THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE
A brief guide to the basics

Introductory note

This guide has grown from some short notes that I wrote in 1993 for the first person who I helped learn the technique, and is intended for any other such people to help them get started and see the way ahead a little. It was originally intended to be a supplement to rather than a replacement for the many books that are available on the Alexander Technique. However, I have had reports from people who have actually been using this, with partial success, as an instruction manual in lieu of taking lessons because the book which I'd been recommending had gone out of print and all the other books on the AT which could be found were not practical guides for learning the technique but instead were introductions aimed at interesting people in going for formal lessons.

This latter point is hardly surprising, when you consider that the commercially published books on the AT are almost all written by qualified AT teachers who have a strong financial interest* in not encouraging people to learn the technique themselves! Also, a lot of them have been given much indoctrination in their training, to the effect that the AT cannot be learnt except through formal lessons. In a correspondence some years ago with the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (STAT) on one or two matters, I was actually asked not to call what I was doing or teaching "Alexander Technique", apparently because they felt that they owned it, and only teachers accredited by them should be allowed to use that name for what they taught. As far as I'm concerned, that is just power politics, which looks all the more bizarre in the light of the considerable proportion of fully qualified AT teachers who actually teach an abomination of the technique, because they've learnt the physical techniques but not the deeper essence, which is actually a self realization process that comes from deep within - not from a set of rules.

* That financial interest would be particularly strong among STAT-qualified AT teachers because of the length and large cost of the training courses, so motivating the teachers to seek to recoup their considerable outlay for their training.

In this guide I seek (1) to explain concisely what the Alexander Technique is and undo various popular misunderstandings about it, and (2) to give basic practical guidance and tips to anyone who I happen to be helping to learn the technique. Inevitably other people find this useful too. In places I include certain practical insights that are likely to be disapproved of in some quarters because I have the temerity to touch on a few things that are missing from the theory and normal teaching and practice of the technique - and I see it in its broader context as fundamentally a broadly based self realization practice, even though it appears to focus on the physical body.

Let me warn now that this is not a complete do-it-yourself manual, and even if you were one of the rare people who (like me) are able to take to the AT as a duck takes to water, you would still do best to take at least some lessons to get you started fully on course - in particular to receive direct, physical guidance about your head / neck alignment and in using the so-called monkey position.

1. What is the Alexander Technique?

In a nutshell, it is a mental discipline which enables you to consistently and methodically undo your lifelong accumulation of habits of body misuse. It's more than that too, but its many benefits and ramifications, and its higher levels of application, are accessed through a simple and elegant process of letting go of that body misuse. The misuse includes chronic tensions and slackness of body muscles, overuse and underuse of different parts of the body, and all manner of distorted and unbalanced postures. The misuse involves excessive effort being applied to virtually every movement and even to being stationary. All this and more is effectively addressed by the Alexander Technique (AT). It is a whole body technique and cannot be applied to part of the body in isolation.

2.  Some popular misunderstandings

It's a relaxation technique, isn't it?

No, not in the accepted sense. From outside it does indeed often get confused with what are widely known as relaxation techniques, but these do not seek the same goal and are limited in what they can achieve for you. What you gradually achieve by use of the AT is not total relaxation in the usual sense but, rather, correct and appropriate muscular tone throughout the body. This involves bringing under-used muscles back into service just as much as releasing inappropriate tensions.

The state that you work towards is one in which all body movements are carried out with a minimum of effort; all parts of the body that are not involved in a particular movement remain in a state of 'dynamic balanced rest', to which the whole body consistently reverts when not carrying out any specific movement. This is an alert, positive state very different from the state of collapse and passivity that is normally understood by 'relaxation'.

Although in applying the AT we keep talking of achieving 'release', and this usually does involve letting go of excess tensions, the full meaning of release here is release from patterns of habitual interference in the body's poise and functioning, so it shouldn't be thought of as fully equivalent to 'relaxation'.

So, if we do use the term 'relaxation' or 'relaxed' within an AT context, it needs to be understood not as an unhealthy collapse (with further resultant distortions) but as 'attaining or having no excess muscle tension, and thus having optimal muscle tone'.

It's about posture, isn't it.

'Posture' is rather a dirty word in the application of the AT. Many a physiotherapist or other medical practitioner will extol to you the importance of good posture, and, particularly if you have any spinal problems, you may well be urged to hold yourself in 'better' postures. I myself was caught on this misunderstanding for years. Holding 'good' postures appeared to control my lower back problems to a moderate extent, but was in fact adding to the long term problem and no doubt brought forward the onset of my neck trouble. And the 'postural correction' for my neck was very definitely harmful.

The key to the problem is that when you hold yourself in a specific posture you are applying further effort and muscular tension to your body to achieve this. Any spinal problem will have arisen from, or at least will be greatly aggravated by, the extant chronic tensions and unbalanced forces exerted on the vertebrae, so additional forces are just what you don't need. When you hold a new, 'correct' posture you either tire of it and collapse again into your old bad ways or you assimilate the new fixed posture as yet another layer of chronic tension - yet another biomechanical / physiological time bomb, as though you didn't have enough of those already.

By contrast, the AT concentrates on letting go of all the excessive tensions and related distortions that are causing the problems in the first place. It is a weird and wonderful fact of life that as you let go of all the habits of body misuse, your body readily reverts to its much more elegant, balanced and efficient mode of operation, which you would have experienced as a very young child before the conditioned behaviour of adults around you started interfering and causing the build-up of tensions and unawareness. The AT therefore isn't about postures in the normal sense, but is about achieving freely-moving, balanced, poised states.

Even in the AT many people fall into error by thinking of a 'good' alignment as being effectively a specific position - especially as you are liable to be told that you're in good alignment when you, or parts of you, are in particular positions, and for convenience you may be given some image of e.g. what good head / neck alignment is like. It is therefore more helpful generally to think of 'states' rather than 'alignments', which latter could easily become just AT-speak for held postures.

It's sort of exercises, isn't it?

Not really. There are a few procedures you may use which could loosely be called exercises, but the technique doesn't revolve around exercises in any normally accepted sense. Indeed the main procedure for which you are likely to set aside time involves lying down apparently doing nothing!

Sometimes people have told me of 'Alexander Technique exercises' that some alternative medicine practitioner had got them or some friend to do for some specific physical problem - throat, neck, back, eyesight, and so on. Let's be quite clear that, whatever the efficacy of the exercises, all these people, and the practitioners concerned, were mistaken in calling these AT exercises, and they were seriously confused as to what the AT was really about. Whatever exercises were used, they were nothing to do with the AT, and constant vigilance is required to spot and eliminate such confusion. Indeed, as the AT is a whole body technique, it cannot be used upon a single part of the body in isolation.

