Alan Bowers, M.AmSAT
The Alexander Technique in Manhattan

Who was F. M. Alexander?

F. Matthias Alexander (1869-1955) was an actor/orator. He was born in Tasmania, struggled in Victorian era Australia, and brought his technique to fame in London. And that tells us far too little. A saying of Confucius tells us that to learn the measure of a man, we ought to take a look at his pleasures, his pastimes. A man, he says, simply cannot hide himself. And what was Alexander’s favorite pastime? Well, the horses. He was a rider. He grew up around horses; he loved the track, and missed few opportunities to place a bet on his favorite.

He saw that horses, when they are first ridden, are not too pleased at having a 150-pound rider on their backs. Their response is terror and an overwhelming desire to rid themselves of their unaccustomed burden. They hollow the back, they shorten the space between the base of the skull and the shoulders, they send the eyes skyward, and the head back and down.

The response that Alexander had seen in horses, he must have recognized in himself. He suffered from debilitating laryngitis and sought help from the medical community. He reasoned that since the temporary relief he received from prescribed vocal rest did little good and that his problem returned every time he spoke in public, that it must be something that he was doing that made him lose his voice.

Working with a full-length mirror to observe himself in action, Alexander saw that his response to the stimulus of performing dramatic speech was to pull his head back and down. He does not report that he recognized in himself the response he had seen in horses, but it is difficult to imagine that he did not. He recognized that – like horses – human beings have the ability to replace the habitual pattern of back and down with the ever-renewing wish of forward and up. That is Alexander’s discovery in a nutshell.

Like Archimedes in his tub and Newton with his apple, Alexander’s discovery, his genius, was his connection of an everyday phenomenon with an over-arching principle. It is a discovery that continues to resonate in the work of students and practitioners of the Alexander Technique today.

	What is the Alexander technique?
	Who was F.M Alexander?
	Will I experience change?
	How would I benefit from an Alexander lesson?

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