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Using a vast amount of experience and the Alexander Technique to develop your relationship to the piece both emotionally and physically, Nick Chapman will help you reach the professional level of acting you aspire to.

The Alexander Technique really helps you to relax and  harmonize  yourself.  Before embarking on being someone else we must first create a blank canvass. Far too many actors bring far too much of the things they don’t want to the part.

Using Alexander Technique we simplify our demeanor allowing us to be creative with our characters.

From a clear and relaxed  perspective  we can begin to build character, both physically and emotionally.

Nick Chapman has helped students of drama to achieve the goal of drama school but also more experienced actors to develop their auditions for  castings.

Working with a tutor/director can greatly enhance your acting work.

‘Working with Nick helped me get into drama school. My confidence grew and my creativity flowed!’ Nikki Chowen

By Pedro de Alcantara

1. The General Principles

The Use of the Self

Picture, in your mind’s eye, a four-year-old girl laughing with delight at something she has seen or heard. Then ask yourself the following question: Is her laughter the expression of a physical or a mental state? You will soon conclude that her laughter contains the whole of her being – her mind, her body, her emotions, her creativity, her perceptions of the world and of herself.

Perform this experiment a few more times. Imagine a concert artist on stage, a driver during rush hour, a mother breastfeeding her baby; then ask yourself whether their actions are primarily physical or primarily mental. In truth, all human beings reveal their whole, indivisible selves moment by moment. Their gestures may be awkward or masterly, executed with a degree of self-awareness or under a fog of distraction; regardless, the essential unity of their lives is constantly manifested in all that they do.

And yet we tend to separate body and mind in our assessment of ourselves and of others around us. Symptomatic of this split is that we see the workings of the body as separate from the behavior of the body’s owner, so to speak. “My shoulders are tight,” we tend to say; or, “My back is killing me.” If we embraced the unity between body and mind – that is, the inseparability of the physical “doing” and the mind that wills that “doing” – we might say “I’m tightening my shoulders,” or “I’m misusing my back.” This represents a different attitude, one in which we sense and accept our responsibility for our state of being.

Language both reflects and shapes the way we think. To free ourselves of the belief that “the body” and “the mind” operate separately, and of the consequences of this disconnection, we need to free ourselves of our very language. Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869-1955) understood this well and chose his vocabulary carefully. On the one hand, he relied on little technical jargon; the glossary of the Technique has no more than half a dozen terms. On the other hand, he refrained from using words which imply a separation of body and mind, like “body mechanics” and “mental states.” Instead, he spoke simply of “the self,” which “reacts” and “functions.” We can say unequivocally that the Alexander Technique is not a method of physical relaxation, of posture, or of the use of the body, but of The Use of the Self – as Alexander titled his third book, originally published in 1932.

Stimulus and Reaction

The laughing child of our example is reacting to something she has heard, seen, sensed, or imagined. Her life is a never-ending succession of reactions to a never-ending succession of stimuli. And so is anyone’s, for the flow of life and its excitement never stop. Indeed, to be alive is to react, and to react is both inevitable and desirable. A problem arises when one’s reaction is not appropriate or adequate to the needs of the situation. We all know men and women who react quickly, strongly, and negatively to almost all that happens to them. It is as if they are ready to react, always in the same way, regardless of the situation in which they find themselves. Unwilling to sense each situation as it unfolds, and incapable of deciding and acting according to the uniqueness of the situation, they do not so much react to a situation as to their fixed, preconceived idea of what a situation is or will be. Needless to say, they may well not be aware that their attitudes, not the situation itself, is the cause of the difficulty.

The person fighting a situation with a fixed mind – be it a violinist hacking through a difficult passage backstage before a concert, an annoyed bus driver during rush hour, or a mother impatient with a crying child – shows multiple signs of strain. Each person is different: one is brusque and stiff, another hesitant and timid; one lacks suppleness, another vigor. Most are animated by excessive tension (or, more precisely, by the wrong kind of tension, wrongly applied, and for the wrong length of time). These strains, and the high emotions that underlie them, constitute a misuse of the self. Repeated misuse may well lead to disagreeable feelings and sensations, aches and pains, and – in due course – illness and disability.

End-gaining

Why do we misuse ourselves? Many answers have been suggested, including education (or mis-education), imitation, the stress of modern life, lack of time, and so on. But in his diagnosis of misuse F.M. Alexander again showed his insight. If misuse is what we do, its origin is in what we wish to do. And, by and large, we wish to attain quick, easy, direct results in all that we do. Alexander called the unreasonable wishing that motivates our misuse “end-gaining.” He considered it a universal tendency and thought that it – not education, imitation, or modern life – was the ultimate cause of our difficulties.