Sometimes the cause of confusion is that a therapist has recommended exercises which are thought to be compatible with the AT. For specific problems such as back injuries there are undoubtedly helpful and harmful exercises, and the helpful ones, through being compatible with use of the AT, may be mistakenly thought of as part of the AT itself. In this context it's worth noting that the much vaunted McKenzie exercises for the back and the neck - widely recommended by physiotherapists - are all more or less harmful, especially those for the neck.

It's a sort of meditation, then?

No, the AT isn't a form of meditation in the normally accepted sense, though it is certainly a mental discipline. Far from the detached mental state associated with many sorts of meditation, the AT involves a constant inward monitoring of the state of your body and its parts, and systematically 'doing the rounds', disallowing habitual tensions and distortions and allowing release and better functioning in each part of the body. It also involves training yourself to attend thoughtfully to the means by which you carry out each activity and indeed each movement in your everyday life, instead of simply drifting and reacting on autopilot.

On the other hand there can be considerable similarity with some of the techniques employed in the course of meditation of the more advanced schools of Buddhism, for example, where the importance of an alert meditative state of inner clarity and letting go of habitual tendencies in everyday life is emphasized - the practice of mindfulness and 'non-meditation'. Those people who wish to can combine the two disciplines with powerful effect. For users of the AT generally a feeling of lightness and well-being is commonly generated, with an increasing detachment from tense thoughts and feelings, and a fair number of people do find that long-term application of the AT, even with no additional belief or meditation, brings about an opening up of some degree of deeper awareness. Indeed I inadvertently brought myself to crossing the threshold of spiritual enlightenment through using a very thorough application of the AT in lieu of traditional formal meditation.

It's a bit like Yoga, isn't it?

As with meditation, there are various overlaps of concepts. Indeed, a thoroughgoing application of the AT could be regarded as a type of Yoga. However, although Yoga is really a whole class of mental disciplines, in the popular eye it is the physical positions adopted in the popular Western-adopted Hatha Yoga that are in people's minds when they try to make comparisons with the AT. And that is where the AT differs fundamentally, because it actively discourages held positions in favour of light and free dynamically balanced states. Indeed some Hatha Yoga positions would be regarded by AT practitioners as positively harmful. For more precise information on this see Constructive Awareness, mentioned in the book list given at the end.

I've heard it's very good but is very time consuming...

'Very good', yes it is, except that some may well regard that as understatement. But, 'very time consuming', well, it depends what you mean by that. The 'time consuming' criticism comes from people who have not understood the nature of the AT. Initially you'd take weekly lessons, each lasting about ¾ hour, and you'd need to take, say, 20-40 minutes per day in lie-downs, though you could make some progress with as little as 10 minutes per day. If you're used to rushing through each day on autopilot you may well wonder where you'd find even that much time, but the reality is that when you do start taking the regular lie-downs you find that you function more efficiently for the rest of the time and in this way the time set aside is made up. You might also start questioning just why you're running around like a scalded cat all the time, and make changes to give yourself more peace and space.

What would probably open the AT most to the 'time consuming' criticism, however, is the fact that the AT is a mental discipline which you learn to use all the time in your everyday life. To an outsider this can appear to be an unacceptable degree of devotion and commitment, but this perception is based on the mistaken notion that the AT is yet another thing for you to 'do'. In fact, as we shall see, the AT is a discipline of un-doing, which involves letting go of habitual movements and responses to situations and attending fully to the means by which we move ourselves and achieve goals. Those who fully take up the AT discover that, far from being another time-consuming thing to do, it is simply a better, more efficient and more enjoyable way of living, with the potential of rich rewards indeed.

3. Who is the AT for?

Theoretically, everyone.

The majority of people taking up the AT do so initially because of a physical problem that has come to light, e.g. osteo-arthritis, lower back or neck trouble or other joint pains, or work-related repetitive strain injury problems. Others take it up because of more obviously stress-related problems such as anxiety, insomnia, irritable bowel syndrome or migraines. And a smaller number of particularly self-aware people - the real wise ones! - take it up without the prompting of any obvious physical problems, because they understand that the AT is a powerful key to getting much more out of life, both physically and mentally. Nobody is too old or too young (or too well!) to benefit from the AT. Musicians, actors and ballet dancers have particularly severe demands made upon their posture and physical co-ordination, and people from these professions have always ranked high among the numbers learning the AT.

I particularly recommend the AT for dentists and surgeons because of the repeated harmful positions they get into during the course of their work. Even if they can't improve those positions very much, at least they can learn to return to a 'balanced state of rest' in good alignment in-between times. They would also then understand the AT enough to put many of their patients onto it and so reduce the load upon the health services - for people using the AT are, on average, healthier people.

On the other hand, many people put forward as an excuse for not taking up the AT words to the effect of "I'm already damaged goods" or "I'm too far gone - I've got a steel pin in my back" or similar. The truth is that for even these people the AT would give great benefits, for it enables you to get the best use out of what you've got, even if it is damaged or malformed. Indeed, my (excellent) second AT teacher had had a steel pin put in her lower back in the course of the problems that caused her to take up the AT in the first place.

Theoretically it's for everyone, but...

In practice certain common socially ingrained attitudes prevent many people from being able to learn or use the technique. For example, some people seem unable to adjust to the very notion of such powerful self-help; they may want AT lessons, but only as therapy that is done to them instead of actually learning to use the AT themselves. Such people will benefit little if at all. Many other people are so unaware of their habits of misuse, or of the possibilities of change in their lives, even after a series of lessons, that they cannot progress with the AT. Usually, however, such people do not seek AT lessons in the first place unless perhaps pressured to do so (e.g. by a well-meaning but perhaps misguided spouse). A common variant of this situation is where a person has some awareness of the need for, or possibilities of, change in her life but is simply afraid of letting go of what is familiar - 'I prefer the devil I already know, thank you very much'.

Many people who do take lessons make only limited progress and eventually give up use of the AT because some of their habitual rigid ways of perceiving things cause them persistently to misunderstand the technique's basic principles, despite its elegant simplicity and the best endeavours of excellent AT teachers. Such people will usually speak highly of what the AT has done for them, but will have little conception of how much further and in what other ways they could improve if they applied the technique fully for the rest of their lives.

4. How are we misusing our bodies?

Since early childhood, to some extent all of us have built up a large and unedifying collection of interrelated muscular tensions, which exert excessive force in the joints of the skeleton; such excess force is often unbalanced and causes poor alignment of the bones. This is particularly true in the case of the spine. These excess forces in many cases cause premature wear (osteo-arthritis), and aggravate joint problems that have arisen for other reasons. Many people are blissfully unaware of these tensions in their own bodies. The tense muscles interfere with the operation of other muscles, which become slack and often over-extended and more or less unable to carry out their proper function.

