Alexander Technique

The Alexander Technique is an educational approach in which a teacher uses spoken instruction, gentle hand contact and feedback to help people make small changes to the way they move and act. By making people aware of habits they had not noticed before, it aims to improve posture, coordination, balance, movement, breathing and everyday function. It was developed in Australia by the Tasmanian-born Frederick Matthias Alexander between the 1890s and the early 1900s, at first to improve his own voice.

Description

Lessons

Because the technique is taught, people learning it are usually called students, not patients. Most learn in individual lessons suited to their own needs, although introductory group classes and intensive workshops are also offered. In a lesson, students carry out everyday movements, such as walking or getting up from a chair, and practise noticing their posture and muscle tension while at rest, while getting ready to move and while moving. The teacher may guide them with gentle hand contact, but most of the learning comes from spoken instruction, feedback and discussion, and hands-on guidance is reduced as the student gains skill. Students are encouraged to practise every day between lessons, for example by lying in a semi-supine position for 15 to 20 minutes.

The Victorian Government's Better Health Channel, in a page produced with the Australian Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (AUSTAT), says lessons with a qualified teacher are needed. In a typical lesson the teacher may point out where the student is using more muscle effort than needed when standing, walking or sitting, and suggest easier ways of moving.

Number of lessons

AUSTAT recommends at least six lessons, and suggests that 12 to 24 lessons may give greater and longer-lasting results. In a survey of Alexander Technique teachers in the United Kingdom, 38% said their clients took more than 25 lessons; the median lesson lasted 45 minutes, and lessons were usually weekly at first and less frequent later.

How teachers explain it

The technique rests on the belief that there is an ideal relationship between the head, neck and spine that supports coordination, balance, posture and pain-free activity. Habitual ways of moving are thought to cause excess muscle tension that disturbs this relationship. Proponents say that becoming aware of these habits, and replacing them with ways of moving that keep the spine lengthened and reduce unnecessary muscle effort, makes movement easier. Alexander called good neuromuscular organisation of the body "primary control".

These are the teachers' own explanations. The 2024 review for the Australian Government notes that Alexander's techniques and principles did not have a formal scientific basis, and that researchers have more recently tried to describe how the technique might work in terms of the nervous system.

What the evidence says

The Australian Government's 2015 review found no clear scientific evidence that the technique was effective. A 2024 systematic review for the government's Natural Therapies Review found seven trials that compared people who had Alexander Technique lessons with people who did not, and that measured the outcomes the review had prioritised:

• For people with chronic low back or neck pain, it found moderate-certainty evidence that the technique probably reduces disability, and low-certainty evidence that it may reduce pain but may make little difference to quality of life or emotional wellbeing.
• For older people with low vision and people with Parkinson's disease, it may improve mobility, but its effects on falls, disability and quality of life are very uncertain.
• No studies were found of other conditions.

The review was written to inform government policy on private health insurance, and was not intended to guide individual decisions about using the technique. That distinction matters when reading the findings: they describe groups in trials, not what any one student can expect.

Scope

What it includes

• Individual lessons, introductory group classes and intensive workshops
• Spoken instruction, feedback and gentle hand contact from a teacher
• Practice by the student in daily life and at home between lessons

What it is not

• The Alexander Technique is not an exercise regime.
• It is not a therapy done to a passive client. Unlike many physical therapies delivered in classes, its lessons are meant to give people skills in self-observation and self-awareness that they can apply in their own daily lives.

Traditions and lineage

Alexander in Australia

Frederick Matthias Alexander was born at Table Cape, in north-west Tasmania, on 20 January 1869. As a young man he worked as a clerk at the Mount Bischoff mine at Waratah and recited poetry as a hobby. Around 1890 he moved to Melbourne, took acting lessons and gave public readings, and he later turned to teaching stage skills, especially breathing and voice production. He came to believe that correct posture was essential to physical, emotional and spiritual health. As an actor, Alexander had noticed that his vocal problems seemed linked to the way he held and moved his body. He developed techniques to change these habits and taught them to others through lessons and books.

London, the United States and later revival

Alexander worked in Sydney from 1899 to 1904 and then moved to London, where his first pupils again came from the theatre. His first major book, Man's Supreme Inheritance, was published in 1910. From 1914 he also taught regularly in the United States; the philosopher John Dewey and the writer Aldous Huxley were among his pupils, and both wrote about his ideas. During the Second World War he moved his school to Massachusetts. He died in London on 10 October 1955.

Interest in Alexander's work grew again from the late 1960s. In 1973 the ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen praised him in the address he gave on accepting the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The technique is now one of many mind–body practices taught by trained teachers in Western countries. In Australia, one professional association, Alexander Technique Education (ATE), follows the teaching methods of Walter Carrington.

Context

Within Spiritualism

Spiritfold has found no published source linking the Alexander Technique with Spiritualism.

In Australian Spiritualism

Spiritfold has found no published source linking the Alexander Technique with Spiritualism in Australia.

A Spiritualist perspective

Anyone who has sat for development will know how much of the early work is about noticing: the tightness in the shoulders, the held breath, the restless habit that pulls attention away. The Alexander Technique, as described above, is an education in noticing habits of that kind. It is not a spiritual practice and is no part of Spiritualism, but a Spiritualist teacher might well see why a student would value it. Alexander himself thought posture mattered for spiritual as well as physical health, though that was his personal view, not Spiritualist teaching.

A calm, upright and comfortable sitting posture makes long periods of meditation or circle work easier, and awareness of one's own body is a good foundation for any kind of attunement. Even so, the technique should be learned from a qualified teacher on its own terms, not dressed up as psychic development, because a student deserves to know exactly what they are being taught and by whom. And it is no substitute for medical advice when something is wrong.

Alexander Technique in Australia

Training and associations

In Australia the technique is usually taught by teachers who have completed an accredited teacher training course of at least 1,600 contact hours over three years. AUSTAT has accredited four teacher training schools that meet its standards. ATE has one teacher training school and is a sister organisation of ATE in the United Kingdom.

AUSTAT has procedures for handling complaints and misconduct, a Code of Professional Conduct for its members, and coordinates their professional development. It is a member of Alexander Technique Affiliated Societies (ATAS), which keeps minimum common standards for the training and professional conduct of teachers around the world. Better Health lists AUSTAT as a source of help.

There is little Australian information on how many people use the technique: the 2017 national survey of complementary medicine use did not include it.

Regulation

Teaching the Alexander Technique is not regulated under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law, so teachers don't have to be registered. The training standards and complaints procedures of the professional associations described above are therefore the main safeguards for students.

Private health insurance

Since 1 April 2019, the Alexander technique has been one of 16 natural therapies that private health insurers can't cover. The Natural Therapies Review 2024 looked at the evidence again. Its Chair, Professor Michael Kidd, recommended re-inclusion for therapies with moderate-certainty evidence of effectiveness for at least one health outcome in one condition, and the Alexander Technique was one of the seven therapies he recommended should become eligible again.

Safety and good practice

The 2024 systematic review did not assess safety. Better Health, written with AUSTAT, stresses that lessons should be taken with a qualified teacher.

Related modalities

• Feldenkrais Method
• Pilates
• Yoga
• Relaxation techniques

Further reading

• Better Health Channel. "Alexander technique". Department of Health, State Government of Victoria, 2014.
• Cochrane Australia. Systematic review of evidence on the clinical effectiveness of Alexander Technique. Australian Government Department of Health, 2024.
• Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. "Natural Therapies Review 2024". Australian Government.
• Roe, Michael. "Alexander, Frederick Matthias (1869–1955)". Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1979.