How Alexander Technique Lessons Can Improve Health

The first thing to make clear is that the Alexander Technique is not a therapy and that Alexander Teachers are not therapists. The Technique isn't a form of alternative medicine or complimentary therapy, and we don't offer any treatment, or claim that we can cure anything at all. What we do is teach people to use themselves in a better way, and one of the results of pupils learning to use themselves in a better way is that some of the health problems that they had will tend to improve.

The reason that some health problems tend to improve by learning good use is that many are caused by bad use. Just look at the state of the person sitting at the computer - all the internal organs are squashed, and the spine just isn't meant to spend hours bent over like that. So it wouldn't be surprising if this person experienced neck and shoulder problems, low back pain, sub-optimal breathing and digestion, and a lot more besides. It just stands to reason that if you squash the lungs like that they won't function as well, and the same goes for all the other organs in the thoracic cavity - heart, liver, pancreas, guts and all the rest of it. The point is that this person is causing their problems through what Alexander called faulty use, so when people have Alexander Lessons, and some of their health problems tend to resolve themselves, it is a result of the pupil learning to change their habits.

So an Alexander Teacher doesn't cure or treat anything, and The Alexander Technique is not a treatment for any medical condition: The Alexander Technique simply teaches good use, and as a result the body can resolve some self-inflicted problems.

There are of course problems that won't go away, not even with the help of the Alexander Technique, but it can still be very helpful in managing some medical conditions. What you have may not be great, but the Technique helps people to make the best of what they do have.

And its not just physical problems. People become easier to live with, more relaxed and less likely to fly off the handle, so it is sometimes the people living with the person having Alexander Lessons who first notice the changes.

Although we don't treat illnesses and we always tell people that if they have a health problem they should see a doctor, someone in an office who knows nothing about the Technique and is probably sitting like the person in the picture has decided that we are not allowed to say what medical conditions the Alexander Technique has been helping for nearly a century and half. So just to be absolutely clear, all we are saying is that given favourable conditions, the body is better able to sort itself out and, the Alexander Technique helps to create favourable conditions.

Which is bad news for the pharmaceutical industry who make their money by managing rather than curing illness!

The British Medical Journal has produced two videos about the Alexander Technique that you can watch by clicking the links below. Please note that the BMJ videos refer solely to the work of STAT Trained Alexander Teachers

 

British Medical Journal Video 1

British Medical Journal video 2