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The Alexander Technique was developed by Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869-1955) over the course of his life in Tasmania, Australia and England. It is a practical method for self-improvement. Through a series of lessons with a teacher, students learn to observe and change the way they "use" themselves as they engage in the activities of living. Through consistent application they are able to greatly improve their general function. Alexander observed that the ways we respond to the world, or engage in virtually any activity, are often determined by subconscious patterns of habit that are largely self-conflictive and destructive to the integrated function of the
whole self.
Alexander discovered that human movement is organized around a group of reflexes he called "the primary control" that operate in the relationship of the head, neck and back, and create the basic conditions of our upright balance and poise. Alexander saw free, upright posture (“poise”) as a species-defining endowment of evolution (as Darwin did), and something that normal children possess in their first years. However, poise is generally lost or compromised during adolescence and adulthood due to the pressures of life, particularly our culture. Through a long observation of human function, he established a set of principles identifying how our poise operates within us, and how it can be restored.
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