End-gaining is so prevalent that we are almost unaware of its presence and importance – it is considered normal. Economic policy and political discourse, for instance, are often affected by the end-gaining of officials who try to produce short-term results (perhaps ahead of an election) despite the long-term costs to the nation. In all the arts, there are creators who aim for “effect.” We watch a movie and become conscious of the director’s effort to manipulate our emotions and extract a tear from our eyes; such a manipulation is a form of end-gaining. A tennis player who, overly keen on the win, smashes the ball into the net, has committed a small act of end-gaining.

And we, human beings of average ability leading our daily lives, sitting, standing, walking, talking, driving, interacting with other people, all end-gain and misuse ourselves. The simple act of moving from a standing to a sitting position illustrates end-gaining and misuse to perfection. People sit down as if they were looking for the chair with their buttocks; the chair itself is their desired end, which they pursue unthinkingly, inattentively, automatically. In the process they tend to contract the head into the neck, lift and round the shoulders, jut the chest forwards, and stick the buttocks backwards. Alexander teachers see the end-gaining of simple daily activities as fertile ground for their work.

Alexander contrasted the “end-gaining principle” with the “means-whereby principle,” his term for the series of intermediate steps and indirect procedures that allow us to achieve our goals in the manner best suited to each situation. In the case of sitting and standing, these may include suspending the action for a moment; becoming aware of the assumptions one makes (most times unconsciously) about where the chair may be and how to reach it; sensing one’s tendency to rush or to block an action; taking some time to execute other gestures, directly or indirectly related to sitting and standing; and other procedures still. In time, these would lead the pupil to sense how he end-gains and how to stop end-gaining, with all the consequences that such a change of attitude entails.

F M Alexander, the founder of the Alexander Technique, was born in 1869. He was born premature. He suffered breathing problems, labeled Asthma. He almost died and had to be fed not with Mothers milk, but with goat’s milk, his sensitive digestive system unable to cope with anything else. He was fed with a tiny little pipette. He was lucky to survive.

This goes a long way to helping us understand a man who has developed a technique which is now practised all over the world by literally thousands of people.
So why is it, that people know so little about this amazing technique? Not only that, but why do so many people think it is just about posture?

It is true that those who practice the technique fully and for some time develop a fantastic posture.
But are we really to believe that posture is interesting or important enough to dedicate a whole subject to? Has any other technique been developed to cover only posture? Of course not. The simple reason why the Alexander Technique is labeled as a postural technique is because most people are lazy and it is far too much trouble for most people to think about in any other fashion.

So what is the Alexander Technique? The trouble is it is actually quite difficult to say. So let’s break it right down. Firstly, we would have to say that the technique can help with musculoskeletal problems; stuff like back pain and neck pain, knee problems and shoulder tension. So this would put it in the same sort of group along side Physiotherapy, Osteopathy and Chiropractics. This would not be far from the truth as many people have benefited from relief of symptoms even in cases where the other practitioners have failed. So that is already far more than a posture technique and we haven’t even started yet.

Secondly we have to look at the effect the technique is known to have on the psychological and emotional aspect. In order to explore this we need a case study. Let’s take George (real name changed), a 24 year old who when he first studied the Alexander Technique had failed to be inspired by conventional psychology and was feeling depressed, suffered from a hyperactive nervous disposition and often had bouts of paranoia. He was also generally suffering from a lack of confidence. His state was very un-relaxed and could not sit still or concentrate very well at all.

After a series of 10 lessons, George complained that he felt all his emotional problems were racing to the surface and he could not handle it. He stopped doing the lessons for about a month. Then he returned saying that he thought it ‘was all happening too fast.’ He now felt ready to go on. Using the Technique George found that he was able to change all of the negative aspects described earlier. He was now more confident, relaxed, centered, focused and he showed no signs of nervousness, hyperactivity or paranoia. Clearly this demonstrates that Alexander Technique has implications within psychology and proved to be far more effective for George than he had found in more conventional services.

Thirdly, we must discuss the effects on learning.

“Alexander established not only the beginnings of a far reaching science of the apparently involuntary movements we call reflexes, but a technique of correction and self-control which forms a substantial addition to our very slender resources in personal education.” – George Bernard Shaw, playwright

“It (the Alexander Technique) bears the same relation to education that education itself bears to all other activities.” – Professor John Dewey, philosopher and educationalist.

