I have had a long association with the European String Teachers Association (ESTA) ever since I gave a one-day workshop for them in 2015. This workshop explored ’10 ways the Alexander Technique will improve your string playing and teaching’, and was very well attended. Working with string players and indeed all kinds of musicians is one of my specialisms; the Chair of ESTA UK commented at the time,

I have been to numerous Alexander talks over the past 40 or so years … What Henry’s talk did, though, was to explain the rationale behind the Technique in a way which clarified it for me as never before.

John Shayler, Chair of ESTA UK

Since then I have been invited to present at the ESTA UK Summer School, most recently in 2021 when I lead a series of morning sessions entitled, ‘Wake Up to Natural Movement’. This year, not only string players joined these sessions; clarinettists and saxophonists from the Clarinet and Saxophone Society of Great Britain (CASS GB) also came along to discover how the Alexander Technique could help them.

As well as leading group sessions at the summer school, I also worked hands-on with many of the course participants, helping them to truly embody the Alexander Technique principles.

Steve Bingham of the Bingham String Quartet took some wonderful aerial shots of some of the activities we engaged in outdoors, and I’ll share a few of these as soon as I receive them.

“Everything is amazing, from the Technique to the teacher.”

In the summer of 2018 and 2019 I had the privilege of working with some very high level young Romanian musicians at the start of their careers. I have also returned to work in Romania post-pandemic.

The programme, called Ad Musicam, was funded by the Romanian Cultural Institute and was designed to give these musicians the tools to take their careers to the next level. Although the Alexander Technique is well established in British conservatoires, this is not the case worldwide, and indeed my workshops were the first encounter these musicians had had with the Technique.

For the 2019 workshops, some of the participants provided their feedback, which I include below. It was a very popular part of their programme, and I hope that I can return to Bucharest again sometime soon to work with young musicians again.

Selection of participant feedback

“This is the first time I discovered Alexander Technique and I will use it from now on in everything I do.”

“I have realised how important it is to listen to our own body. I have learned how to relax and to be aware about my posture”.

“I attended to a one-to-one lesson and I like the way my body felt like in a different new way. I discovered that relaxation, stopping and thinking are the key for many problems.”

“It’s like going to a doctor trained especially for musicians. The workshops are also lots of fun and they’re quite life-changing in the long term”

“I would recommend Henry’s Alexander workshops because he is a very kind and patient person. He combines a lot of interactive typs of teaching.”

“I will improve my posture and it will help me to get rid of back pain. Thank you so much for this opportunity.”

“I think that Alexander Technique is a wonderful way to decrease my back pain and to create a mental balance.”

“It will help me develop a healthy life as a musician and understand the movements I’m doing”

“[The Alexander Technique will help me] By giving me a good posture, also by letting me get rid of anxiety when I have a concert, by helping me to improve my way of playing (posture and mental awareness).”

“Everything is amazing, from the Technique to the teacher.”

“I think that with the Alexander Technique I will be able to achieve my goals with more ease, musically speaking and also career-wise. :)”

This week I had the privilege of introducing the Alexander Technique to attendees of the Bryanston International Summer School. This is a residential course held every year at Bryanston School in Dorset, and is for students around the world of the renowned Suzuki Method of learning a musical instrument.

Bryanston is an extraordinary course, consisting of countless workshops, masterclasses, orchestras, concerts and other events, and has gone ahead this year despite the real challenges posed by Covid.

The Alexander Technique compliments the Suzuki Method beautifully – the ethos and aims seem to me well aligned. In my main workshop, aimed at parents and teachers, I attempted to introduce the Alexander Technique in the most engaging and accessible way I could find. The event went something like this:

• What is AT?
  • a sophisticated way of ‘recalibrating’ your muscle tone.
• Why is it relevant to me or my child?
  • reduces or eliminates pain and discomfort;
  • improves overall movement, coordination and balance;
  • improves skills such as playing a musical instrument;
  • regulates the emotions (stress, performance anxiety etc).
• Some quotes from young people studying AT at Junior Trinity (Trinity Laban Conservatoire) available here.
• Practical miming games to discover how types of attention influence muscle tension.
• The ‘arousal continuum’ and how it’s easy to ‘get stuck’ on the stress end rather than staying ‘alert and calm’. The deleterious effects (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual) of getting stuck.
• The essential need to be flexible in how we pay attention. In playing music, the need to attend to the healthy coordination of the whole in order to support movement of the parts.
• An exploration of the Alexander Technique through the metaphor of 4 trees:
  • tree on a sunny day (coming to quiet, or Alexander’s ‘Inhibition’);
  • tree in a hurricane (allowing emptiness in the arms);
  • the sapling (letting your trunk grow, or Alexander’s ‘Direction’);
  • tree in the breeze (the ‘golden exercise’, being very useful for all musicians).
• The usual final Q&A.