A good example of this sort of interference caused by tension is in the neck, where large muscles running down the neck are normally excessively tense, preventing the operation of small muscles whose task is to keep individual vertebrae in proper alignment and to control the head's position. Thus, paradoxically, the more tension there is pulling the vertebrae down upon each other and causing excessive wear, the more likely you are to find that with certain head movements the vertebrae slop around against each other in an uncontrolled way, causing clicks and scrunches, because of lack of correct muscle tone in the right areas.

Not just tension.
This latter example shows an important point in understanding the AT. We are not dealing just with tension but with all sorts of related problems including chronic slackness of certain muscles. The majority of people have some degree of slackness in their lower backs and a lot of tension in the upper back, shoulder and neck regions. What the AT works towards is correct and appropriate tone in all the body's muscles.

5. What's it like to be using your body well, then?

When not carrying out a particular movement your body is in a state of 'balanced rest'. This is true no matter whether you are lying, sitting or standing. Minimum effort is used to achieve a task. If the movement of a finger can achieve it, then the rest of the arm doesn't move. If the task doesn't require more than the hand to move, then just the hand moves. No part of your torso becomes involved in a task unless the task is difficult to carry out without such involvement of the torso. A well-functioning body thus always seeks to keep movement to its most distant parts that can carry out a particular task, and meanwhile the rest of the body continues to maintain that balanced state of rest (but is not held still either, for that would apply unnecessary effort).

No sense of effort is required for normal body states and movement, because these depend primarily upon built-in reflex responses to gravity. You can let go of every single muscular tension you thought was holding you up, and you don't fall over - in fact you become a little taller.

This body state is accompanied by a feeling of well-being, of a delightful lightness and lack of effort in all normal activities. You cope well with everyday situations, not normally being upset by them, and indeed responding in constructive, thought-out ways instead of simply reacting.

6. What is so powerful about ceasing to misuse our bodies?

Apart from the immediate physical benefits of minimizing, eliminating or preventing various painful symptoms, and all body movements becoming increasingly light and effortless in feel, there is the fact that wear on joints becomes greatly reduced, so your active life is likely to be considerably extended. But it doesn't stop there. The procedure of directing the mind to let go of the habits of body misuse is at the same time enabling the mind itself to let go of age-old tensions and rigidities of outlook. No two people experience the improvements in exactly the same way, but most feel increasingly a sense of lightness and well-being, and become more and more inclined to respond in thought-out constructive ways to the crazy situations that life presents them with, instead of just reacting out of ingrained feelings or habit. Such people are actually recovering parts of their intelligence and intrinsic capacity to enjoy life, which had become locked up over the years by all the accumulating tensions.

Banish the psychotherapist as well as the doctor!

While you may on occasions still have cause to see a medical practitioner, consistent use of the AT undoes not only many common chronic physical problems, but also all manner of emotional ones - even ones you never knew you had. The beauty of this method is that you don't have to stop and consider whether you have any sort of emotional tensions or problems: as you improve your body usage, so you simply feel better and function better in all respects. No need for analysis or discussion of the causes of anything - you simply let it all go anyway, and greatly enjoy the experience.

I don't claim, however, that the AT will clear anything like ALL your emotional issues - which is why I strongly recommend the use of The Work and the EFT in addition to the AT.

7. The technique itself - how is it done?

In general...

A central feature of the AT and indeed of continued improvement in your self-usage is un-doing. You train yourself to set aside the tense and limiting concept of doing, because that means end-gaining - choosing a goal and then going on autopilot (in other words using all manner of habitual responses) to achieve that goal. You retrain yourself to attend first and foremost to the means by which you achieve each movement, each goal. Of course you can't attend consciously all at once to every detail of every single movement you make, but nonetheless that marks the direction of the changes that you would be allowing to occur.

In practice the most basic things to attend to are allowing muscles in your neck and back to be released from inappropriate tensions and your spine consequently to be nicely lengthened, with your head in a lightly balanced state on top. You learn to pay virtually constant attention to this while going about your everyday life, and it appears to be fundamental to all the other improvements that accrue.

Primary Control

The term 'primary control' is a bit of AT jargon commonly used to signify the most basic goal that you work towards in learning the AT. Your spine (back plus neck) and shoulders need to be thought of as a single (loosely) crucifix-shaped unit, whose state is central to that of all the other parts of the body. On the one hand you concentrate on achieving muscular release and consequent lengthening in the spine and broadening between the shoulders, and on the other, you don't allow spine or shoulders to become involved in particular body movements unless it is essential (most of the time it isn't). Your spine and shoulders and associated musculature are thus regarded as being at the core of the balanced state of rest which your whole body is able to return to after each movement.

The foregoing isn't meant to signify that the spine and shoulders should be held immobile, but simply that they do not become directly used in the carrying out of particular voluntary movements unless that involvement is essential. In practice, in a really free and balanced body even quite a small and peripheral movement will cause involuntary balancing adjustments within the core, so actually quite a lot of very small movements in the 'core' of spine and shoulders can be regarded as an integral part of that balanced state of rest.

A particularly important element of 'primary control' is the maintaining of a balanced, poised relationship of head to neck. You learn to stop moving your neck about with your head movements, for the head should be pivoting and rotating lightly and effortlessly on just the very top of the neck. Your neck, therefore should nearly all the time remain in alignment with the rest of the spine and function as an extension of the back rather than as a stalk on which to wag the head. This means undoing your ingrained habits of head movement and learning to allow the head to move freely on its own.

This might at first sound like a great restriction on head movement, and indeed some people go wrong in their learning of the AT by fixing their heads in a stiff, relatively immobile semblance of a nicely poised head. You can always check that your head is as free and as mobile as it needs to be by carrying out a spot 'teeterability test'. However, it's fact that the majority of people move their heads about in too gross a way, and once you've saved your neck from all that abuse, your head movements, say during conversation, will be smaller and more subtle. If you feel that you have to wag your head (and neck) a lot to express yourself, then that perception is definitely part of the problem that you need to resolve.

The head / neck relationship - forget 'forward and up'!

Most books on the AT which I've seen extol the virtues of keeping your head in a 'forward-and-up' relationship with the spine. This is a good dictum only if you happen to mean the right thing by this, and many people take on board precisely the worst possible meaning - the very posture which the 'forward and up' direction is supposed to contradict! The most common distortion of the head-neck relationship is to have the neck to some extent protruding forward and the upper part of the head pulled back by a chronic shortening of the large muscles in the back of the neck. As always, little benefit can be gained by just hauling yourself out of this distortion as a physiotherapist would probably have you do.