A very close friend and confidant of Alexander himself Dewey was interested in the Alexander Technique as a way of helping people to become more open to learning. By improving the way people behave mentally and physically clearly we can improve the capacity to learn. A violin student asked to play a simple scale suddenly became riddled with tension. This tension undermined the sound of the instrument significantly. When the Alexander Technique was used to relax the student the tone of the instrument improved. The student was able to learn a better approach to practice and therefore developed much quicker her skills in the use of the violin.

When I went for a golf lesson for the first time the instructor was surprised at my success and commented that I was a natural. This I knew was not true as when I had tried golf as a youngster I was quite poor. I said then to the instructor, ‘No I am using the Alexander Technique.’

To this day many different activities have been tried using the Alexander Technique; swimming, running, acting and many books are available on its application to the various subjects.

We must conclude that it is a very narrow perspective the general population seems to have about the Alexander Technique. Clearly it has a lot more to offer. We might say it is one of the best means of personal development known to man. No matter what you would like to be better at or would like to improve, it is your self you need to work on. The Alexander Technique allows you to work on yourself in an entirely unique way, improving both mental and physical attributes. Or to put it a better way;

“Mr. Alexander’s method lays hold of the individual as a whole, as a self-vitalizing agent. He reconditions and re-educates the reflex mechanisms and brings their habits into normal relation with the functioning of the organism as a whole. I regard this method as thoroughly scientific and educationally sound.” – Professor George E. Coghill, Nobel Prize winning anatomist and physiologist.

Nicholas Chapman
December 2007

-by: Mark Shaw 

In this article I do not want to repeat all the information on the internet about the history of FM Alexander and how he developed his techniques. 

What I do want to concentrate on is precisely how The Alexander Technique can be used as part of an adjunctive strategy along with other techniques, with respect to alleviating your Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome symptoms. 

All the techniques I detail have a way of dove-tailing into each other and symbiotically deepening the effects of each other. 

Basically, my angle on the Alexander Technique is that I want to take what I need from the techniques and apply them directly to assist with the musculoskeletal problems that are maintaining patients Fibro and CFS symptoms. 

Bottom line: There is a way of moving that your body likes and a way that it doesn’t. 

When you have an injury or imbalance there is a way of moving that helps the body heal and a way that prevents it from healing. 

All musculoskeletal conditions have varying symptoms and present in different ways, but all have one thing in common, they can all be made better or worse by the way you align your head, neck and trunk as you go through the movements and postures of your every day life. 

The muscles which support your skeleton are usually asked to work far too hard for the task or tasks that they are being employed and over time this can lead to them becoming “stuck” in this state of excess tension aka Trigger points. These may gradually worsen over a period of years. 

When you are then attacked by whatever initially triggered what you consider to be the “recognized” start of your life with Fibromyalgia/ CFS, then if your muscles were already habitually in this state of excess tension, then post infection, one of your main symptoms will then be the muscular pain. 

When you go on to present at your chosen healthcare provider, you will be labelled more towards Fibromyalgia rather than CFS and you will be tested via the trigger point methodology. 

Your primary diagnosis will be Fibromyalgia as oppose to CFS. 

Let me make one point clear that is an over-riding theme through all the therapy that I outline: Your body has an innate capacity to heal itself, but as human beings in Western Society we are hell bent on destroying everything that nature has taught us and switching to unnatural modes of action simply because its fashionable or that is the way everyone else does it, or that’s the way things are made and manufactured etc. 

Look at toddlers when they first sit up and stand, look at the perfect alignment of the head neck and torso, and look at the ease and grace with which they move. All humans are born with this grace and poise and we “choose” to unlearn it as soon as we can possibly start copying moody slouching, ill postured teenagers and adults. 

Take the simple act of sitting in a comfy chair that maybe 200 million Americans are doing right now as you read this. The reality is that that chair is NOT COMFY just because it says so on the manufacturer’s label! 

The typical slouching position that people are forced to assume on a daily basis is absolutely against all the natural laws of correct posture and alignment of the spinal column and results in these millions of people holding their body in a state of excess tension for all the time that they actually believe they are “relaxing”. 

In third world countries where natural posture is forced in daily lives due to the unavailability of “comfy” sofas, “bad backs” are relatively uncommon and unsurprisingly so is Fibromyalgia and CFS as defined by Western Society. 

Fibromyalgia and CFS are largely diseases of modern “civilized” society. We have evolved through the industrial age in a few hundred years. 

