Frederick Matthias AlexanderFrederick Matthias Alexander (1869-1955) was an actor of Australian origin, a Shakespeare performer, who tried to help himself solving his chronic voice and breathing problems that occurred on stage. He tried this in a very practical way, by observing himself and by experimenting. He was so successful that more and more people turned to him for help in their similar problems, so that at the end he gave up his career as actor and committed his life to teaching and handing over his method. His assumptions lead much further from what he thought, his technique turned out to be effective not only in the treatment of breathing and voice problems, but also in the treatment of moving, digestive and cardiovascular disorders, and even in the handling of depression and other mental malfunctions.

 

Upon the advice of his friends and acquaintance, he moved to London – the medical capital of his age – in order to promote his method. Soon he had a flourishing praxis there, and many famous actors, artist, politicians and scientists of his age became not only his students, but also his friends.

 

From 1914 he travelled to the United States approximately each six months, where he also promoted and taught his technique.

In the Second World War, during the bombardment of London he left England and moved to America, where his brother, Albert Redden Alexander had already been teaching his method. Before the end of war, in 1943 he returned to London and rebuilt his praxis. In 1947 at the age of 78 he had a serious, spastic stroke from which he soon fully (!) recovered and he had been actively teaching his technique until the end of his life at the age of 86.

 

He wrote and left us four books containing the detailed description of his discoveries and his view concerning the technique. From 1932 he also started to train teachers in London.

Today there are many thousands of educated Alexander Technique teachers in numerous countries of the world, and the Alexander Technique is a widely known method.

 

Discoveries of Alexander

 

While observing himself from different angles in front of mirrors, Alexander discovered that his harsh voice and his “chasing for air” which one could literally hear when he was on stage – and which doctors could due to the lack of any organic disorder not cure – were caused by himself, by the inappropriate use of his own organism. He started a long term self observance and discovered that it was a tendency – not only concerning him, but also concerning most of the people – to press the spine together and to bend it which can be accounted to gravity. He found out that whatever activity we start we tend to pull our head back and downward, tightening it towards our neck which causes our body losing its natural balance and in order to compensate the loss of balance, additional tensions occur at other, further places of our body as well.

 

He discovered that our habits are so powerful that they are not only difficult to change, but most of the times we do not even see them and that thus we cannot trust in our sensory perception neither. We often perceive something familiar but bad as good and vice versa, something new and good as bad and uncomfortable. During his self observance Alexander found out that his kinaesthetic perception (the perception of his own movements) became unreliable, since he often carried out a movement totally different from what he believed he would do, meaning that his habitual body feelings overwrote what he really intended to do. So he worked on himself with the help of mirrors. Soon there were positive changes in the functioning of his whole organism, his problems disappeared entirely and his sensory and kinaesthetic perception became more reliable.