Actually in my view (and also on the basis of my listening to the views of other AT practitioners / teachers), the term 'forward and up', although widely repeated and passed on in AT circles, is best dropped because it causes more confusion than it resolves. As far as I can ascertain, what was really meant originally by that most unfortunate expression was actually "Stop drooping your neck and pulling your head back". In other words it was a matter of stopping doing something which was interfering with your natural state - not trying to haul yourself into a specific position (which could then become just another held posture).

I like what one AT teacher (Sandra Riddell) had to say on the subject:

I have recently found that I don't use the term 'forward and up' at all with beginning students, or in workshops and classes - it mostly creates confusion and doing.  At the moment I am using variations along the lines of "Ask the neck to let go of the head" followed by something like "so that the head can lead the spine into length...."  Several students have said they find this clearer and more effective than just saying 'free the neck'; indeed I do also.

Actually I have a little pragmatic heresy to add here, for in certain cases it can be helpful initially to get holding one's head in a facsimile of good alignment with the neck. I know about this because I did it myself; indeed I had no sensible alternative! I was desperate with neck pain, and I deliberately and awarely held my neck in a worthy facsimile of good alignment, with full understanding of what I was doing. This actually helped me greatly, immediately enabling me to go out on my long hard hikes once more and no longer be tortured by neck pain afterwards. However, what I was also doing was keeping aware that I was initially holding my head in that much less harmful position and also working on releasing the neck tensions and progressively letting go of the holding.

This actually worked very well, so that soon I was simply not drooping my neck, and my head was sitting increasingly lightly on top. However, my use of my spine remains a bit stiff and awkward even now because of the accumulated considerable wear on vertebrae and the fact that attempts at nice flexible use of my spine cause me bad flare-ups of pain which can take days to subside. In fact because of this I probably still am to some extent maintaining an element of holding my back and especially my neck in a certain degree of 'good alignment' facsimile. Certain well meaning people without full understanding of my physical condition have urged me to do a lot of flexing exercises for back and neck in order to increase mobility and prevent fusion of vertebrae - but this is largely unworkable with such a clapped-out spine.

Things to remember, then, about a healthy head / neck relationship or dynamic alignment are:

• Always think of the head as being loosely poised on top of the neck, not held there.
• For this purpose, see the task of the large muscles down the back of the neck as being not to hold the head on but simply to stop the head falling forward. Their tension can thus can be released to just before the point at which the head would fall or tilt too much forward.
• Neck and back are best thought of as a single, dynamic unit, which is always gently seeking to lengthen (if only one let it do so!).
• It's helpful to think of that lengthening continuing out the top of the head. Very often people suggest that you imagine a length of string gently pulling you up from the crown (a little back from centre of the top of your head, and indeed further back than many people realize).
  I myself have never found the notion of anything external helpful; I simply maintain a certain sense of rising at my crown (as part of the operation of 'anti-gravity' rising through the spine) as part of the general lengthening.
  

  Actually this sense of lengthening feels to me to be not just a physical thing. It seems more as though this is occurring first in a non-physical energy template, subsequently transferring to my physical body. I don't know whether that is actually what is happening.

• That rising of the crown implies for most people a usually slightly lower gaze than they were used to, pre-AT (they can readjust their gaze with their eyes to compensate). It may be sensed also as a slight tilt forwards of the head on top of the neck - the actual pivoting point being roughly level with the eyes, but more at the back. This sense of a rising of the crown and a slight forward tilt of the head in relation to the neck is very good for singing, and indeed may then be temporarily slightly accentuated - especially enabling higher notes to be sung in a full, resonant voice, without sounding as though you're being strangled.
• Very importantly, you don't actually try to achieve or 'do' any extension or lengthening of your spine; you just imagine it and train yourself to incorporate that into your ongoing self perception. This in turn gradually trains the relevant muscles to bring about what at first you are just visualizing, in a healthy and flexible manner, whereas a deliberately 'done' extension would itself be applying effort, tensions and - yes - distortions.

It's extremely difficult to get the full sense of a healthy head / neck relationship without the direct physical assistance of a good AT teacher, but as you do so it would be greatly helpful for you to keep it in mind at every possible moment during your waking hours (even while lying in bed), so you get used to the new sense of poise and balance. Eventually this state becomes so familiar that anything else is actually uncomfortable and you're no longer having to fight the old habit of neck abuse.

My particular thanks to Robert Rickover and members of his Google e-mail AT discussion group for discussing in exemplary positive and constructive manner my original, flawed writing in this 'Forward and Up' section in March 2007 and prompting me to be more focused and describe more clearly what I already had come to understand from my own experience.

8. The usual starting point

One-to-one lessons are usually required, though a very strongly motivated and self-aware person can make quite a lot of progress with the sole assistance of one of the better books on the AT. I know this latter is true because I myself had already made dramatic progress in 3 weeks before my first lesson. It's worth remembering too that the AT founder, F.M. Alexander, managed without a teacher and indeed without any books on the subject - he had no alternative! Although he was undoubtedly an exceptional person, it's an unwise assumption widely held in the AT 'Establishment' that virtually nobody else would have a similar level of ability to pick up the technique herself. On the other hand, however well you might pick up the AT from a book, your progress would be hampered by all sorts of misunderstandings and dead ends (Alexander himself didn't exactly learn and formulate the technique overnight, and left much to be refined), whereas with suitable books and a good teacher you can get the best of both worlds and improve much more quickly.

An excellent resource for working on your own (and indeed getting the best out of the AT even if you have a teacher) is the AT Self Study page of The Complete Guide to the Alexander Technique website - without prejudice to all the information I give to that end in this guide, of course!

Your teacher, as well as explaining aspects of the technique, will manipulate your neck/head and your limbs and spinal alignment. The aim is very different from what, say, a chiropractor would do. Here, as far as possible at the time, you let the teacher move the part freely, seeking to set aside any urge to assist or resist the movement or react in any other way. All the movements are very gentle. The teacher is simply giving you the experience of that part of your body moving or being adjusted into better alignment without your habitual interference.

Sitting. You will have some of these manipulations done while sitting on an upright chair, and will be adjusted into a lighter, looser, more balanced sitting state. You will be guided through a light and effortless mode of rising from the seated position to standing, and of descending again to the balanced sitting state.

Standing. Likewise, the teacher will acquaint you with a beautifully light and balanced mode of standing upright. When you start noticing significant release while standing you will probably be amazed at how much tension throughout your body had been trying to hold you upright when in reality it had been interfering with your body's inbuilt reflex response that counters the effect of gravity. Paradoxically, through letting those tensions drop away, you not only feel taller but actually become a little taller.