But by comparison, it took millions of years of evolution just for our body to become bipedal. 

Take the “comfy” sofa example again. What are manufacturer’s criteria in designing and building this item? The real design specifications are that it is more fashionable than the competition; it can be made more cheaply than the competition so the mark-up and profit can be higher from each sale. 

Do not for one minute believe they are sitting round their brain-storming coffee mornings saying “lets design a sofa so our buyers can relax in a natural position, realign their faulty posture and avoid muscular tension.” 

If this was the case the comfy chair would not exist in its current form. 

Another example of the misuse of our body forced upon us by tradition and the manufacturers design specification is the W.C. 

In terms of passing a motion comfortably this piece of furniture is absolutely wrong and causes a requirement for a huge amount of pressure to be applied by the lumbar area in order to expel a motion. 

In a later article I will be diagramming the changes I recommend for sitting posture and using the W.C. 

You may not initially be overwhelmed by what I recommend, but your body will. 

I am not a qualified Alexander therapist, this takes four years of training and so I recommend that you seek a trained therapist in your area, but not until 6 months after you have begun the core therapy. 

What I recommend is that you employ the simple strategies I outline in my next article which will present quick wins in terms of your overall musculoskeletal anomalies. 

I have talked about the musculoskeletal anomalies inherent in Fibromyalgia and CFS sufferers and how they are responsible for maintaining your illness. 

You may be suffering from recurring musculoskeletal pain but do not know exactly what brings on the attacks. Often it is years of poor postural habits which are causing your musculoskeletal imbalance, and we need to address how to change these habits. 

Examine the facts 

Arthritic symptom severity can be reduced by postural habits, keeping the joints moving. 

Spinal surgery or a disc problem can be helped by learning to use the abdominal and back muscles correctly. 

General Back pain can be helped by correct movement as oppose to just bed rest 

Pinched nerves in the neck or lower back are usually the result of compression due to faulty postural habits. 

The first thing we need to learn is to reduce overall spinal compression as this will reduce the flare-ups of musculoskeletal pain which are contributing to your overall experience of Fibromyalgia. 

As you are no doubt aware, when you are in more pain, your sleep is affected and therefore so is your fatigue CFS. 

Using your body correctly results in less pain, improved healing, better sleep, less tension and therefore less fatigue. Sound good? 

If you doubt the effectiveness of the Alexander Technique look at it from this angle. 

Modern medicine and modern science are in no doubt about the following sequence of events. 

Stress causes anxiety. The emotion anxiety produces an excess of the chemicals cortisol and adrenaline which are known to cause ulcers, high blood pressure and tension headaches and that’s just in the short term. 

Nobody doubts that the conscious mind can be utilized to interfere with these thought processes, and similarly with skeletal muscles, the mind can attain precise conscious control over the way they are used to restore and improve overall health 

That is all we are going to focus on by using the Alexander Technique. 

Alexander’s approach to musculoskeletal pain 

Alexander’s approach tries to address the totality of a body. This means that in solving a specific problem, i.e. a problem that may occur in one area of the back. This cannot be healed unless the entire back is used in a well integrated way. 

Being aware of, and able to control our supporting musculature. Alexander understood this and teaches how to control gravity and work with it rather than against it. This is essential for people with recurring back pain 

Learning to do less with the body overall. This is an important feature of Alexander’s work with respect to back problems. This doesn’t mean just being lazier, but rather eliminating unnecessary muscle tension and bad postural habits at the root of back pain 

I cannot express the importance of this to Fibromyalgia sufferers; in so many Fibromyalgia patients the tension cycle is what exacerbates their trigger points. 

Pain causes more tension which in turn causes more pain and so on. By learning to short circuit the pain cycle they can prevent a flare-up of fibro without having to resort to muscle relaxants and painkillers, also they don’t waste the little energy they have on unnecessary muscle tension. 

In the next article I will focus on Alexander’s concepts of “good use” and then the specifics of how they can be applied in everyday life to help Fibromyalgia and CFS patients reduce their musculoskeletal pains.

