Introducing… The Alexander Technique

March 20, 2025
Acting, Articles, Book Extracts

From scrutinising what exactly the Alexander Technique is to offering guidance on more advanced elements, such as core postural support and psycho-physical unity, The Alexander Technique: A Personal and Critical Guide for Practitioners, Students and Performance Artists offers a holistic insight to the Alexander Technique for practitioners and artists.

The author is an expert practitioner who uses his own extensive experience of the Technique to offer tried-and-tested advice and posits that the Alexander Technique is not just about posture, but about choice and the control of reaction.

Get a peek into one of the appendices where the author talks through one such technique for an individual or a group.

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APPENDIX 1

Here are some suggestions on how to talk an individual or group through the main procedures. Such a process is also appropriate for online presentations and for working on oneself.

All procedures are to be taken at two levels depending on which meaning, or both, of the word inhibition is being applied. The first is to insert a pause in order to choose between activities, e.g. between bending the back or bending the knee or knees and hips to lower oneself. The second is to inhibit distortions of use, i.e. not pulling the head back or tightening the shoulders. Ideally both forms of inhibition take place.

Procedures: Basic instructions

These instructions are written here as if spoken by a teacher to a pupil. However, they can be used by individuals as instructions to themselves. They are quite basic and can be endlessly elaborated on. For example, the instruction to lengthen while standing can eventually become an instruction to attend to the feet (which parts of the feet are you standing on?), their connection to the knees, hips and so on up the spine to the neck and head with increasing precision.

The procedures are listed in order of simplicity. Not everyone will agree with this order and much can go wrong with each set of instructions. That will be the time when you have to modify them! For example, it is worth adding the primary directions to ‘let the neck be free to let the head go forward and up to let the back lengthen and widen’ before the word ‘lengthen’ below! The single word lengthen is used here to simplify the instructions. You will also see that the words ‘pause/inhibit/direct’ feature frequently but a bit randomly in these instructions. The randomness is intentional and simply indicates that one can stop and inhibit misuse as often as one wants or as often as it makes sense. Likewise, the word ‘pause’ can appear by itself and implies the rest of the formula. This is in line with a general principle of constantly refining the directions into one increasingly comprehensive pattern or desired body image.

Semi-supine

As a preliminary choose the right number of paperback books or similar to put under your head. A rule of thumb is to make the line of the neck as smooth and continuous as possible so the head is not tilted too far back or the chin compressed into the neck. Choose a hard surface with enough padding to be comfortable. An ordinary carpeted floor with underlay is fine. Not a bed or sofa, though, as these support the body unevenly.

To get into semi-supine, pause/inhibit/direct. Get yourself into a crawling position, pause, roll over onto your side, pause, roll onto your back. Lie on your back with your head on sufficient books to support your head so that your neck and back are in as smooth a line as possible and wait a bit. If it’s uncomfortable give it time to settle before changing anything.

It’s not a bad idea to start off by doing two simple things which could make you more comfortable.

1. Raise both arms vertically immediately above your shoulders by first bending them at the elbows and then raising the upper arms from the joint of the arm and the shoulder. Then lower them and place your hands back on your torso. Your shoulder blades should have come to rest slightly further apart. Don’t worry if not.
2. The bum flip: place the tips of your little finger, ring finger and middle finger under the outer edge of your pelvis and whilst raising your buttocks off the floor push the pelvis away from your head with your fingers. Try not to make too much tension with your arms when doing this. The process should have enabled more of your lower back to make more contact with the floor. If the lower back remains tense it will cause increasingly painful pressure on the points of contact with the floor/table. If this happens, try repeating the process.

Where to start the semi-supine work? Typically, Alexander Teachers start with the head. You can probably start with any part of the self, but the head and neck remains as good a place as any. The aim is to connect up the different parts of the body by directing them apart. So the head goes away from the neck and the lower back and pelvis go away from the head, the knees go away from the pelvis and the feet spread out on the floor. The arms do something similar in relation to the shoulder girdle. This will rarely be happening from the start so it’s a question of putting the pattern together bit by bit.

You can now start to give some more directions if you are ready. If you are not, wait a little longer  This is where it gets individual.

