“It is notoriously difficult to describe the Alexander Technique… Even writers of great talent who were among it’s followers, such as the English novelist Aldous Huxley, struggled to express it in words.”
– Michael Bloch, writing in FM. The Life of Frederick Matthais Alexander.

The impossibility of providing a satisfying all-purpose definition of the technique means many people who might otherwise want to know about it have no idea that it exists.

Those with some general knowledge think it a form of posture correction, which is worse.

All this adds to the mystique of A.T and a perception of difficulty, when the issue is more one of difference by design: the whole purpose of the technique is take you to the frontier of what you know, and to practise going over it into what you don’t.

For Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963), it was “a means of breaking out of ‘the chains of determinism’ and opening the way to physical and spiritual experiences that were not possible for him before.”*

I think of it as a way to work with the creative process, but many use it for purposes entirely unrelated to the arts, such as:

• To meet, manage and relieve pain
• To shed unconscious postures
• To improve balance and coordination
• To feel more comfortable in their skin

“Maybe that is what is so perfect about our work, the impossibility of nailing it down for everyone in the same way. We may need all our different approaches for all the different people out there?”
– Judith Kleinman in an interview about her book Finding Quiet Strength: Emotional Intelligence, Embodied Awareness in STAT News, May 2023.

* Footnote: Quote taken from Frank Pierce Jones, Freedom to Change: The Development and Science of the Alexander Technique