Thespians everywhere have cause to be grateful to Australian actor Frederick Matthias Alexander. Troubled by problems with his voice on stage, and unable to find help from conventional Victorian medicine, Alexander created his own therapy, based on observation of his own body and posture.
The technique is based on the relationship between the head and the spine, from which the condition of the rest of the body flows. Slouch and you will suffer – create delicate poise and you release unnecessary muscle tension and relieve everything from neck and back pain to arthritis, migraines, sciatica, insomnia and even depression.
Keen to experience the benefits of the technique for its staff, the British Library uses the Alexander Technique as part of its corporate wellbeing programme.
According to HR director Mary Canavan, the idea came from staff themselves, some of whom had attended classes individually and enthused about its benefits. So the organisation arranged for an Alexander Technique teacher to run classes in the workplace at a reduced rate for staff.
‘The workshops have been well received and individuals who regularly attend the classes have commented on feeling more alert and productive,’ says Canavan. ‘They sleep better at night, and there is a reduction in back problems and an improvement in general wellbeing.’
Two one-hour Alexander Technique workshops are run each week, with places for six staff members each. Half-hour private lessons are also available for those who want to pursue the technique at their own expense.
As befits the implementation of a holistic therapy initiative, there are no specific productivity statistics to justify the financial investment.
Instead, the programme is seen as part of a ‘complete and coherent package’ that provides benefits to the business as well as individual employees.
Among these, Canavan cites a healthier workforce, leading to what she describes as a ‘virtuous circle’ of lower absence, reduced costs of absenteeism and increased productivity. Another aim is engagement by demonstrating the emphasis the library places on employee health – ‘this is a valuable recruitment and retention tool,’ she notes.

This workshop is relevant to all industries.

-With Nicholas Chapman

Introduction

Using the Alexander Technique as the core of the stress management work, these workshops are aimed specifically at the nursing environment. Stress has become a big problem in the workplace. The HSE have issued its first ‘enforcement notice’ against an NHS hospital for failing to protect doctors and nurses form stress at work. There are a number of well documented cases where a nurse has been successful in suing a hospital or nursing home for considerable sums. Whatever we believe about these issues there is a clear need for the management of these organisations to take seriously the threat of stress in the workplace. But what can we do about stress? How can we deal intelligently with something as abstract and seemingly unquantifiable as stress? 

A Brief History

F. Matthias Alexander (1869-1955) was an Australian actor and teacher. He originally developed the Alexander Technique as a method of vocal training for singers and actors in the 1890s. While Alexander was developing his method of voice training, he realized that the basis for all successful vocal education was an efficiently and naturally functioning respiratory mechanism. So, in teaching voice, Alexander focused primarily on helping the breathing mechanism to function more effectively. Because of his focus on “reeducating” the breathing mechanism, some of Alexanders’ students, who had come to him for vocal training, found that their respiratory difficulties also improved. These improvements were recognized by medical doctors who began referring their patients with respiratory ailments to Alexander for help. In this way, F.M. Alexanders’ technique of vocal training developed into a technique he termed “respiratory we-education.”  Alexander had also made the discovery that breathing and vocalization are part and parcel of how the body functions as a whole. Habitual breathing and vocal patterns are parts of habitual patterns of general coordination. In fact, many problems we see as involving just one particular part of the body, e.g. stress, lower back pain and “RSI,” are often symptoms of larger habitual patterns of malcordination.
Just as people had found Alexanders’ “vocal” technique helped them with their breathing problems, so a number of his students found his method of respiratory re-education helped them with other physical difficulties like stress. Basically, Alexander had evolved a method for learning how to consciously change maladaptive habits of coordination. (Coordination includes movement, posture, breathing, and tension patterns.) He had come to the understanding that the mind and body function as an integrated entity, a rather unusual realisation for that time. Alexander found that habits, whether “physical” habits or “mental” habits, are all psychophysical in nature. He observed that how we think about our activities determines how we coordinate ourselves to do those activities, and, equally, how long-held habits of excessive tension and inefficient coordination affect how we feel and think. In a relatively short period of time, Alexander evolved his technique from a method of vocal training into a method of breathing reeducation and then into a comprehensive technique of psychophysical reeducation. His technique deals with the psychophysical coordination of the whole person, or what he termed more concisely as “the use of the self.”

Outcomes

The workshops take on a practical and theoretical basis. This means that whilst experiencing a definite and strong sense of decreased stress and increased well being, the participants are able to learn ways in which they can themselves reduce stress in their working lives; they are able to see more clearly what stress is and how to prevent it from developing into something more serious. However if stress has built up over time it is possible to use the methods taught in the workshop to start the process of unwinding, clearing accumulated stress, in fact very quickly and efficiently.

