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HISTORY OF THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE
F.M. Alexander was born in 1869 in Tasmania off the
southern coast of Australia. As a young man Alexander had a promising career as
a Shakespearian actor. However, problems with chronic hoarseness plagued him
from early on. Not able to find lasting relief from treatments offered him by
his doctors, Alexander turned to himself for answers. After many years of self
observation Alexander discovered that what he originally thought to be a problem
with incorrect use of his voice was in fact a much larger pattern of muscle
tension and mal coordination throughout his entire body, caused by interference
with the natural balance between his head and neck. Ultimately, the solution to
his vocal problems lay in his ability to learn to recognize and stop his
habitual interference with his head and neck when he went to speak. Years of
patience and persistence allowed Alexander to develop a process of stopping his
habits that caused his vocal trouble.
After seeing that he had solved his own voice problems,
other people began to seek Alexander’s advice. He started to take on students
and teach them what he had learned from his years of self observation. He found
that how people moved and used their bodies had a direct effect not only on their vocal
health but on how they functioned in general. Gradually he developed a
technique that incorporated gentle hands-on guidance and verbal instruction to teach
people to recognize and stop inefficient and harmful habits and establish a more
coordinated use of themselves. Alexander devoted
the rest of his life to developing and refining this technique. In 1904 he moved
to London at the urging of a group of doctors who thought his work deserved
wider recognition.
Alexander spent the greater part of his life teaching his
technique in London, attracting the attention of many in the medical profession
as well as in the performing arts community. Alexander found that he was able to
help many people with seemingly untreatable conditions simply by teaching them
to change inefficient habits of how they moved and used their bodies and to
release areas of unnecessary muscular tension that interfered with their natural
poise and coordination.
During his later years Alexander began to train others to
teach his technique. The first training course opened in the early 1930’s in
London. Alexander was still teaching and training teachers when he died in 1955
at age 86. Today there are several thousand certified teachers worldwide. Most
of them belong to one or more professional societies.
AmSAT (the American Society
for the Alexander Technique) is the largest professional association of
certified Alexander Technique teachers in the United States.
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