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About the Alexander Technique
 "After working for a lifetime in this new field, I am conscious that the knowledge gained is but a beginning, but I think I may confidently predict that those who are sufficiently interested in the findings I have recorded, and who will be guided by them in any further search, will find their outlook and understanding towards the question of control of human reaction (behaviour) so completely changed that they will see that knowledge of the self is fundamental to all other."
Frederick Matthias Alexander, 1869-1955
Experience of the Technique has led to praise from George Bernard Shaw, Aldous Huxley, Prof. John Dewey, Sir Charles Sherrington, Julian Bream, John Cleese, Kevin Kline, Roald Dahl, Robertson Davies and many others. It is taught at the Juilliard School of Performing Arts in New York, at the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, The Stratford Shakespearean Festival, Boston University, Brandeis University and many other centers.
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"The Alexander Technique is based on exceptionally sophisticated observation, not only by means of vision, but to a surprising extent by using the sense of touch. I noticed with growing amazement, very striking improvements in such diverse things as high blood pressure, breathing, depth of sleep, overall cheerfulness, mental alertness, resilience against outside pressures and also in such refined skills as the playing of a stringed musical instrument."
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Nobel Prizewinner for Medicine and Physiology, Nikolaas Tinbergen, from his Nobel Prize acceptance speech
Olympic level athletes have similarly used the Technique to improve their performance as have leading golfers and business people. Medical studies have shown the Technique to be as effective in lowering blood pressure as the normally prescribed beta-blocking drugs. Other studies have shown significant improvement in respiratory function. The common factor in all these aspects of life is that how we are using ourselves - the way we do things - affects the results we get. The Alexander Technique is a means of improving that use. It has been called a "pre-technique" which people can apply to furthering their own special skills and activities.. It is also essentially a preventative technique with which we can learn to improve and maintain our health.
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"Mr. Alexander has done a service to the subject by insistently treating each act as involving the whole integrated individual, the whole psychophysical man. To take a step is an affair not of this or that limb solely but of the total neuromuscular activity of the moment - not least of the head and neck."
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Sir Charles Sherrington, Nobel Prizewinner for Medicine and Physiology
The individual is the focus of the Alexander Technique. We are all unique, with different bodies, different experiences and different problems. We go about the process of change in different ways and at different rates. For these reasons what happens in a lesson depends very much on the needs of the student at the time. But basically you will learn an attitude of not trying to gain your ends at any cost and at the same time how to prevent your present harmful habits that cause unnecessary stress and restrict your capabilities. Obviously, since what you are changing are patterns built up over many years, a permanent change will not be brought about overnight. However, the person who learns to stop and take time, to think constructively about how he/she uses him/herself in everday life will find that this simple procedure can have far reaching results.
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"It is difficult for anyone to grasp its full force without having actual demonstration of the principle in operation. And even then, as I know from personal experience, its full meaning dawns upon one slowly and with new meanings continually opening up... Only when the results of Mr. Alexander's lessons have changed one's sensory appreciation and supplied a new standard, so that the old and new condition can be compared with each other, does the concrete force of his teaching come home to one... It is this which makes it practically impossible for anyone to go to him with any idea at the outset beyond that of gaining some specific relief and remedy."
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Prof. John Dewey, philosopher, educator and author
The above text and graphics have kindly been provided by and are © Copyright of Alexander Technique International, The International Governing Body for the Alexander Technique.
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