The experience of removing stresses both at the workshop and afterwards, alone, is a developmental process that has a variety of benefits. Not only in the obvious sense of increased well being, but also in the way one feels about
the workplace and oneself in it. People, who have had the opportunity to learn these stress management techniques fully, have found that their ability to perform the different functions of their jobs has vastly improved. It is well documented by the HSE (See Research  Report 273, www.hse.gov.uk) that stress can lead to a variety of musculoskeletal problems, as well as the obvious effects on mental health and therefore the ability of staff to fulfill their functions within the working environment.

The workshops will provide the individual with the ability not only to deal with stress, but also to improve aspects of maneuvering and handling. The training that a nurse usually experiences in this area is very useful. However it is actually limited as it does not take into consideration the workings of the psycho-physical. In other words, the relationship between the brain (mentation) and the musculo-skeletal system, as it effects the actual functioning of the individual. For example, imagine a nurse trying to move a patient. The usual consideration would be to maneuver the patient by considering the position of both oneself and the patient. Using the Alexander
Technique one is taught not only to be physically aware but also to be mentally aware in a way that is experiential and therefore difficult to explain in a document such as this. We touched on this in the workshop at Bridgeside  Lodge (Forest Healthcare), when we introduced the idea of inhibition*. Before we moved or did anything we would say NO, no to tightening our muscles. This unnecessary tightening of muscle is the crux of both our levels of stress and our ability to perform physical functions, not only safely but with absolute certainty that we are not at risk of injury. Alexander Technique is about developing a continued awareness of our own bodies via our mental state, which is why it is an excellent tool for reducing stress and increasing effectiveness in the workplace. As well as learning inhibition the workshops will introduce direction. Direction is a means whereby we can develop further our control over our stress levels and improve our physical capabilities in the working environment.

Using the Alexander Technique will lead to a stress free work place where individuals are far more conscious of themselves both physically and mentally and whilst experiencing an increased sense of well being, will actually become far more efficient in their daily activities. 

*Not to be confused with the Freudian use referring to anxiety, but the original use of the word; the action or process of inhibiting or being inhibited (from an action or activity).

Biography

Nick Chapman is a fully qualified Alexander Technique Teacher and is a member of the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique, the main body overseeing the technique in the UK.

Training took place at The Constructive Teaching Centre in Holland Park. The founder of this school, Walter Carrington was, until he recently passed away aged 90, one of the leading exponents in the country for the Alexander Technique. He trained under FM Alexander, the originator of the technique.

Since graduating in 2000 Nick Chapman has taught individuals and groups, developing the work by studying also Yoga and Reiki, into a stress management method that is both comprehendible and effective. The main outlet for the group work has been nursing staff, though workshops have been taken to a variety of different industries. A recent article in the Nursing Standards magazine (See attached) discussed the workshop that took place at  Bridgeside Lodge Nursing Home. The workshop, although only an introduction was very well received.  One nurse who had said very clearly at the outset that, ‘this sort of thing wasn’t her cup of tea’ was astounded and said she would definitely use these techniques in the future.

Workshops and Prices

A.Drop in workshop cost £250

One hour session Max 12

The aim of this workshop is to relieve stress and there is minimal learning involved. Participants will perform a relaxation and will experience an increased sense of well being and a reduced stress level. 

B.Introductory Workshop  Cost £475

Two Hour Session Max 12

This is an introduction to the Alexander Technique. It will establish a working method for reducing stress and develop ideas around movement habits that create stress and interfere with basic functioning. 

C.Beginner and Advanced  Cost £875

2 x Two hour workshops Max 12

In these two workshops we are able to develop a deeper understanding of the technique and its application to stress. We are also able to begin to understand the implications of the work in maneuvering and handling, learning how to move consciously, avoiding stress and the risk of injury. 

D.Complete course Cost £1400

6 x Two Hour Workshops

This is a fully comprehensive introduction to the Alexander Technique. All of the working methods of the technique will be introduced. A significant reduction in stress will be noticed and the participants will be taught a complete method for maintaining this reduced stress. Whilst also having learnt all of the techniques participants should have a clear idea about how to apply the technique to maneuvering and handling. Practical exercises, based on real nursing situations will be explored. Back pain and general muscular pain will be significantly reduced. 

Refresher courses will be available at a reduced rate for staff that have completed the six week course.