What you feel will depend on your particular use of yourself. However, a good way of proceeding for everyone is to work systematically round your body starting with your head and neck. Think your head away from your neck and your neck away from your spine. Indeed you can develop this into thinking a kind of star-shaped centrifugal pattern of directions. Starting where you want, think your head away from your neck and your back separating, vertebra away from vertebra, until you reach the pelvis. The knees now need to separate away from the pelvis and the feet from the knees while spreading on the ground. A variation which works for many people involves imagining someone (an imaginary benevolent Alexander Teacher perhaps) rotating the thigh inward before seeking to send the thighs upward and away from each other. Thus a complex pattern of directions is created which combines into a single entity with the parts pulsing away from each other.

Should semi-supine be active or passive? My answer is, ‘Whatever you want it to be.’ You can choose. If you want it to serve as a total switch off, don’t read the next bit. If you want it to be active, try the following. Once you have established some sort of pattern of directions throughout your body you can start to move the limbs with direction. This is relatively straightforward with the arms but pretty difficult with the legs.

Starting with the arms. Pause/inhibit/direct/lengthen to raise the elbows off the floor. Involve the shoulder blades and pectoral muscles as little as possible so that the movement is entirely at the shoulder joint (glenohumeral) where the upper arm joins the shoulder girdle. Thus the shoulder girdle forms a stable base for the arms. The spine lengthens and drops towards the floor. The arms should feel pretty light provided you keep the upper spine anchored and do not raise the sternum or solar plexus. If the sternum or solar plexus do lift up, don’t worry or try to change anything. You shouldn’t try to rush this as tension will occur. Other activities for the arms while in semi-supine position include raising the forearms vertically from the elbows without creating tension in the rest of the arm and moving the hands and fingers without involving the forearm too much.

A cheap trick: try putting a couple of centimetres or so of books under your elbows to help the shoulder blades not to clamp together towards the spine in their resting position.

Now for the most demanding bit. Using the pelvic girdle as an anchor raise a foot. Initially, this may be easier when the opposite foot is also used as an anchor. Place a hand on the belly in order to sense and lessen the extent of involvement of the superficial abdominal muscles. Progressively clarify your thinking to separate the leg from the pelvis using the hand on the belly to monitor any muscular activity. Now enable the leg to move with less or without involvement of the abdominal muscles. Finally, and most importantly, monitor the shoulders to see if they are tensing to stabilize you for this. If this is the case, you should be able to restrict the stabilizing to the dropping of the back onto the floor rather than tightening the shoulders.

Stop and allow things to settle while maintaining your directions without ‘doing’. If this ‘active’ version of semi-supine does not serve to release the tension in the back and shoulders, wait longer for good use to assert itself. After all, maybe the right thing really does ‘do itself’!

Changing the weight (useful for supermarket queues, bus stops and immediately after getting up from semi-supine)

Pause/inhibit/direct . . .

While standing with your feet more or less together. Lengthen to put your weight on the right foot. Lengthen to lift the left foot away from the ground. Simply lifting the foot off the ground is fine. But you can test yourself by lifting the thigh parallel to the ground when you can do the simple version without difficulty. Resist the temptation to look down at the ground. Now pause and inhibit in order to lengthen and put the left foot on the ground. Pause and inhibit, of course. Lengthen to put the weight on the left foot and then lift the right foot from the ground. Now pause and inhibit in order to lengthen to put your weight on the right foot so that the left foot may be lifted off the ground.

And so on.  Finish up on both feet where you started.

Now for the tricky part. Try the same thing in front of a mirror. The task now is to use your ability to inhibit and direct in order to minimize the swaying of your body as you pick up your feet. The easiest way is by ensuring that your head remains more or less stationary in the mirror.

It takes the majority of new pupils about two weeks to pass the head test but don’t be discouraged if it takes longer!

Monkey position (useful as a substitute for bending by collapsing the back)

Pause/inhibit/direct . . .

Lengthen to place your feet just over hip width apart. Lengthen to allow the knees to bend without tipping the torso forward. Repeat in small increments in order to resist the tendency to lose the lengthening in the process. Do not at first seek to lower yourself too much. If only a few centimetres are possible for whatever reason, stop. Now pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to tilt forward. This manoeuvre is particularly accident prone as it very easily generates an almost imperceptible tension in the hips and lower abdomen. If this happens it might be appropriate to avoid the forward tilt entirely and simply emphasize a softness in front of the ankles, the backs of the knees and the hip joints with the following set of instructions: ‘allow the ankles and knees to bend in such a way as to allow the knees lengthen away from the pelvis’. In this manoeuvre possibly more than any other the teacher’s words are likely to be received differently from the way they were intended. (To avoid these difficulties, try doing the first part of a monkey position with the back against a wall and the heels a few inches away from the wall, see Wall work below.)