Lying. When lying on your back on a firm surface with your legs drawn up so that your knees are raised and pointing towards the ceiling, you are least liable to be reinforcing the habitual muscular tensions, and the teacher will probably have you at times lying in this way on a table or firm couch, with a suitable thickness of books under your head to raise it to an appropriate height. Again, the teacher will go round and successively move each of your limbs, your shoulders and your head, so that you gain the release that occurs when these parts of your body are moved without your calling into play your habitual interferences.

Finding a teacher

Particularly in towns and cities you can often locate one or more teachers by inquiring at local complementary health centres. Others may come to light because they give adult education courses, so their names appear in your local adult education directory. For the most part adult education classes (for groups) are of limited use, but they can be a means of pinpointing a teacher with whom you consider it worthwhile having proper one-to-one lessons. Others may be located simply by word of mouth. You may not know anyone who has had AT lessons, but anyone who seems to be conversant at all with local alternative therapy facilities may know, even if they haven't been involved with the AT themselves. Look also for ads in places like a window or noticeboard of a whole- or health-food shop. Other sources of such information may come from musicians and actors, many of whom may already have been having AT lessons themselves.

If at all possible, try to get some picture of any teachers you've heard about, by getting first-hand accounts of them and their teaching style from people who've had lessons from them.

Choice of teacher

Even among fully qualified AT teachers there are middling and bad ones as well as the good ones. And then, if we just consider the good ones, each has his/her own viewpoint and style in applying and teaching the technique. Some will explain things constantly, others will concentrate more on giving lots of tips appropriate to gaining release from your particular misuse patterns, and others will tell you little at all and rely on your gaining body awareness and a sense of lightness from manipulation during the lessons, which, they believe, would be enough in itself to lead you on in applying the AT in your everyday life. Others may bring in concepts that aren't generally regarded as basic to the AT, such as the non-physical aspects, the aura, 'energy flow' and chakras. It's helpful to be aware of this variety of approaches to AT teaching, so that you might choose a teacher with an approach and style with which you can empathize. None of these approaches is absolutely wrong per se, though if applied too narrowly and/or to the wrong students each can be limiting. It should be noted, though, that some teachers do present serious distortions of the AT. A common one of these will described later under `teacher problems'.

Despite appearances, it's a lesson, not a therapy session - IMPORTANT!

There are many people who waste money on going for AT lessons, regarding it as a therapy that's done to them. In general they get little lasting benefit, and indeed conscientious AT teachers will recognise when this sort of thing is happening and gently ask the particular clients to discontinue their sessions. True, the release you get during a lesson with a good teacher can be dramatic and extremely beneficial, but, whether or not the teacher tells you to, you then have to take the improved functioning back into your everyday life, allowing yourself to keep getting in touch with and extending those releases and other improvements in body use which you gained in your lesson. Part of that process involves committing yourself to taking daily lie-downs, as explained below. If you do this consistently, you will eventually get to the point where you readily allow your state of release and balance to return, no matter where you are - even, for example, while standing in a bus queue. You can become completely self-sufficient, with the AT completely assimilated into your lifestyle so that it no longer seems to be a special technique, but is simply a better and continually improving way of living. In practice most people would benefit from the occasional 'top-up' lesson after their initial series of perhaps 12 to 20 weekly lessons, just to keep them going in the right direction.

9. What can I 'do' at home?

Apart from gradually retraining yourself in your body use generally, to carry out all tasks and body movements with a minimum of physical effort and a maximum sense of lightness and balance, it is the lying down (as done on the teacher's table), which is the most important thing to set time aside for.

Lying down

Probably you'd have to lie down on the floor - preferably on really soft carpet or a camping mat - for a bed is very unlikely to be sufficiently flat and firm. A really firm couch might do, if long enough. The need is for a flat, firm surface upon which your back can be let down into an undistorted, fully lengthened state. Get your teacher to advise you as to what a suitable thickness of books you need to support your head when lying like this; this depends very much on the individual, and will probably reduce somewhat as you progress - particularly if you have a forwardly hunched upper back to start with.

Going down

There are arguments for and against different ways of getting down into that lying position. Some people (including me) normally get down into a sitting position on the floor, with legs out in front, then allow the back to unfurl onto the floor, using the hands to support the head as it approaches the support. This method of 'going down' is good for building and maintaining strength and a supple co-ordination of the back muscles. On the other hand it can mean that you come to rest with a tensed-up neck. Some people therefore prefer to go down in a gentler way that is more or less a reverse of the preferred method of getting up (see below), seeking to give minimum work and tension to the back and neck muscles.

Whichever method you use to lie down, your overall aim needs to be to arrive on the floor in as released a state as possible, with maximum length in your spine. Thus while unfurling backwards onto the floor you should be imagining your back releasing, lengthening and broadening, so encouraging it to do so. Think of your back spreading out onto the floor as though it were melting butter or maybe a melting watch in a Salvador Dalí painting - or whatever image works best for you at the time. Also, as part of that freeing up, set aside any habitual urge to hold or catch your breath - even for just an instant. Allow yourself to continue breathing as though you were doing absolutely nothing.

Once lying there

With your legs straight but moderately apart, wait perhaps for a minute or two, to get in touch with your body in the lying state and allow release to occur as you feel the force of gravity on all the different parts of your body. Then decide to raise one of your knees, so allowing the foot to come closer - but don't actually do it yet! Think of it and how you will achieve that end with the minimum of effort. If you just went ahead and 'did' it you'd once again operate on a habitual level and probably use all manner of muscles and parts of your body that don't need to be involved at all. The only muscles that you'd need to use are those to raise the one upper leg; the lower leg should be allowed to hang or drag along limply, for the mere raising of the knee will then cause the foot to be drawn towards you. Think of the knee being drawn upwards by a levitational force.

When the movement occurs with no interference it feels deliciously light and effortless. In practice you'll probably find that all sorts of interferences still occur when you actually give your consent for the knee to be raised. For example various movements and passing tensions may occur in the other leg, and your lower back may well tighten. Maybe your neck will tighten too.

Although you need to eliminate these habitual responses, it's important not to allow a sense of failure because at the moment you can't stop particular interference. The truth is that you're firmly on the path of improvement, and that's what counts. Therefore simply make a mental note of all the unnecessary muscular involvement which has occurred in spite of your best endeavours, and rejoice in the fact that you're already aware of so many things which are going to get better. By remembering all these difficulties, and even noting them down, you will have yardsticks against which to recognise the magnitude of your progress later on.