- By Leland Vall

In the December 18, 2000 issue of Golf Plus, a Sports Illustrated supplement, there appeared a story about Jeff Jullian, a 39 year-old PGA golfer who “gave himself back his career” using an “unusual” method called the Alexander Technique. Jullian’s neck and back were in constant pain, causing him to lose his tour card, until he took lessons in the Technique, which he credits not only for alleviating his pain, but also rejuvenating his career. 
While the Alexander Technique is not well known among golfers, this is not the first time golf and the Technique have been associated. As far back as 1920, John Duncan Dunn, a member of the famous golf family of the same name, course architect, instructor, and author of many golf books including Natural Golf, wrote a long article in The Golfers Magazine extolling the virtues of the Alexander Technique and its value to the golfer. More recently, Neil Holman, a British golfer, co-authored a book about using the Alexander Technique to improve your game. 
So what is it? The Alexander Technique is a 100 year-old method for understanding how to use your body. Not an exercise, it is a different way of thinking and challenging habitual body use. Its theory is that general habits of body use, good or bad, influence how well or poorly you execute any activity. Alexander teachers observe students during everyday activities like sitting, standing and walking. They are trained to recognize unnecessary tension and, through verbal explanation and hands on guidance, teach their students how to avoid this tension. The student can then use this information to improve their body use during any activity.
Studies have shown that the Alexander Technique improves posture and breathing,reduces tension, and improves many chronic conditions like back and neck pain and repetitive strain injury. Its adherents also say that it improves grace and general ease in movement. 
Dr. Jack Stern, MD of the Neurosurgical Group of Westchester adds the following: “The Alexander Technique stresses unification in an era of greater and greater medical specialization. Its educational system teaches people how to best use their bodies in ordinary action to avoid or reduce unnecessary stress and pain. It enables clients to get better faster and stay better longer.” 
F.M. Alexander (1869-1955), an Australian,developed the Technique because he was suffering from chronic laryngitis. On the advice of doctors Alexander rested his voice. This worked – but only until he started using his voice again at which point his hoarseness would return. Through a period of self-observation, Alexander realized that he was causing his own problem because of the way he was using his voice and his whole body in general. 
By becoming aware of and preventing unconscious habits of tension as he spoke, Alexander was able to cure himself. Convinced of the value of his work, he moved to England in 1904 where he taught his Technique to thousands of people, including the philosopher John Dewey, the novelist Aldous Huxley and the playwright George Bernard Shaw. 
Today musicians and other performing artists use the Alexander Technique extensively. It is part of the required curriculum at Juilliard and the Royal Academy of Music. Its use by athletes has been increasing, especially with swimmers, equestrians and, apparently, golfers, including the aforementioned PGA tour member, Jeff Julian.
Notes:
Vigeland, Carl: “The Alexander Technique: The Answer to A Stress Test”, Sports Illustrated, Vol. 93, Issue 25, page G21, Dec. 18, 2000.
* * *
About the author: Leland Vall is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique with a practice in Long Island and Manhattan. He is editor of the AmSAT News, the official newsletter of the American Society for the Alexander Technique, and a board member of the American Center for the Alexander Technique, the oldest Alexander teacher training facility in the United States. His website address is www.freeyourneck.com.
Learning from Tiger Woods describes some parallels between Tiger and F. M. Alexander, the developer of the Alexander Technique
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The Alexander Technique and Sports Performance

 I have been a professional singer of theater and classical music for over 25 years. For the last fifteen years, I have also been a singing teacher at the post-secondary level. About eight years ago I began to notice a significant rise in tension when I sang and taught. It began with my awareness that I was stiffening my neck, and feeling increased nervousness about performing.

Within a year, I had quickly escalated the stiffness into chronic pain in my neck, head and back. Lengthy walks caused back pain. Finding a comfortable position in which to sleep became difficult. I began to wear a mouth guard during the night to prevent me from grinding my teeth. I had difficulty standing comfortably while singing or sitting comfortably at a piano bench while teaching. My stamina for singing or teaching waned dramatically.
Under the stress of a long teaching day or of a public performance, I unconsciously caused the pain and fatigue to worsen. To my ear, my voice was becoming less resonant. Breathing to sing became laborious. I started seriously to doubt my ability to communicate effectively as a singer. Finally, I developed performance anxiety. I feared what I used to love doing the most – singing for people. I also feared that I was becoming a hypocritical teacher: my body language and sound were conveying tension and pain while contradicting my verbal messages office and pleasure in singing.
My first conclusion as to the cause of my problems was that there was some recent change in my behavior or health that was negatively effecting my singing and teaching. I began seeking help. Over a four year period, the treatments I sought were extensive and expensive; pain killing pills, naturopathic remedies and change of diet, physiotherapy, traditional and neuromuscular massage, chiropractic, various exercise and relaxation methods, cranial-sacral therapy, alignment therapy, and plain therapy.