I’ve really enjoyed my week at Bryanston, and felt that the diversity of people I’ve interacted with here has enabled me to deepen my skills in presenting the Alexander Technique. Definitely a win-win!

On a recent radio show, a professor of hand surgery gave some surprising comments on the mind-body connection:

If you sat and watched a film with your partner holding hands, you don’t need to talk about what’s on the film because you know what they’re thinking as they hold hands. It’s extraordinary that you can convey an enormous amount by holding hands, and I think the emotions that come through – you can convey love and fear and caring and protection and anxiety – all of these things can come through, and strength and weakness and supplication too.

Professor Simon Kay, consultant plastic surgeon and professor of hand surgery at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (BBC Sounds podcast, ‘A Show of Hands: Touch’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000xrzc)

As an Alexander Technique teacher, I’m constantly reminded of the unity of body and mind, and how the connection between a client’s emotions and their hands is (quite literally) palpable. Indeed, FM Alexander – not one to mince his words – rather famously put it in the following way:

You translate everything, whether physical, mental or spiritual, into muscular tension.

FM Alexander, Teaching Aphorisms, Articles and Lectures p. 207

Unravelling the physical patterns of tension caused by clients’ mental and emotional states is part of the job description of an Alexander Technique teacher. Hands and fingers, for example, learn to open out, to return to a neutral state.

Crucially, though, as teachers we’re also in the business of helping clients avoid this muscular tension in the first place. The newfound choice and awareness that emerges as part of this process is empowering and liberating. It’s also why the Alexander Technique must be seen as a unique educational process – a skill to be acquired – and not a therapy.

The Developing Self team has for a second year running curated a series of videos relating to Alexander Technique in education. Twenty presenters with intimate knowledge of the Alexander Technique in education share their ideas in the form of interviews and presentations.

There’s great diversity among these videos, and anyone who wishes to deepen their understanding of Alexander Technique in the educational setting will find plenty to explore. Some of the topics included are below. Enjoy!

• the Alexander Technique at the prestigious Julliard School in New York (Lori Schiff)
• how to create a curriculum and present in an age-appropriate style to different age groups (Angelique Swallow)
• the Early History of the Alexander Technique in Education (1910s to 1940s) (Regina Stratil)
• introducing body mapping to children (Elizabeth Castagna)
• the link between FM Alexander and John Dewey, America’s most famous educational philosopher (Malcolm Williamson)
• Alexander Technique and gender equality (Abi Wright)
• Alexander Technique through the eyes of a magician (Lee Warren)
• Alexander Technique and performance education for creativity, health and balance (Wolfgang Weiser)

I’ve been teaching the Alexander Technique to young adult musicians for many years now at Trinity Laban Conservatoire in Greenwich, London. When the pandemic hit, as with many institutions, learning went online. Despite the challenges of learning online, my students at Trinity have come on in leaps and bounds, and this was brought home to me recently by some end-of-year feedback I asked them to give.

In fact, I was unexpectedly moved and surprised by their responses which blew me away with their depth of insight and maturity (just note the ages of the respondents). Occasionally I thought, quite literally, that I couldn’t have phrased it better myself.

I asked my students to write down informally what the Alexander Technique meant to them, and how it had helped them over the last year. Here’s a selection of what they said.

Over the past year of learning about Alexander Technique, I have felt more open and free, and it has helped me take more notice of things around me, rather than rushing past them as I used to do. As a result, a possible byproduct is that I feel that my life is more satisfying and full, and weirdly time seems to pass slower the more I notice the things around me. Overall, I feel less stressed and feel as though life has become easier to live.

EC, 15 years

The Alexander Technique to me means efficiency and comfort; not using any more energy or holding any more tension than you have to, therefore enabling you to carry out actions more comfortably and naturally. Semi supine has helped with my violin as it allowed me to release any tension so that when I came back to practice I felt refreshed, both physically and mentally. The Alexander Technique has also been helpful in everyday actions, especially in school, and my posture which I feel has improved and benefited my confidence as well. I think Alexander Technique in a way helps humans to become more human; to do what they were meant to without complicating simple things.