Having raised one knee, go through a similar procedure with the other one. Some books suggest you should bring your feet as close as possible to your bottom, but I find it better not to be so bunched up because my leg muscles release more fully when the legs are bent at a slightly easier angle.

Before you attend to any fine adjustment of leg positioning, the next thing you need to attend to is allowing your spine to lengthen as much as it can at this moment. By drawing your legs up you've now made it possible for the whole of your back to lower onto the floor if it's able to release sufficiently yet. To assist this process you need to ease your pelvis forwards (i.e. away from your head) or to haul the upper part of your torso away from the lower part (as a teacher would do for you) - or both. At this stage you will find that significant lengthening of the spine occurs, unless you happen to be one of the people whose back happens to be already fixed in a straight shape that lies flat against the floor without any change of shape.

In general, until you have some experience, it's best to stick with easing the pelvis forward. Do this with your hands underneath, seeking to minimize any involvement of your shoulders in the movement. I found that, after some nine months' pretty concentrated progress, I got additional spine lengthening by following the pelvis adjustment by gently hauling the top of my torso in the other direction, and I still use both methods each time I lie down. If you use the latter of the two methods you should note that this gives some work to the shoulders and therefore in the long run might be regarded as a bad thing; in any case it's then important to pay immediate attention to the shoulders to allow them to release as much as they can at the moment.

Having allowed what spine lengthening is available at this point you now attend to your legs. Your legs need to be so positioned that they are delicately balanced, your knees not falling over one way or the other despite not being held up by any muscular tension at all. Ideally you'd have arrived at your present position with the legs already beautifully free and balanced, but in practice you'll probably have to make adjustments. Check how free a leg is by very gently pushing it sideways with a finger, one way and then the other; the moment the knee is moved from the point of balance it should start falling over and you then have to restore it to its balanced position. The freer your legs are, the more difficult it will seem to find that point of balance where no muscular effort is required to stop your knees falling over; it is nonetheless important to achieve this balanced state and indeed periodically to recheck that you haven't started holding the legs in that position.

Meanwhile, direct your attention to your neck, the different parts of your back, your shoulders, your chest and breathing, your jaws, face, abdomen and successively each part of each limb, and in fact each other part of your body that happens to come to mind. In every case you both observe as far as you can what is the state of the part you've focused on, and think of it releasing, softening, letting go, or whatever is the most appropriate form of words or image for you just then - be creative! Attend also to your breathing. (See the note on breathing.)

After, say, your first round of your body, attend again to your lower back. Unless that area is already very free and always settles immediately onto the floor, you can probably now obtain a little further release and lengthening by running your fingers up and down underneath both sides of the lower back - even if there's no obvious free space there. This is worth repeating at intervals during the lie-down until you're sure that it's producing no further release. Each time you sense any release, assist the lengthening by easing your pelvis a little forwards or gently hauling your upper torso away from the pelvis. You can encourage still further release, especially of back and shoulders, by a spell of very slow deep breathing. (See the note on breathing.)

If you're one of those with a back already fixed in a straight shape that hugs the floor, then a more extensive and forceful running of your fingers up and down under your back should gradually encourage release to occur. Meanwhile ensure that your neck is not getting at all bunched up and that your head moves outward to take up any lengthening in that region.

Let's be clear that what we're aiming for really is not a flat back as such but a free and flexible back, lengthened as far as it will go of its own accord through removal of all excess tensions that are habitually shortening it. The healthy upright human spine has a very slight curvature, so your back in a well released and fully lengthened state will likewise settle into that residual slight curvature when you become upright. That is true even if your back started off fixed in an absolutely straight shape.

Remember not to try to make release happen. The need is to simply imagine it occurring, and allow that part of your body to take the hint. On any one occasion you'll probably find that noticeable release occurs only in certain parts of your body. Rest assured, that's normal, and whatever little seems to be happening will be paving the way for releases in other parts of your body in due course.

In your earliest stages of learning the AT you may not be aware of anything particular happening at all. That is no cause for concern, for each lie-down is still serving its important purpose in that it is preparing the ground for more tangible releases that will occur later.

Books on the AT may give you the impression that you must first of all gain release in the neck before anything else much can happen. That's highly misleading. True, release in the neck is of fundamental importance, but no two people are the same and there's no telling which parts of your body will undergo major release first. In my case, despite considerable neck trouble which was my initial primary concern, it was my lower back that started releasing first, closely followed by upper back and a first stage of release in my shoulders. Although I quickly learnt better use of my neck, really noticeable release of the tense muscles there didn't start occurring till 9 months later.

Having said that, though, I would concur with the books in that once you can allow good release in your neck, that is about the first thing you want to check for release and balance when you are returning yourself into a better state.

During your lie-down, repeatedly make mental rounds of your body, concentrating on each part, letting yourself become aware of its state and giving it consent to release. Give special attention to those parts where you can feel release occurring, and to parts which you notice have become 'held' again; old habits will keep trying to creep in. Particularly if you cough or yawn or swallow or speak, or think a tense thought, immediately check the state of your neck again and as necessary direct it to let go of any tightening-up.

Once you seem to be getting no further release, remain lying for the allotted time, occasionally checking that nothing is surreptitiously becoming held and tensed up again. Apart from those little checks, your mind can wander far and wide then, though it's good policy to take your attention away from compulsive worry thoughts. Or you can even doze off.

What do I do with my eyes, my hands?

In general keep your eyes open and keep in touch with your surroundings and especially with anything - sounds, light, etc - from outside. By keeping your eyes closed you'd limit the usefulness of your releases by making them a cosy experience isolated from the rest of the world.

Your arms and hands should be in a position that isn't habitual for you. In nearly all cases the best position is for the hands to be resting lightly somewhere on the upper abdomen, not quite meeting each other. Any tendency for your hands to grip, clench or fidget needs to be set aside. Also beware any sneaky tendency for one or both thumbs to become stuck out, for that can have a major interfering effect on muscular balance in far-removed parts of the body. Check for this quirk particularly if you're speaking.

I should keep quiet and not talk with anyone while lying, of course?

As a general rule, yes, for you need time and space to be undistracted in the attention you give yourself. However, no complete ban on such communication is necessary, provided you think carefully about what's going on for you. If anyone else is present while you're lying down, feel free to continue conversation, provided that you keep part of your awareness to continue monitoring your state and allowing release, and you don't try to continue talking in your old familiar (probably tense) manner. You'd have to pay special attention to not allowing habitual neck-tightening head-wagging responses to accompany your talking, and to check for and interrupt any tendency to stick a thumb out or do any other sympathetic tightening up.

