FOR WHOM?
More than a century after F.M. Alexander (1869-1955) began teaching in Australia, the Alexander Technique has established itself around the world as a unique and invaluable method of pyschophysical education. Due to its educational approach and tangible results, it is particularly valued by health professionals, performing artists, and athletes around the world.
There are currently over 3,000 certified Alexander Teachers working worldwide in more than 35 countries. In Catalonia there are upwards of 25 teachers, and more than 65 in the whole of Spain.
F.M. ALEXANDER
Alexander based his work on his discovery of a fundamental principle (applicable to all vertebrates): an appropriate coordination between the head, neck, and trunk stimulates the inherent coordination of the whole body and permits our primary movement upward in response to the stimulus of gravity.
Realizing his technique was of universal benefit, he developed a teaching method combining highly refined hands-on guidance with verbal instruction to transmit the experience of improved neuromuscular functioning, or “use”. He taught students to consciously reorganize their own particular neuromuscular use more efficiently and effectively, enabling them to enjoy the same process of healthy psychophysical improvement as did he himself.
HOW IT WORKS
Posture is a term closely associated with poise and the Alexander Technique, and it has a much richer significance than we tend to realize. We typically think of posture in terms of a fixed position or alignment, and either as “good” (rigid, artificial and forced) or “bad” (everything else).
In fact, posture includes everything related to that most basic, fundamental effort we make: organizing and mobilizing our own weight upward in response to the constant downward force of gravity.