Some treatments, like physiotherapy, exacerbated my problems. Others helped a little bit. Some helped more. However, I always had a nagging feeling that I was not getting at the source of my problems. Then, in January of 1994, a theater colleague suggested that I investigate the Alexander Technique. I read a few books, such as Michael Gelb’s Body Learning. In a nutshell, these books explained that the Alexander Technique was a method of re-education designed to help improve functioning in all of one’s daily activities.
This re-education method centered around creating a dynamic, balanced relationship between head, neck and back, and as a result, one’s whole body. The books were suggesting that all my pain had nothing to do with recent change, but everything to do with my lifelong approaches to everything I did. I was intrigued. In the Spring of 1994 I began private Alexander Technique lessons. I believe that this was the beginning of a process of positive, long lasting, and most importantly, conscious change.

In my first Alexander Technique lesson, I discovered that the teacher was going to communicate with me through touch, combined with verbal “directions”, and verbal explanations and feedback. Although this sounds simple, nothing I had done in the past prepared me for the particular experience of Alexander Technique lessons. Although fascinated, I was quite disoriented. I decided to keep a journal of my lessons in an attempt to track what was happening. What follows is an edited excerpt from my first two journal entries:
“I understand almost nothing about what the teacher is doing, nor what she wants me to do. Her hands are on me a great deal, but in such a subtle way that I can barely feel them. The changes she is making in the area of my head, neck and back seem so small as to be completely insignificant. She asks me not to try to help her make the movements nor to anticipate what she is doing. She begins by giving me directions regarding my head, neck and back with some explanation as to what they mean. She asks me to think the directions, not do them, while she touches my body. Thinking without doing is incredibly difficult. As I walked out of the teacher’s studio today I felt mentally buoyant and much lighter than usual, as if my legs were dangling out of my hips – an absolutely unrecognizable way of walking. I don’t seem to recognize the sensations, nor the thinking pattern that goes with them.”
After three months of lessons, my pain seemed to almost disappear. Long walks were no longer a problem, I could sleep comfortably, and I stopped grinding my teeth in the night. Ease began creeping not only into my singing, but also into everything I did. By the time I had completed course of  lessons, bouts of stiffness became more infrequent. Breathing while singing became much easier. Jaw tension dramatically reduced and I noticed that my jaw was moving differently while I sang.

As more lessons followed, my singing voice became more resonant, and everything I sang became easier to do. My stamina for performing and teaching was better than it ever had been. My powers of observation regarding my students, and choices of solutions to their problems seemed greatly enhanced. With rare exceptions, my performance anxiety was dramatically reduced. I began looking forward to performing engagements. I was having fun singing and teaching singing again. 

People imagine that their bodies are disobedient and unreliable in carrying out their wishes, whereas nothing could be further from the truth.
-Walter Carrington

This was a picture I took when Walter was riding regularly at Danny Pevner’s. I think it conveys very well the amazing posture Walter had. The horse is called Badger. A fine man on a fine horse. Those who were privileged to be taught by Walter would vouch for the fact that he used the Alexander Technique to the full. He was 87 in the photo. According to Danny he started riding in his 50s.

That is the message that Walter loved to espouse. That using the technique enhanced your learning ability. My experience of this was the same. I tried all my life to learn the flute and for some reason I just could not get it. When I started training I decided I needed to test this theory. Everyday at break time I would sneak into one of the many teaching rooms at Lansdowne road, cup of tea in hand, Alexander Technique very much in mind and start to teach myself the flute.
It worked!

After a few weeks of never before heard of success I decided to get myself a flute teacher. By
the end of my training I think I had tried several different flute teachers.
The strangest thing was that although these teachers were very good, the best ‘Flute’ lesson I
had was with Walter. He could not play a single instrument. One day he said to me when we were due to have a private lesson “Bring your flute Nick”.

I was of course very excited and had a great sense even then that this was a rare treat,
though I had no idea of how profound an influence he would really have on me, on my flute playing and on my approach to learning anything from that time onwards.

After the lesson I went down to the teaching room where I had often practiced. I followed his instructions and without a doubt I played the best flute I ever had to that day. It was strange to imagine that a non flute player could help me play better flute, better even than the flute teachers.

That was Walter though a genius that we were all very lucky to have had in our lives. If you
get the chance to read anything by or about Walter Carrington and his work read it!

-Nick Chapman 21st October 2005