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With experimentation, Alexander developed the ability to stop the unnecessary and habitual contracting in his neck, displacement of his head, and shortening of his stature. As he became practiced speaking without these interferences, he found that his problem with recurrent voice loss was resolved. While on a recital tour in [[New Zealand]] (1895), he came to believe in the wider significance of improved carriage for overall physical functioning, although evidence from his own publications appears to indicate it happened less systematically and over a long period of time.<ref name="bloch">{{Cite book |last=Bloch |first=Michael |title=F.M.: The Life of Frederick Matthias Alexander: Founder of the Alexander Technique |publisher=Little, Brown |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-316-86048-2 |location=London}}</ref>{{rp|36}}
With experimentation, Alexander developed the ability to stop the unnecessary and habitual contracting in his neck, displacement of his head, and shortening of his stature. As he became practiced speaking without these interferences, he found that his problem with recurrent voice loss was resolved. While on a recital tour in [[New Zealand]] (1895), he came to believe in the wider significance of improved carriage for overall physical functioning, although evidence from his own publications appears to indicate it happened less systematically and over a long period of time.<ref name="bloch">{{Cite book |last=Bloch |first=Michael |title=F.M.: The Life of Frederick Matthias Alexander: Founder of the Alexander Technique |publisher=Little, Brown |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-316-86048-2 |location=London}}</ref>{{rp|36}}

Alexander did not originally conceive of his technique as therapy, but it has become a form of [[alternative medicine]].<ref name="ee150">{{Cite book |last=Ernst E |title=Alternative Medicine&nbsp;&ndash; A Critical Assessment of 150 Modalities |publisher=Springer |year=2019 |isbn=978-3-030-12600-1 |pages=153–154 |doi=10.1007/978-3-030-12601-8 |author-link=Edzard Ernst |s2cid=34148480}}</ref>


===Influence===
===Influence===

Revision as of 16:46, 25 November 2022

Alexander Technique
Alternative therapy

The Alexander Technique, named after its developer Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869–1955), is a popular type of alternative therapy based on the idea that poor posture gives rise to a range of health problems.[1][2]: 221 

Alexander began developing his technique's principles in the 1890s[3] in an attempt to address his own voice loss during public speaking.[2]: 34–35  He credited his method with allowing him to pursue his passion for performing Shakespearean recitations.[4]

Proponents and teachers of the Alexander Technique believe the technique can address a variety of health conditions, but there is a lack of research to support the claims.[5][6] As of 2021, the UK National Health Service cites evidence that the Alexander Technique may be helpful for long-term back pain and for long-term neck pain, and that it could help people cope with Parkinson's disease.[6] Both the American health-insurance company Aetna and the Australian Department of Health have conducted reviews and concluded that there is insufficient evidence for the technique's health claims to warrant insurance coverage.[5][7]

Uses

The Alexander Technique is used and taught by classically trained vocal coaches and musicians in schools and private lessons. Its advocates state that it allows for a balanced use of all aspects of the vocal tract by consciously increasing air-flow, allowing improved vocal skill and tone. The method is said by actors to reduce stage fright and to increase spontaneity.[8]

The Alexander Technique is a frequent component in acting training, where it is said to assist the actor in being more natural in performance.[9]

According to Alexander Technique instructor Michael J. Gelb, people tend to study the Alexander Technique for reasons of personal development.[10]

Health effects

A review of the evidence for the Alexander Technique for various health conditions provided by the UK National Health Service, last updated in 2021, said that advocates of the technique made claims for it that were not supported by evidence, but that there was evidence suggesting that it might help with: "long-term back pain – lessons in the technique may lead to reduced back pain-associated disability and reduce how often you feel pain for up to a year or more; long-term neck pain – lessons in the technique may lead to reduced neck pain and associated disability for up to a year or more; Parkinson's disease – lessons in the technique may help you carry out everyday tasks more easily and improve how you feel about your condition"[6]

