and happy person until you do so.”
I think that the Alexander Technique is fundamentally a spiritual practice, and that this is a dharma book.
I also think that zazen is a fine way to practice the Alexander Technique.
[1] And sitting in the Orgone box was a fine way to engage with the energy of the universe, except that you could forget the box and just sit down.
[2] I asked my teacher if the “natural practice” ever becomes “normal,” that is, if it becomes the thing we normally do. She said yes, but said that by the time that would happen, after five or ten years, you realize that the mindfulness itself, the constantly paying attention, has its own value, and you want to do that for its own sake.
www.davidguy.org
April 10, 2023
Like most people, I had only been vaguely aware of the Alexander Technique. I had thought of it as another postural correction program - teaching people how to sit up straight, stand tall and not round their shoulders.
But after being recently diagnosed with a rare and incurable voice disorder (spasmodic dysphonia) and reading that the Alexander Technique had been successfully deployed by some sufferers, I felt compelled to find out more.
That led to me seeking out a teacher (I have had a single lesson so far) and doing some background reading on the nature and history of the technique. This particular book by a Brazilian musician, around my age, is an excellent introduction.
It turns out the Alexander Technique is more a philosophy and life-body mindset than a set of exercises. In fact, physical exercises - like yoga or tai chi - have very little to do with it. It comes down to embracing the idea that the body and the mind are not separate entities and that, after childhood, we quickly learn bad habits in how we respond to the world. Unnatural tensions and rigidities develop. And the methods we deploy to overcome them often make the outcomes worse.
At a practical level, the technique - developed by a Tasmanian-born actor in the late 19th century in response to his own chronic voice condition - is all about developing a more natural alignment between the head, neck and spine. Mind you, this not about learning to walk like a soldier - stiff and rigid. In contrast, the technique teaches students to re-learn how they moved and respond to the world, with heads forward and upward, necks free and bodies moving in line.
Philosophically, the technique teaches that we sabotage ourselves by jumping ahead to “end-gains”. In so doing, we misuse ourselves and lose our sensory awareness of how our bodies work. The answer is what the author calls “non-doing”. At the very most, we need to get out of our own way and stop bad habits. The good habits will come naturally. This excerpt expresses it well:
“The mind can’t really be the master of the body: the mind is the body and the body is the mind. At the very least you can’t separate your body from your thoughts and feelings about your body. Your neck is what you think and feel about your neck. Stop what is wrong, and the right thing will do itself. This non-doing principle will change everything in your life, from posture and movement to personal relationships and goal-setting, from emotions and convictions to reactions and behaviours.”
This is all very New Age-sounding and redolent of Zen Buddhism or Taoism, particularly the idea that everything can be achieved through inaction, or that trying essentially gets in the way of results. But at a practical level, it still leaves me wondering exactly what it all adds up beyond a change of internal perspective or to use that old Boy Scout phrase, “it ain’t what you do but the way that you do it”. One can see how the hard scientists of mainstream medicine might have reservations.
I’m certainly prepared to believe that the technique can help people in dealing with chronic pain and other ailments. Whether it can help alleviate a neurologically-derived dystonia, which is what I have, I am sceptical. But I am prepared to believe that the technique may help me at least cope better with the symptoms, improve my breathing and manage my stress about my ailment.
For now, I’m keen to learn more and am prepared to do whatever I can to feel comfortable again within my own body and voice.
But after being recently diagnosed with a rare and incurable voice disorder (spasmodic dysphonia) and reading that the Alexander Technique had been successfully deployed by some sufferers, I felt compelled to find out more.
That led to me seeking out a teacher (I have had a single lesson so far) and doing some background reading on the nature and history of the technique. This particular book by a Brazilian musician, around my age, is an excellent introduction.
It turns out the Alexander Technique is more a philosophy and life-body mindset than a set of exercises. In fact, physical exercises - like yoga or tai chi - have very little to do with it. It comes down to embracing the idea that the body and the mind are not separate entities and that, after childhood, we quickly learn bad habits in how we respond to the world. Unnatural tensions and rigidities develop. And the methods we deploy to overcome them often make the outcomes worse.
At a practical level, the technique - developed by a Tasmanian-born actor in the late 19th century in response to his own chronic voice condition - is all about developing a more natural alignment between the head, neck and spine. Mind you, this not about learning to walk like a soldier - stiff and rigid. In contrast, the technique teaches students to re-learn how they moved and respond to the world, with heads forward and upward, necks free and bodies moving in line.
Philosophically, the technique teaches that we sabotage ourselves by jumping ahead to “end-gains”. In so doing, we misuse ourselves and lose our sensory awareness of how our bodies work. The answer is what the author calls “non-doing”. At the very most, we need to get out of our own way and stop bad habits. The good habits will come naturally. This excerpt expresses it well:
“The mind can’t really be the master of the body: the mind is the body and the body is the mind. At the very least you can’t separate your body from your thoughts and feelings about your body. Your neck is what you think and feel about your neck. Stop what is wrong, and the right thing will do itself. This non-doing principle will change everything in your life, from posture and movement to personal relationships and goal-setting, from emotions and convictions to reactions and behaviours.”
This is all very New Age-sounding and redolent of Zen Buddhism or Taoism, particularly the idea that everything can be achieved through inaction, or that trying essentially gets in the way of results. But at a practical level, it still leaves me wondering exactly what it all adds up beyond a change of internal perspective or to use that old Boy Scout phrase, “it ain’t what you do but the way that you do it”. One can see how the hard scientists of mainstream medicine might have reservations.
I’m certainly prepared to believe that the technique can help people in dealing with chronic pain and other ailments. Whether it can help alleviate a neurologically-derived dystonia, which is what I have, I am sceptical. But I am prepared to believe that the technique may help me at least cope better with the symptoms, improve my breathing and manage my stress about my ailment.
For now, I’m keen to learn more and am prepared to do whatever I can to feel comfortable again within my own body and voice.
September 25, 2024
Deep ideas, shallow engagement.
March 31, 2025
Interesting but a bit "evangelistic". Also a tad repetitive.
November 2, 2011
Interesting. Answers my questions about the Alexander technique. I'd place the concepts very much at the conservative end of the New Age spectrum. In fact, if the author hadn't referred, in passing, to astrology as valuable, I don't think I'd call it New Agey at all.
A good, quick read for insight into the topic.
A good, quick read for insight into the topic.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews