The Alexander Technique is often known for the way it reduces unnecessary muscular tension, the way it changes postural and movement habits, and how it is an effective solution for back, neck and other musculoskeletal pain.
All of this is true. And yet it is also to miss the point. The essence of the Alexander Technique is something else, as the well-known instructor Anthony Kingsley explained in an interview last year.
I love the clarity of Anthony’s thinking on this topic, and so I’ve transcribed some of what he said below. He describes the Alexander Technique as a technique for preventing the distorting effects of reactions to living. He goes on,
Later on in his life, [Alexander] understood his work as a technique of preventing reaction. He said, ‘You all think my work is about getting in and out of a chair properly … – how to stand properly, how to have a good spine, how to have the shoulders nicely broadening [etc] – [but] it’s nothing of the kind. It’s about receiving a stimulus and learning not to react against the habits of life.’
And I think that’s so exciting! … It doesn’t really matter how you sit and stand: it’s a function of how you cope with everything in living, life’s ups and downs, life’s struggles and hopes and dreams and aspirations, all the things that happen to us in an average life, and all the dramas: how we cope with it, how we manage it. Do we manage it in a way that disturbs and distorts ourselves – Alexander called it the self, the psychophysical self – or do we manage the struggles and the ups and downs and the frustrations and hopes and disappointments and pains and losses – all these things – in a way that isn’t so destructive to the health of the organism, to the health of the mind-body.
And that for me is really exciting, that actually the thing that hurts us isn’t necessarily the event – Alexander was very clear – it’s how we react to the event. Two people can have the same event, or stimulus, and come out totally different. And I think the work – the deep Alexander work – is how to manage some of the things that really are quite big stimuli, the big struggles, in a way that isn’t so harmful, or so disturbing or so toxic for the mind-body, for the psychophysical self.
Thank you, Anthony, for this clarity. There are plenty more of Anthony’s videos online.