The NHS further states: "Some research has also suggested the Alexander Technique may improve general long-term pain, stammering, and balance skills in older people to help them avoid falls. But the evidence in these areas is limited and more studies are needed. There's currently little evidence to suggest the Alexander Technique can help improve other health conditions, including asthma, headaches, osteoarthritis, difficulty sleeping (insomnia), and stress."[6]

A review published in BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine in 2014 focused on "the evidence for the effectiveness of AT sessions on musicians' performance, anxiety, respiratory function and posture" concluded that "evidence from RCTs and CTs suggests that AT sessions may improve performance anxiety in musicians. Effects on music performance, respiratory function and posture yet remain inconclusive."[11]

A 2012 Cochrane systematic review found that there is no good evidence that the Alexander Technique is effective for treating asthma, and randomized clinical trials are needed in order to assess the effectiveness of this type of treatment approach.[12]

A review by Aetna last updated in 2021 stated: "Aetna considers the following alternative medicine interventions experimental and investigational because there is inadequate evidence in the peer-reviewed published medical literature of their effectiveness." The Alexander Technique is included in that list.[7]

A 2015 review, conducted for the Australian Department of Health in order to determine what services the Australian government should pay for, examined clinical trials published to date and found that "overall, the evidence was limited by the small number of participants in the intervention arms, wide confidence intervals or a lack of replication of results." It concluded that "the Alexander Technique may improve short-term pain and disability in people with low back pain, but the longer-term effects remain uncertain. For all other clinical conditions, the effectiveness of the Alexander Technique was deemed to be uncertain, due to insufficient evidence." It also noted that "evidence for the safety of Alexander Technique was lacking, with most trials not reporting on this outcome."[5] Subsequently in 2017, the Australian government named the Alexander Technique as a practice that would not qualify for insurance subsidy, saying this step would "ensure taxpayer funds are expended appropriately and not directed to therapies lacking evidence".[13]

Method

The Alexander Technique is most commonly taught in a series of private lessons which may last from 30 minutes to an hour. The number of lessons varies widely, depending on the student's needs and level of interest. Students are often performers, such as actors, dancers, musicians, athletes and public speakers, people who work on computers, or those who are in frequent pain for other reasons. Instructors observe their students, and provide both verbal and gentle manual guidance to help students learn how to move with better poise and less strain.[9] Sessions include chair work – often in front of a mirror – during which the instructor will guide the student while the student stands, sits and walks, learning to move efficiently while maintaining a comfortable relationship between the head, neck, and spine, and table work or physical manipulation.[14]

To qualify as a teacher of the Alexander Technique, instructors are required to complete 1,600 hours of supervised teacher training, spanning three years. The result must be satisfactory to qualified peers to gain membership in professional societies.[15][16]

Process

Alexander's approach emphasizes awareness strategies applied to conducting oneself while in action.[incomprehensible]

A teacher observes a student performing actions, usually simple actions like sitting, standing, or walking - however, a student may opt to be observed whilst performing actions more relevant to their lifestyle, such as whilst doing sports, using a computer, or public speaking. As they are observing the student, the teacher aims to identify problematic movements, so they can then help the student to avoid those issues. Guided modelling with a highly skilled light hand contact is the primary tool for detecting and guiding the student into a more-coordinated state of movement and at rest during in-person lessons.[incomprehensible] Suggestions for improvements are often student-specific, as everyone starts out with slightly different habits.[15]

Exercise as a teaching tool is deliberately omitted because of a common mistaken assumption that there exists a "correct" position. There are only two specific procedures that are practiced by the student; the first is lying semi-supine. Resting in this way uses "mechanical advantage" as a means of redirecting long-term and short-term accumulated muscular tension into a more integrated and balanced state. This position is sometimes referred to as "constructive rest", or "the balanced resting state". It's also a specific time to practice Alexander's principle of conscious "directing" without "doing".[incomprehensible] The second exercise is the "Whispered Ah", which is used to co-ordinate freer breathing and vocal production.[clarify]