If you attend well to yourself in this way, disallowing your habitual responses while talking with somebody, you may well initially find it quite difficult to speak. Your voice will probably seem strange and much lower than you're used to, and absurdly devoid of your habitual expressive variations. Stay with it like that, however, for that is your real voice that you're beginning to reclaim. You can eventually take that new, less tense, mode of speaking into your everyday life. Of course you'd learn to modify it with subtle expressive nuances, but these would probably be very different from what you'd been accustomed to before.

Can I have music playing while I'm lying down?

That's not a good idea as a regular thing. It can certainly be very pleasant indeed listening to music that you enjoy while you're lying and maybe feeling beautifully spaced out. The problem is that listening to music can work a bit like keeping your eyes closed: it takes your attention rather away from the outer world, directing it to your inner world. In any case the aim here is not to get spaced out but to cultivate a certain alert awareness. You need to develop strong mental associations between your improved body state and the actual here-and-now if you're to sustain and build upon the gains made while lying down. But best to be flexible and creative about this. I myself do occasionally have music playing while I'm lying, though as a matter of policy I never actually put on music specifically for the lie-down, and, apart from the exception mentioned below, I'd advise against your doing so. An occasional musical background - perhaps because you just happened to have music playing on the radio anyway - can increase the variety and enjoyment of the experience without significant compromise of the purpose of the lie-downs.

However, that isn't the end of the story, because it is possible to make important gains sometimes by having your lie-down while listening to music that has a strong emotional effect on you. There are two ways of looking at this. Such music will probably trigger excess tension, particularly in the neck, upper back and shoulders, and therefore it could be considered to be an undesirable hindrance to your release process. However, you can treat such a musical experience in a positive and extremely constructive way - to concentrate carefully on keeping in a released state those very parts of you which normally tense up while the music plays. While I haven't read or heard this point made by anyone else, I'm convinced that keeping yourself in such a released state while listening to music that otherwise causes you to tense up will bring about very important gains, not only in the way you listen to music, but also in your improved, more thought-out responses to all manner of everyday situations.

Later note (November 2007) - actually for quite some years now my own personal use of the lie-downs has been more flexible than I originally described above, because I incorporated in them some self healing practice. I thus often during my lie-downs have been carrying out certain self healing visualizations and the odd other practice which is compatible with the lie-down and doesn't cause significant tensing of muscles. Until earlier this year I also extremely misguidedly had crystals and healing wands placed on and around myself during lie-downs, but have since come to understand that these were doing me a lot of harm and have disposed of them all. See Sacred Geometry, Wands and Crystals - A Serious Warning.

Getting up from the lie-down

On no account raise your torso directly to the sitting position again, for that would involve a tightening of neck and back muscles that would destroy much of the benefit you've gained while lying there. Instead, first decide that you are going to get up in a moment, and, while still giving all your inner directions for release, think about how this is going to happen.

The normal best way (subject to minor variations) is, when you give consent for it to happen, to let your eyes look round towards the side onto which you're about to turn. Let your head gently follow your eyes round, leading the rest of the body. Maintaining the freedom of your neck, and maintaining the improved head-neck relationship, continue the rolling-over movement to bring you into a half-kneeling position from which you rise up to standing. Remain standing there at least a moment or two, and allow yourself to get into a good state of balance and poise. Repeatedly check the state of release in your neck and state of poise of your head upon it.

I find that most people, while getting up like this, forget their head / neck alignment and pull their head back so that they can still be looking ahead. I have to keep pointing out that while their neck is, say, parallel to the floor, then their gaze should be at the floor, not 'ahead', unless there is something specific they have to look at which is ahead. It does take real concentration on that alignment to forestall that auto-pilot 'look ahead' response which pulls the head back in relation to the neck. It really is okay to be looking at the floor briefly while you are getting up - even if at that point you do notice that you haven't vacuumed the carpet lately...

The doorbell or phone goes - it's okay to get up quickly then?

No. Not that quickly, or you're just stepping back into automatic end-gaining and destroying most of the careful letting-go work that you've just been doing. This may feel difficult at first, but the procedure has to be immediately to set aside the impulse to jump up, and to pause just long enough (just a few seconds) to allow release of suddenly tensed muscles, especially in the neck, and then to direct yourself through your established getting-up procedure. This can be carried out more quickly than usual, so that the total delay as compared with springing directly forwards off the floor would be no more than about five to ten seconds.

By setting aside a habitual response to a startle stimulus you actually make a much more fundamental gain than just the standard gains of a lie-down. That little delay is sure worth making, even if it is a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses at the door or a heavy breathing person of the opposite sex offering double glazing on the phone.

How long do I lie there, and how often?

Anything from a very few minutes to 20 minutes or even longer. Books and most teachers urge you to aim for a good 20 minutes each time. Personally, I often get too uncomfortable lying so long on the floor even with my very soft carpet, and my usual lying time is more like ten minutes. However, a quick lie of even three minutes is much better than no lie. As for how often, within reason the more you do it the more you'll gain - with the proviso that you also need to continue your everyday activities in which to learn to integrate the better and freer modes of functioning.

Undoubtedly I was a bit exceptional in my dedication: for the first few months I was taking at least 12 of these lie-downs per day, though some of those were very short. I didn't specifically decide to take that many but scheduled them between my normal daily activities, e.g. before and after each meal, and before and after going out in the morning, before and after my late evening reading session, and immediately before going to bed. Nowadays this has reduced to normally four: after each meal and immediately before going to bed. An additional lie-down can be taken - and is recommended - when you become aware of a tension you can't simply let go of otherwise, or if you get the recurrence of a back or neck pain for example. Similarly, it's a good thing to have a lie-down as soon as practical after any upsetting event - no matter whether it's the receipt of a £5 tax demand or your house and family just having been demolished in a force 9 earthquake!

Later note (March 2007) - With regard to the latter, I do not now recommend using the AT lie-downs as the only means of emotional release, as they tend to be used (or rather, misused) to 'put the lid on' when actually the emotion is better faced and actively released. In general, following some emotional upset it is far the best to use a speedy emotional clearance method such as the EFT or/and The Work first, but then, once that work has been done, an AT lie-down can be very helpful and enjoyable.

Of course even one lie-down per day will do a lot of good, but it would then be more important to make it more like the normally recommended 20 minutes if you can possibly manage it.

Excuses time...

But I really haven't the time!

