Alexander's Great Experiment

For over one hundred years FM Alexander has challenged individuals to take part in an incredible experiment of human awareness. Alexander Technique is not a belief system nor does it require conformity. Alexander Technique is an invitation to take part in a magnificent experiment where your role is to gather data, analyse the results and act on them. The object of the experiment is your self and specifically your movement. By beginning to observe your movement in the same way that Alexander did, you too  may find patterns that organise and disorganise your every move. You may become intrigued that with even the most delicate change to your pattern vast changes can occur to your awareness of movement and to the movement itself. Some patterns may concern you because they place an unnecessary pressure on the body, some may please you because they take pressure off tired parts and spread the load around the body.
People who are suffering from pain in the neck or back often will find that a strong awareness of their body and a focused experiment with new movement and movement organisation will create significant improvement in the way that they feel. I think of it as pressure coming off the injury site. By the constructive redistribution of weight pressure comes off of the injury site and great improvement is felt. As pressure continues to come off the site injured areas have the opportunity to heal.
Alexander experimenters should be happy with that result but they soon come to realise that awareness in movement brings about many other benefits. When an individual, who had been locked into a patterned response to a stimulus, can begin to determine their physiological response to a stimulus and break the pattern, this allows for a great degree of autonomy.
I think it may have been the American philosopher John Dewey who said of Alexander's experiment, "All human beings are born with the potential for freedom of choice, but to have this potential come to fruition we need to learn the skill of preventing our habitual response and applying our reasoning."
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