Freedom, efficiency, and patience are the prescribed values. Proscribed are unnecessary effort, self-limiting habits, as well as mistaken perceptual conclusions about the nature of training and experimentation. Students are led to change the largely automatic routines that are interpreted by the teacher to currently or cumulatively be physically limiting, inefficient, or not in keeping with the best "use" of themselves as a whole.[incomprehensible] The Alexander teacher provides verbal coaching while monitoring, guiding, and preventing unnecessary habits at their source with specialized hands-on assistance.[17]

This specialized hands-on skill also allows Alexander teachers to bring about a balanced working of the student's supportive musculature as it relates to gravity's downward pull from moment to moment. Often, students require a great deal of hands-on work in order to first gain an experience of a fully poised relation to gravity and themselves. The hands-on skill requires Alexander teachers to maintain in themselves from moment-to-moment their own improved psycho-physical coordination that the teacher is communicating to the student.[incomprehensible][17]

History

Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869–1955) was a Shakespearean orator from Tasmania, who developed voice loss during his unamplified performances. After doctors found no physical cause, Alexander reasoned that he was inadvertently damaging himself while speaking. He observed himself in multiple mirrors and saw that he was contracting his posture in preparation for any speech. He hypothesized that a habitual conditioned pattern (of pulling his head backward and downward) needlessly was disrupting the normal working of his total postural, breathing, and vocal processes.

With experimentation, Alexander developed the ability to stop the unnecessary and habitual contracting in his neck, displacement of his head, and shortening of his stature. As he became practiced speaking without these interferences, he found that his problem with recurrent voice loss was resolved. While on a recital tour in New Zealand (1895), he came to believe in the wider significance of improved carriage for overall physical functioning, although evidence from his own publications appears to indicate it happened less systematically and over a long period of time.[2]: 36 

Influence

The American philosopher and educator John Dewey became impressed with the Alexander Technique after his headaches, neck pains, blurred vision, and stress symptoms largely improved during the time he used Alexander's advice to change his posture.[18] In 1923, Dewey wrote the introduction to Alexander's Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual.[19] Aldous Huxley had transformative lessons with Alexander, and with other teachers after moving to the US. He thought highly of Alexander, basing a doctor character in Eyeless in Gaza on him and putting many of his phrases into the character's mouth.[20] Huxley's work The Art of Seeing also discusses his views on the technique.

Nikolaas Tinbergen, Dutch biologist and ornithologist, dedicated a large part of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech to F.M. Alexander and the Alexander technique. [21]

Stafford Cripps, George Bernard Shaw, Henry Irving and other stage grandees, Lord Lytton and other eminent people of the era also wrote positive appreciations of Alexander's work after taking lessons with him.

Since Alexander's work in the field came at the start of the 20th century, his ideas influenced many originators in the field of mind-body improvement. Fritz Perls, who originated Gestalt therapy, credited Alexander as an inspiration for his psychological work.[22] The Mitzvah Technique was influenced by the Alexander Technique, as was the Feldenkrais Method, which expanded on the one exercise in Alexander Technique called "The Whispered Ah."

