What did F.M. Alexander discover?

The story of the creator of the Alexander Technique

In the late 1800s, F.M. Alexander recited Shakespeare and other dramatic pieces for a living. His livelihood was seriously threatened when he began to suffer from hoarseness after and during performances, which led to him even periodically losing his voice due to severe hoarseness. He consulted with many doctors and was told he had inflammation of the mucus membrane in his throat. Though he went to doctors frequently for this problem, they were of little help.

Before a particularly important performance, he was advised by his doctor that he needed to rest his voice. Following this advice, he used his voice as little as possible for the preceding two weeks, and as his hoarseness went entirely away, he was confident that he would be able to perform. The beginning of the performance went fine, but before he was even halfway through his program, he was becoming increasingly hoarse. By the end of the performance he could barely use his voice. This was a confounding and devastating problem. The doctors advice of rest had solved his issue in the short term, but once he was back to reciting, his voice problems promptly returned. Alexander was faced with the very real possibility that he would not be able to continue reciting professionally, as there seemed to be no solution to his problem.

Alexander reasoned that if his hoarseness had gone away when he rested his voice, and had returned when he was reciting, that it must have been something he was doing while reciting that was causing his problem. His doctor agreed, but could offer no idea of what Alexander was doing that was causing the problem. So Alexander would have to discover the source of his trouble himself.

He decided to observe himself with a mirror, hoping that he would see something that could help him understand his problem. First he observed himself speaking normally, and he detected nothing of note. He then went on to observing himself while reciting, and he noticed that he was pulling his head back when he started to speak. He also noticed that he was lifting his chest forward, and was depressing his larynx (which is the voice box). This is easy to understand, if you attempt to impersonate someone speaking or singing dramatically, you will see it’s quite likely that the first thing you’ll do is pull your head back and move your chest forward. Curiously, Alexander found that, under closer observation, he was also pulling his head back when speaking casually, the difference being that it was a smaller, less noticeable movement when speaking casually as opposed to when he was attempting to recite something. He also found while reciting that he would pull his head back even more than was typical when he was attempting to recite a particularly difficult or demanding passage. It seemed he had a habit of always pulling his head back when setting to do something, and that the more strenuous or demanding the task was, the more he would pull his head back.

Alexander had another troublesome problem that had appeared alongside his hoarseness. Colleagues of his pointed out to him that he was making an audible sound of sucking in breath while reciting. He was quite ashamed to have this pointed out, as he prided himself on not having this quite common defect in his practice of reciting. Under observation, he found that this gasping in of breaths, too, was present in his normal speaking, and was made much worse when in the act of reciting.

These discoveries lead to further observations which crystallized into a groundbreaking and utterly important discovery about human physiology. He found that the source of his problem of losing his voice and his problem of audibly gasping in breaths were both caused by the habitual movements he was making with his body. It was not just his head moving back or his chest moving forward, those actions were linked with a whole set of habitual gestures that he was making with his torso, shoulders, arms, legs, and feet. These distortions that he was unconsciously making to his body, distortions that didn’t really stand out if you weren’t looking for them, were the cause of his voice problems.

After spending a great deal of time and effort developing a technique for preventing himself from unconsciously distorting his body, he was able to overcome his voice troubles. Because he was able to prevent his habitual distorting gestures, he no longer suffered from hoarseness or loss of voice. When he returned to his doctor to be examined, the doctor found the mucus membrane in his throat was no longer inflamed.

Alexander thought that perhaps his problems were unique, but in working with other performers he saw that they all made the same distortions to their bodies that he had. He went on to teach his technique to other vocal performers, and after some success, he was soon enough teaching his technique to all kinds of people, not just performers, and he found something astonishing. He found that all sorts of minor and even quite serious maladies were a result of these unconscious distortions that people apply to their bodies.

After becoming known for the help he had provided to a large number of performers and others, there were doctors who sent Alexander some of their patients; patients who had not been helped by any of the normal medical treatments. This included children suffering from infantile paralysis, as well as patients who suffered from joint pains, pains from past injuries, digestive troubles, postural abnormalities like scoliosis, stuttering, mental problems related to “nerves” and irrational fears, and many other things, and he was able to help these people permanently overcome their maladies which doctors had to that point been unsuccessful in treating. He did this solely by helping them to stop unconsciously distorting their bodies. To be clear, he had nothing else whatsoever to offer these people, many of whom had suffered from their maladies for years and had had numerous doctors fail to help them. The only assistance Alexander could offer was to teach them to understand the distortions that they were unconsciously making in their bodies, and to teach them to stop. That was enough to successfully help many people whom doctors had failed to help.

This staggeringly simple concept was Alexander’s great gift to man. When we habitually, unconsciously distort our bodies, we will experience all sorts of different maladies. This is not to say that Alexander’s Technique will prevent all illnesses. But quite simply, if you constantly distort your body in habitual and unconscious ways, you will experience preventable maladies.

These distortions we make to our bodies are not vague or metaphysical, they are quite easily observable. The problem is that no one is looking for them. We grow up surrounded by people making these distortions to their body, and as a result, these distortions seem quite normal; they don’t even register to us as distortions.

When Alexander had gone to doctors for his voice problems before venturing out to find his own solution, he had been given a concrete diagnosis of the problem - that the mucus membrane in his throat was inflamed. The doctors attempted various remedies, but none were successful. Alexander had even been advised to have a surgery performed to reduce the size of his uvula, as it was suspected that that might be the cause of the inflammation. Alexander had refused the surgery, and that decision was vindicated when he overcame his voice problems without need of surgery.

This is important to consider. Doctors could identify an element of Alexander’s problem - the inflammation in his throat, but since they didn’t understand the cause of the problem, they were unable to help him. They went so far as to advise surgery to permanently alter a natural structure within his body. But his uvula was not the problem at all.

Alexander’s voice problems make perfect sense when you understand their cause. He was habitually distorting his body, which made him pull his head back. He pulled his head back more when attempting to do anything that was demanding, like while reciting. Because pulling his head back was restricting his airway and interfering with his normal breathing, he began gasping in breaths. Gasping in breaths can also be understood as speeding up the air as it’s breathed in, the increased speed of the air being the source of the audible gasping sound. This increase in the speed of the air being breathed causes inflammation of the mucus membrane in the throat, and that inflammation causes hoarseness and loss of voice. The only long term solution was to stop the unconscious distortions that were interfering with his breathing and leading to inflammation.

Doctors saw the inflammation, but they didn’t understand the cause, so their remedies failed and all they had to offer was destructive surgery. This is unfortunately still the case with many maladies. The cause of a problem is misunderstood because doctors have never been trained to understand how habitual unconscious distortions lead to negative health consequences, and so their remedies either fail or work only in the short term.

Alexander believed he had come upon the most important method of preventing illness, and I believe he was and is correct. The systems of our bodies cannot function optimally when we are distorting the structures of our bodies through compression, undue tension and flaccidity, habitual twisting, and general misuse. The unconscious distortions we habitually make to our bodies can be seen and verified, and if you learn to stop distorting your body, you will find that many aches and pains and other seemingly inexplicable maladies will disappear.