FM, 14 years

I think the Alexander Technique is a good way of persuading your mind to not get used to negative habits, like slouching, bending your back when performing, etc etc. It really makes you aware of your surroundings, and yourself in general, your senses are opened up, and the more vulnerable you are I think is how much more you are able to correct yourself. It also relies a bit on muscle memory, so if you were to consistently keep your back long, keep your shoulders relaxed and wide, spread your feet out, eventually this will replace your old habit of slouching, bending your back, staying tense and you will automatically start to have better posture and that’s what I think Alexander Technique is all about.

ZK, 12 years

What Alexander tech means to me: I really like Alexander technique and I find it very useful in music and day-to-day life. It helps me calm down and deal with stress or anxiety, and has actually improved my cello playing and how I feel playing. After playing the cello for a long period of time I used to feel quite achy but now that has improved dramatically and I can play for a long period of time without feeling uncomfortable! Alexander technique was really useful in my exams and I was sitting down for a long period of time and was stressed, I managed to sit in a way that was comfy and calm down and centre myself when I was stressed!

ML,13 years

Alexander technique has been an opportunity for me to be able to release the tension that builds up when moving about in everyday life. It has also enabled me to become more aware of the different parts of my body and how they come together to create movement. In doing so I have also realised how effortless our existence can be despite how much stress we are under in a modern society. It has also helped me to make my playing more undemanding and more natural as I haven’t felt the need to force my body into a state and instead take my time. By doing this my playing has improved greatly. Alexander technique is something I incorporate into everyday life and I have reaped the benefits of it.

NT, 17 years

I think that what Alexander means in my mind is slowly realising what quiet sounds and feels like. It’s not something that you notice or realise that you don’t notice until you start Alexander.

MD, 18 years

Almost ten years ago, Amy Cuddy shot to fame with her popular TED Talk on the ‘power pose’. This was the idea that adopting an expansive body position for a couple of minutes would increase testosterone, and thus help you feel more confident and even perform better. The classic example of the power pose was the ‘Wonder Woman stance’ where the individual would stand with their legs wide, their hands on their hips and their chin raised.

However, over the last decade, scientists have consistently failed to replicate the results of Amy Cuddy’s initial research. Perhaps the nail in the coffin for the power pose was a meta-analysis published in June 2020 by a team at Aarhus University in Denmark which looked at the impact of posture on emotions and behaviour. Recently, one of the paper’s authors, Professor Mia OToole, was interviewed for the BBC. She said,

“We found no evidence that power poses, in and of themselves, increase feelings of power. Tentatively, we conclude that it is the absence of contractive poses or postures that matters most. When you stop assuming a slumped position, and you just sit in a neutral position – that’s where the change in mood occurs, that you have less negative emotions, that you have more positive emotions and so-forth.”

Interview on Podcast ‘Made of Stronger Stuff: the Spine’ from 16:18

This is a striking finding, and a much more nuanced understanding of the relationship between posture and emotions. It also chimes with how the Alexander Technique seems to bring about positive emotions through reducing habitual and unnecessary muscular contraction. Little attention in the research literature has so far been paid to such ‘non-physical’ outcomes of the Alexander Technique, but a review of the current evidence is expected to be published later this year – so watch this space.

You’ll find this quote all over the internet:

97% of people with back pain could benefit by learning the Alexander Technique. It is only a very small minority of back pain sufferers that require medical intervention such as surgery.

Dr Jack Stern, spinal neurosurgeon

I haven’t tracked down the source of this quote, but Dr Jack Stern is a renowned New York-based neurosurgeon of some 40 years’ standing with a specialization in the spine. So, I wanted to know, what is the basis of his 97% claim?

Recently, I was able to watch an online talk given by Dr Stern entitled ‘The role of the Alexander Technique in the treatment of low back pain’ and hosted by the Judith Leibowitz Scholarship Fund. Watching his presentation, it seems that Dr. Stern’s claim for the efficacy of the Alexander Technique is based on clinical evidence that 97% of low back pain is due to ‘mechanical’* causes. Here’s what the data looks like:

Included under those mechanical causes of low back pain is lumbar strain or sprain which accounts for a massive 70% of cases. This is by far the most common cause of back pain and, in Dr Stern’s words, ‘the diagnosis most readily treated by the Alexander Technique.’ And then there are also a number of further diagnoses under this category such as degenerative processes of disc and facets (usually related to age) (10%) and herniated disc (4%). Congenital diseases such as severe kyphosis and scoliosis are also included.