See also

Citations

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference ee150 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b c Bloch, Michael (2004). F.M.: The Life of Frederick Matthias Alexander: Founder of the Alexander Technique. London: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-86048-2.
  3. ^ Rootberg, Ruth (September 2007). Mandy Rees (ed.). "Voice and Gender and other contemporary issues in professional voice and speech training". Voice and Speech Review. 35 (1): 164–170. doi:10.1080/23268263.2007.10769755. S2CID 144810660.
  4. ^ Harer, John B.; Munden, Sharon (2008). The Alexander Technique Resource Book: A Reference Guide. Scarecrow Press. pp. xii–xiii. ISBN 978-0810863927. Retrieved 3 June 2014.
  5. ^ a b c Baggoley C (2015). "Review of the Australian Government Rebate on Natural Therapies for Private Health Insurance" (PDF). Australian Government – Department of Health. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 June 2016. Retrieved 12 December 2015.
  6. ^ a b c d "Alexander Technique". National Health Service. 17 October 2017. Retrieved 1 December 2021.
  7. ^ a b "Medical Clinical Policy Bulletin Number 0388: Complementary and Alternative Medicine". Aetna. Retrieved 1 December 2021.
  8. ^ Aronson, AE (1990). Clinical Voice Disorders: An Interdisciplinary Approach. Thieme Medical Publishers. ISBN 0-86577-337-8.
  9. ^ a b McEvenue, Kelly; Rodenburg, Patsy (2002). The Actor and the Alexander Technique. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 3–14. ISBN 0-312-29515-4.
  10. ^ Gelb, Michael J. (1995). Body learning: an introduction to the Alexander Technique (2nd Owl Book ed.). New York: Holt. pp. 3–4. ISBN 0805042067.
  11. ^ Klein, SD; Bayard, C; Wolf, U (24 October 2014). "The Alexander Technique and musicians: a systematic review of controlled trials". BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine. 14: 414. doi:10.1186/1472-6882-14-414. PMC 4287507. PMID 25344325.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  12. ^ Dennis, JA; Cates, CJ (12 September 2012). "Alexander technique for chronic asthma". The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (9): CD000995. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD000995.pub2. PMC 6458000. PMID 22972048.
  13. ^ Paola S (17 October 2017). "Homeopathy, naturopathy struck off private insurance list". Australian Journal of Pharmacy. Archived from the original on 18 April 2021. Retrieved 11 January 2018.
  14. ^ Jain, Sanjiv; Kristy Janssen; Sharon DeCelle (2004). "Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais method: A critical overview". Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinics of North America. 15 (4): 811–825. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.611.4183. doi:10.1016/j.pmr.2004.04.005. PMID 15458754.
  15. ^ a b Arnold, Joan; Hope Gillerman (1997). "Frequently Asked Questions". American Society for the Alexander Technique. Archived from the original on 4 July 2007. Retrieved 2 May 2007.
  16. ^ Little, P.; Lewith, G.; Webley, F.; Evans, M.; Beattie, A.; Middleton, K.; Barnett, J.; Ballard, K.; Oxford, F.; Smith, P.; Yardley, L.; Hollinghurst, S.; Sharp, D. (19 August 2008). "Randomised controlled trial of Alexander Technique lessons, exercise, and massage (ATEAM) for chronic and recurrent back pain". BMJ. 337 (aug19 2): a884. doi:10.1136/bmj.a884. PMC 3272681. PMID 18713809.
  17. ^ a b Cacciatore, T; et al. (2005). "Improvement in Automatic Postural Coordination Following Alexander Technique Lessons in a Person With Low Back Pain". Physical Therapy. 85 (6): 565–78. doi:10.1093/ptj/85.6.565. PMC 1351283. PMID 15921477. Archived from the original on 29 October 2006. Retrieved 15 July 2008.
  18. ^ Ryan, Alan (1997). John Dewey and the high tide of American liberalism. New York: W.W. Norton. pp. 187–188. ISBN 0-393-31550-9.
  19. ^ F. M. Alexander, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, E. P. Dutton & Co., 1923, ISBN 0-913111-11-2
  20. ^ Huxley, Aldous (2009). Eyeless in Gaza (1st ed.). New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0-06-172489-3. OCLC 461092622.
  21. ^ Tinbergen, Nikolaas (12 December 1973) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXr-9kQZ0ow&list=PLvIX7Pp1knJLO0tpcTBHY7zCVnjJqayzh&index=10
  22. ^ Tengwall, Roger (1996). "A note on the influence of F. M. Alexander on the development of gestalt therapy". Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. 17 (1). Wiley: 126–130. doi:10.1002/1520-6696(198101)17:1<126::AID-JHBS2300170113>3.0.CO;2-X. ISSN 1520-6696. PMID 7007480.
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