Finally, lengthen again to come back to standing.

Lunge (useful for picking objects up off chairs, writing at table height while standing, etc.)

The lunge can be thought of flexibly as half a monkey position by starting in monkey position, straightening one leg and twisting a bit, It can also be treated as something to be worked on separately as follows.

Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to put your weight onto the right foot.

Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to place the left heel in the hollow of the right foot at an angle of about 45 degrees. Twist your body to face in the direction of the non-standing foot. Lengthen to pick up the left knee and foot with the thigh parallel to the ground. Lengthen and drop the left foot to the ground while maintaining back lengthened. Push back to the vertical to straighten both legs.

Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to bend the back knee. Pause/ inhibit/direct and lengthen to straighten the back leg.

Repeat to the other side as follows:

Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to place the right heel in the hollow of the left foot at an angle of about 45 degrees. Twist your body to face in the direction of the non-standing foot. Lengthen to pick up the right knee and foot with the thigh parallel to the ground. Lengthen and drop the right foot to the ground while maintaining back lengthened. Push back to the vertical with both legs straight. Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to bend the back leg. Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to straighten the back leg.

And so on . . .

Hands on the back of the chair (useful for lightening up the arms, supporting the back and shoulder girdle, achieving independence of the arms etc.)

This can be done either while seated or in monkey position. If it is being done in the absence of a teacher, the individual will have to imagine the lengthening imparted by a teacher.

Note: this is most effective if one has a clear picture of the musculoskeletal anatomy of the arms, shoulder girdle and back. In this way the fingers can be connected through to the feet (in monkey position) or sit bones and feet (when seated).

I will give the instructions as a teacher would while physically taking a pupil through the procedure. Equally, the individual can take themselves through this procedure on their own.

Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to let me take your hand and arm. Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to allow me to stretch your arm out to the side. Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to allow me to take your arm out to the elbow and the forearm round and place your straight fingers and thumbs onto the back of the chair. Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to grip onto the back of the chair with straight fingers and thumbs.

Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to let me remove your hands from the back of the chair while not collapsing your back or arms.

There are a number of variations of this procedure most of which depend on how the hand is placed on the chair (tips of the fingers and thumbs in contact with the back of the chair, a larger part of the fingers and thumbs in contact with the chair, bent or straight wrists, etc.). By and large these are not important. What is important is that the superficial muscles around the joints are not creating friction in the joints. Note that accurate compression of the joints by a teacher can equally create an appropriate coordination by provoking the superficial muscles to release.

Whispered ‘ah’ (for coordinating the voice)

Find a standing or sitting position in which you are at ease. Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to smile. Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to place the tongue on the tips of the lower teeth. Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to let the jaw go forward and drop open while keeping the smile. Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen to exhale air. Don’t force the air out. Pause/inhibit/direct lengthen to close the mouth and let the ribs expand. Have you been able to maintain a coordinated condition of the head/neck/back and torso/legs/feet axis or have there been any side effects on the rest of the body?

Wall work

Wall work can be thought of as a transposing of semi-supine into the vertical. Stand with your back to the wall and your heels about six inches or so from the wall (the closer your heels are to the wall, the more difficult wall work gets). Pause/inhibit/direct and lengthen. Start to transpose your directions from semi-supine into the vertical. Don’t press your back too hard against the wall and don’t let your head touch the wall. Whilst directing the head forward and up allow the knees to bend a little, very little! Continue in small increments to allow the knees to bend while preceding the bending with a direction to lengthen. At a certain point you will probably not feel able to go any further. Don’t force things. If your knee joints give you pain, pause, start again and don’t go as far. If the quadriceps (thigh muscles) start to get tired, it’s okay but don’t go on too long as it might create unnecessary tension. In the process you can vary this procedure by shifting the weight from one foot to the other or by going onto the toes making sure that you do not lose the coordination and that you keep sending the primary directions to the head, neck and back. Remember to keep pausing and directing at regular intervals.

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The Alexander Technique: A Personal and Critical Guide for Practitioners, Students and Performance Artists is now available via Bloomsbury. com