Alexander Technique

The formative experiences of our lives do not just shape our character, they also shape our bodies, our posture and our habitual responses.

Alexander teachers use subtle, highly skilled hands-on work and voice to explore with students how they may be habitually overiding the "natural good use" and freedom of movement that most of them had as children.

They learn to stop and give time to notice how their head, neck, trunk relationship affects their whole system. This gradual process of re-education gives a sense of coming home to themselves. It offers long term help with a surprisingly wide range of concerns.

AT in practice

Teachers use subtle, highly skilled hands-on work plus detailed observation to guide the student through a wide range of slow movement, couch work or slow stretches while the student learns to direct their attention. Principles of human movement and anatomy emerge gradually through a course of sessions/ lessons.

Methods of teaching, perceptions of the technique and appropriate depth of work can differ noticeably between teachers and inevitably students need to find a teacher that suits them. Gentian is a senior and relatively unconventional teacher whose wide training and experienced allow her to work in an intuitive and flexible way. She is interested in the wider implications of this fundamental and life changing work. Her training in cranio- sacral work and eastern meditative disciplines have expanded her understanding of the Alexander Technique spectrum.

Human movement

While animals are organised to move through space with the head leading and body following (eg a cat or dog stalking or running) humans have a vertically poised upright system with a remarkable ability to support itself against gravity without locking the joints. The body hangs freely from the head with a very puppet like instability which paradoxically stimulates a reflex system of balance, postural support, breathing and co-ordination.

Muscles don’t just contract to produce movement, they are elastically stretched within this skeletal framework to create a lattice-work of support thus converting the entire musculoskeletal system into a spring like framework.

Stretch reflexes in the neck in particular play a primary role in organising this system and are elicited by the natural balance of the head in relation to a lengthened and supported spine.

However, for a wide variety of reasons, we may gradually constrict and shorten this exquisitely suspended and finely tuned mechanism, especially with the demands of modern living such as computer use.

Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869-1955) spent a lifetime exploring these patterns of interference and also how to restore the elasticity and freedom of movement , the “natural good use” which most of us had as children. Our understanding of the deep and radical implications of his work continue to develop, especially in the light of new discoveries in neuroscience about the dynamics of mind, body and emotions.

AT can help

Muscle pain/stiffness and tension from bad backs, stiff neck and shoulders
Breathing and posture issues, computer use
Stress, anxiety and depression, fatigue
Body/mind skills required by actors, dancers, vocalists, musicians, sports people, runners, public speakers etc.
Yoga, meditation, tai chi, qi gong
As a support for counselling