Body Learning: 40th anniversary edition: An Introduction to the Alexander Technique

The biologist Rudolf Magnus (1873–1927) demonstrated that the head–neck–torso relationship was the Zentralapparat (central mechanism) in orienting an animal in its environment.

A pupil might be asked, for example, to visualize his head floating like a helium balloon or to think of his back smiling.

One of the aims of an Alexander lesson is to give the pupil the experience of a balanced working of the Primary Control. This is not an end in itself but rather a preparation for activity. I know from my own experience that when this balanced Use is maintained in movement the quality of action changes. Movement becomes lighter and easier, breathing

In order to allow his reasoned direction to dominate habit, Alexander concluded that he must give up all thought of the end for which he was working and focus instead on the steps leading to that end (the ‘means-whereby’).

Alexander does not suggest that we should return to more primitive, ‘natural’ conditions of life but rather that we should take more care about the manner of our reactions.

His experiments taught him that the best conditions of Use were brought about when he released the tension in his neck, so that his head could go forward and up and his back could lengthen and widen.

So, what is the Alexander Technique? The best formal definition is that offered by Dr Frank Jones, former director of the Tufts University Institute for Psychological Research. He described the Technique as ‘a means for changing stereotyped response patterns by the inhibition of certain postural sets’.1 He also described it as ‘a method for expandi

In the final chapter of The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski wrote, ‘We are nature’s unique experiment to make the rational intelligence prove itself sounder than the reflex.’ Bronowski implied that the success or failure of this experiment depended on the basic human ability to interpose a delay between stimulus and response.

His experiments showed that his voice functioned best when his stature lengthened and that this could only be achieved when he used his head in a way that he described as ‘forward and up’ in relation to his neck and torso. From this came his later discovery that the dynamic relationship of the head, neck and torso is the primary factor in organizin