Biography
Frederick Matthias Alexander was born on January 20, 1869, in Tasmania, then part of the British Empire, and died on October 10, 1955, in London, England. As a young man, he moved to Melbourne and later Sydney, where he became an actor in variety shows and specialized in reciting poems and Shakespearean monologues.
In the early 1890s, Alexander experienced a resurgence of the poor health that had plagued him during childhood. After recovering from acute illness, he still experienced hoarseness and sometimes lost the use of his voice entirely. Despite resting his voice and following his doctors’ treatment plans, Alexander often became hoarse during and after performance.
Because his doctors had no remaining concerns about the health of his organs and tissues, he came to believe that he must have been doing something himself to contribute to his symptoms. If the symptoms were in fact caused by Alexander himself, he realized that he needed to catch himself in the process of reciting and observe how he carried out the act.
Over the course of a few years, Alexander set out to observe himself in the moments before, during, and after the act of recitation. He used mirrors arranged in a semi-circle and trial and error to learn about himself. He identified three key patterns that arose just before recitation: he pulled his head back and down, he depressed his larynx, and he audibly gasped. When he watched himself closely, he saw that those habits were also present during ordinary speech, but to a much lesser degree. He also noted other patterns of “undue muscular tension”: he lifted his chest, shortened his torso, and “took hold of the floor with his feet.”
Drawing upon his own experience, F.M. started to develop an educational process, and eventually a way of using his hands, to help others experiencing similar symptoms. His brother Albert Redden (A.R.), an avid horseman, joined him in Melbourne and played a key role in developing the procedures. F.M. trained A.R. and entrusted him with teaching and training others, both in Australia and later in the United States. F.M. moved to London in 1904 to further his career. After receiving the support of wealthy patrons, famous actors, and key medical professionals, he became a well-known figure in artistic and progressive education circles. He later visited the United States, where he interacted with John Dewey, a key supporter who aided in the dissemination of his written work. He and his assistants set up several schools for young children in England and briefly in the United States.
Alexander’s early work focused on breathing, vocal production, and elocution and was conveyed through pamphlets and private teaching. As he secured support and public testimony from doctors, scientists, and members of the general public, his technique broadened in scope into the more general set of principles we know today.
Alexander’s main books and major writings include: Man’s Supreme Inheritance (1910); Conscious Control: In Relation to Human Evolution in Civilization (1912); Man’s Supreme Inheritance: Conscious Guidance and Control in Relation to Human Evolution in Civilization (1918); Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual (1923); The Use of the Self (1932); The Universal Constant in Living (U.S., 1941), (U.K., 1942); and Articles and Lectures (U.K., 1995).
Alexander Technique Central Ideas: In F.M.’s Words
Picking up Alexander’s story, he describes a methodical process by which he observed his habitual responses and experimented with various interventions to address his symptoms.
First, he tried to do the opposite of his habits by sending himself what he called conscious directions. He recognized that he had been relying upon what felt natural or familiar, rather than consciously working out a “reasoned” response to a stimulus. He used consciously projected phrases to direct himself as he was about to speak. One common formulation that is used today: “Allow the neck to be free to let the head go forward and up so that the back may lengthen and widen.” We may direct ourselves to “allow the knees to go forward and away,” for example in stand-to-sit and sit-to-stand. Alexander practiced John Dewey’s “thinking in activity” by consciously projecting each direction sequentially and simultaneously, “all together, one after the other.”
New and unfamiliar sensory experiences felt “wrong” to him. For example, when he thought he was directing his head forward and up, he saw in the mirror that he was in fact falling into his old habit of head back and down. Alexander had discovered that by relying upon “instinct” and “feeling,” his perception was “untrustworthy.” Alexander called this phenomenon faulty sensory appreciation.
Using the directions, Alexander saw some improvement in his vocal functioning, but he still noticed that his old patterns returned in the split second before speaking. Finally, after much trial and error, he realized that he could prevent his habits by consciously asking himself not to respond to the stimulus to speak, a process he called inhibition.
F.M. describes a five-step process of practicing continuous direction in conjunction with inhibition, including stopping (#4), considering his decision to gain his original end, and making a “fresh decision” whether to speak, not to speak, or carry out another action like lifting his hand (#5). The principle of non-doing, of doing less, of doing only what is necessary, is a central tenet of Alexander’s technique.
Alexander also discovered that a narrow focus on the goal of reciting led him to fall into his old habits. This hurried, tunnel-vision focus on a goal is what he called end-gaining. A conscious awareness of how we do what we do, or how we gain an end, he called the means-whereby principle. Alexander noticed the centrality of the use of the head in relation to the torso as it affected the rest of his body and his overall coordination. His explorations “led to the further discovery of the primary control of the working of all the mechanisms of the human organism…”
In the first paragraph of Alexander’s account, he states that “it is impossible to separate ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ processes in any form of human activity,” and a few paragraphs later asserts that all training and education “must be based upon the indivisibility of the human organism.” Alexander states that his employment of the term “use” takes into account the “different psycho-physical mechanisms of the organism” that affect a specific part.
When Alexander managed to prevent his habitual tendencies from occurring, he then saw an improved functioning of his vocal organs, as confirmed by his doctors. He thus realized that use affects functioning, for better or worse. He later called this principle the “universal constant,” recognizing that use exerted a “constant influence” on general human functioning.
For more about Alexander’s story, see:
F. M. Alexander, “The Evolution of the Technique,” The Use of the Self (1932).
Michael Bloch, F.M.: The Life of Frederick Matthias Alexander (2004).