And why, as Dr. Stern claims, is the Alexander Technique of such benefit to these 97% of people with back pain? The reason is that, in the vast majority of cases, poor use of the musculoskeletal system contributes to poor functioning, which in turn causes pain – and this is the generally unacknowledged factor which the Alexander Technique seeks to address. In other words, the Alexander Technique retrains us to use our bodies in the most efficient and non-damaging manner, which in turn alters how we function – in short, use affects functioning. Dr. Stern puts it in the following way:

Low back pain is almost always a benign self-limiting problem related to poor use.

It would of course be reckless to make such claims for an intervention without evidence, but the evidence is there. It’s contained in the results of a large-scale randomized control trial of the effects of Alexander Technique on back pain. This study, published in the British Medical Journal, concluded that Alexander Technique had ‘long term benefits for patients with chronic back pain’. You can read here my own short summary of its remarkable findings.

I’ll leave the final few words to Dr Stern who, in another interview several years ago, commented:

For me as a neurosurgeon who sees thousands of patients with low back pain, it’s really a very important tool to have as one of my consultants an Alexander Teacher for those large number of patients who really don’t need surgery, don’t need chiropractic, don’t need physical therapy, don’t need acupuncture, don’t need medication, but who have the ability to relearn and be taught by an Alexander teacher how to use their bodies most efficiently and with the least amount of pain.

*defined by the authors of the paper as ‘an anatomic or functional abnormality without an underlying malignant, neoplastic [tumorous], or inflammatory disease’

Seth Godin, one of America’s most famous marketing gurus and bloggers, has endorsed the Alexander Technique in a short Youtube interview with interviewer Zak Kuhn. He explained that he has been having lessons off and on for 16 years and then commented,

I strongly advise people, go to two sessions and see whether it changes the way you breathe and walk – it was a gift.

The conversation then moves on to marketing the Alexander Technique and how practitioners can get the word out more effectively. Seth recognizes that the Technique deserves a bigger audience, and the pair even suggest setting up a table in New York’s Central Park!

Here’s the clip below.

The short answer to this question is ‘yes’. The longer and much better answer is ‘yes, but…’.

In the Alexander Technique, we’re not learning the ‘correct’ way to sit, stand, walk or play the guitar, for example. As soon as you fixate on such a ‘correct’ way to move, you’re most likely inviting tension. In fact, we know that expert movement exhibits so-called ‘good variability’ where the end-point may be very accurate, but the pathway to that end-point differs each time. The opposite of this kind of healthy movement is stereotyped movement, and this is what we find in older populations, or in conditions with impaired motor coordination such as Parkinson’s disease.

So, rather than learning how to move in a certain way, one of the aims of the Alexander Technique is arguably to improve the support of any movement. According to research, it seems to achieve this by improving the distribution and adaptability of muscle tone throughout the body.

But since there will always be some ways of moving that are more efficient and less damaging, there is evidence to suggest that the Alexander Technique’s focus on support starts to change movement patterns indirectly. For example*, research suggests that, in rising from a chair, Alexander-trained participants demonstrated a smooth weight transfer, whereas control participants tended to move abruptly. And in another study of walking, older Alexander-trained participants showed greater hip and knee flexion than controls, similar to the way in which younger people move.

Some Alexander Technique teachers will work with an individual’s movement patterns more than others. Walking is a good example. I recently wrote a blog post, ’10 steps to better walking with the Alexander Technique’ which looked into the biomechanics of efficient and well-supported walking. Just one example from that post demonstrates how movement and support are closely intertwined: a healthy bending movement of the big toe is essential for cultivating the arched support of the foot, through activation of the so-called ‘windlass’ (or ‘winching’) mechanism.

To conclude, teachers of the Alexander Technique do not usually focus on individual movements, but seek to improve how all movement can be better supported. This process can lead indirectly to changes in how a person moves.

* a complete summary of research findings on the effects of Alexander Technique on movement can be found in Cacciatore, T. et al. (2020) ‘Potential Mechanisms of the Alexander Technique: Toward a Comprehensive Neurophysiological Model’ (https://doi.org/10.1123/kr.2020-0026)