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Without realizing it, over time, our muscles tighten excessively compressing into our joints. This excessive muscle tightness causes our skeleton to move out of alignment. With the Alexander Technique, when the muscles release the excessive tension there can be a ripple affect, of pressure taken off joints, with the skeleton moving back to its natural state - the result being the body functions better. As the body begins to function more efficiently tension, stress, aches, and pains can diminish, positively influencing daily movement and activities.
Alexander Technique is not a treatment or cure, nor a therapy, exercise program, or form of healing. It is a gradual process of reeducation - learning how to use your body in the most efficient way. Alexander Technique involves developing awareness and living more consciously to notice and change habitual patterns of tension, which may be the root of misuse and poor body function. Alexander Technique is a self-care approach, based on a set of principles students learn to apply to daily and specialized activities.
During the study of Alexander Technique students are actively engaged in the process.
For over 100 years Alexander Technique teachers have taught Alexander Technique in individual, private, one-on-one lessons. Some Alexander Technique teachers offer workshops and group classes which are a good way to learn the basic fundamentals of Alexander Technique. However, there can be little individual instruction. Students who seek Alexander Technique to help with a problem or issue are strongly encouraged to take a series of private lessons.
Alexander Technique teachers use their hands - called “hands-on work,” a gentle, non-invasive touch and verbal guidance to encourage the release of excessive muscular tension. Teachers of Alexander Technique will typically work first with students in very general, basic daily activities, such as sitting, standing, or walking - using their hands to encourage the body to let go of the tension, compression, or effort that is not needed and to discover the student’s habits of tension and misuse.
Many Alexander Technique lessons also include lying down or table work. Students lie on a bodywork table, fully clothed, while the teacher uses his/her hands to encourage the student to release the muscular compression into more lengthening, widening, and a heightened kinesthetic awareness.
Once the basic principles have been taught, then lessons may include activity work, applying Alexander’s principles to any activity the student wants to explore. Activity work could include sitting at the computer, public speaking, writing, driving, walking, dancing, playing an instrument, conducting, or running, to name a few.
This instructor teaches 50-minute lessons. A longer session of 70 minutes is sometimes offered if there is a specialized activity or special problem that needs addressed.
Students are encouraged to wear loose, comfortable clothing. Since table work is sometimes a part of every lesson women should not wear dresses or skirts. Shoes are typically not worn during an Alexander Technique lesson.
How many lessons one needs depend upon several factors: why one is taking lessons, the student’s present condition, and the student’s goals and level of motivation. Since many of our issues are habitual, causing us to continually misuse our bodies, it does take time to re-educate our thinking and to enhance our awareness, so we can eliminate the tension and habits we do not need. At a minimum, a series of weekly lessons over a period of several months are strongly encouraged and recommended to fully understand and to receive long-term benefits. Think of learning Alexander Technique similarly to learning a new skill, e.g., learning to play an instrument or golf, to crochet, dance, making pottery or learning a new language. All takes time and patience.
A student should initially take one or two lessons to see if Alexander Technique is the approach he/she wants to pursue. However, one to two lessons are not sufficient for one to study without further guidance from an experienced Alexander Technique teacher. For there is always the possibility, that without an Alexander Technique teacher’s instruction, one could cause more misuse and more habitual patterns of tension.
Many students, not all, but many will notice a change during the first lesson. And will keep noticing more and more changes after each lesson. What kind of change depends upon the individual. For example, many students notice they are more relaxed and calmer, feeling lighter in their bodies and freer in movement when they walk.
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