Ah, well that's part of your problem, and you do have to tackle it to make good progress. It's very common for people to feel trapped by their everyday routine because it seems to them that they have so much to do. Note that hideous last word, 'do'. Quite apart from the beneficial physical releases that occur during lying down, a very important effect of the regular lie-downs is that you knock holes in your habit of compulsive routine; you're starting to take charge of your life and say 'Hey, wait a minute, what's all the rush about? I'm taking nn minutes now for myself, and the world can wait for me for a change!'. The very fact of scheduling chunks of time just for yourself is the beginning of a glorious un-doing. You are then beginning to show true respect towards yourself, and are beginning to exert the wonderful force of your reasoning power over the oppressive force of habitual feelings and routine. Yes, in an important sense the AT could be said to be subversive - deliciously so!

Yes, but I really don't have the time! Honest!

That's no worthwhile excuse at all. If your time is so committed that it apparently leaves you no time for a lie-down most days, then part of your un-doing process has to be to cut down on that excessive commitment. If you don't, the latter may well kill you - reason enough for some pretty radical rethinking of what you're doing with your life. In fact you'd achieve more - not less - that was worthwhile through taking whatever time you required to enable you to function better. If you're working silly long hours for an employer, for example, stop saying you can't change anything and instead consider actually what action you will take to improve your life, even if it may involve a decision to tell the employer that in future you'll only work more sensible hours, or you even give up the particular job altogether. The world doesn't depend on your running around compulsively like a scalded cat, and there's nothing virtuous in doing so, never mind what many an advocate of the so-called 'Christian work ethic' will say.

I keep forgetting or not getting round to taking the time...

The answer is, to schedule your lie-downs as I do - such as before/after meals. Once you've scheduled them around your activities, then treat them as some sort of fixture in their own right, to stop them getting crowded out by your old habitual routine. If you're out at work all day and genuinely have no lie-down opportunity at work, take a lie-down as soon as you arrive home. Perhaps another one after your evening meal, a shortie before going to bed, and another before setting out to work. The most important of those would be the one immediately you arrive home.

I'm just too upset or exhausted to have a lie-down today.

Absurd when you stop to think about it, but nonetheless it is a very common excuse which people make. The feeling, of course is very real, but feelings aren't a good guide to reality. If you allow upsets or exhausted, drained feelings to stop you taking lie-downs (or indeed attending lessons) you'll get nowhere fast. It's true that you may seem too preoccupied to pay proper attention to yourself, but it's important still to take your lie-downs and allow as much release as you can at that point - even if you find yourself dozing off when you're lying there. As with the pattern of feeling to be in too much of a hurry, the mere fact of taking the lie-downs will be knocking holes in the habitual tendency to be driven totally by your hurt or otherwise tense feelings. Also keep in mind the wonderful reassurance that however bad the upset feelings are at the moment, your continuing to apply the AT will make you less and less vulnerable to upsets or feelings of exhaustion - and as you appear more and more self-confident to other people they will become less and less inclined to try upsetting or stressful things upon you in the first place.

My back and neck have released now, so I don't need to do the lying down any more.

Oops! No, it's not like that. Because of the interlocking nature of our tensions and other misuses, only so much can be let go of at a time. As we progress with the AT, we find ourselves going through phases of major release in some particular part of the body, followed by possibly a long spell of nothing very obvious happening there while major release occurs in various other parts. It's often said that tension has been laid on - and is removed - in progressive layers like the layers of an onion. Another comparison is with a huge tangle of string. At any one position you can undo only so much at a time, and then you have to undo other parts before returning to that particular bit, and so on. It's a lifelong process.

10. Other things you can 'do' outside lessons - a few suggestions

Sitting

Pay especial attention to your sitting - not only a balanced state with free and lengthened spine but also what your legs are doing. Position your feet so that your knees remain lightly poised directly above them without being held there at all. That involves training yourself to desist from any habit of tucking your lower legs under the chair or sticking them out in front. If knees tend to move inwards or outwards, reposition your feet so that the knees remain over them.

Never cross your legs. At least one book on the AT says it's okay to cross your lower legs, more or less at the ankles; I take a different view. Even though it's not grossly harmful like a full crossing of the legs, it still interferes considerably with your state of muscular balance. By all means cross your lower legs briefly just for a change, but it's best not to regard that as a workable rest position.

Frequently check with small forward and backward tilting movements that you are free and not fixed in the hips, from where you should be hingeing in these movements. In tilting forward there should be no bending over of any part of the spine, and the head's relationship to the spine should remain unchanged, so that as you tilt forwards your gaze correspondingly lowers (you can use upward eye movement to compensate if necessary). Check particularly carefully, using a mirror sometimes, that when you tilt forward or backwards you really are hingeing only at the hips, as otherwise the lower back can easily get involved in the movement without your noticing. A lower back that is hingeing is not a happy one!

Practise rising up and sitting down again in the improved way that your teacher will have demonstrated with you. Check your state in a mirror. Use upright chairs - not low 'easy' chairs.

Standing

Take short pauses of standing in a free and balanced state. Once in a while check your state in a mirror. Your feet should be a little apart, not pointing inwards and probably pointing a little outwards - the latter especially if your feet habitually tend to turn over towards each other, collapsing the arches. Check that you're letting your shoulders sit naturally and you aren't holding them up or down. As a general rule the shoulders are at about the right height when the collar bones run in a pretty horizontal straight line. The following few paragraphs explain further how to achieve a balanced standing state.

Repeatedly check your state of overall balance by allowing yourself to tilt forwards and then backwards very slightly, hingeing at the ankles only, stopping as soon as you feel the slightest tensing up at the front or the back of the ankles. The mid-point between those two limits of travel will be your approximate centre of balance.

As in all body positions, you assist release greatly by allowing yourself to feel as fully as possible the force of gravity. Allow yourself to feel this in the way that a well-functioning body does - that is, not as a force pulling you down, but as 'anti-gravity', an upward force pushing on your body. Let yourself feel to the full the pressure of the floor against the underneath of your feet, and this force being constantly transmitted up through your leg bones to the pelvis and then up your spine, gently thrusting your head upwards in a good relationship with the neck. As you feel this, let everything else just fall away. My own visualization here is of my muscles all falling off like a grossly overcooked chicken being lifted out of the casserole! (That is actually an image lifted from a strange dream in one of my novels.) Entertain yourself with your own mental images; life with the AT well applied is fun!

As your legs and the rest of your body become more released in this way you neither crumple nor fall to the floor but should experience a new, initially very strange, wobbly state. Attend not only to maintaining a released condition but also, by allowing the very slightest forward and backward tiltings, keep in touch with the best possible balance at your ankles. You should be aware of a multitude of little movements of virtually every bone in your body, as minor adjustments of balance occur virtually continuously. Move an arm about and you will feel wobbly compensations in many other parts of your body.

It should be clear that the state of balance we are talking about here is not static balance, but dynamic balance. In other words the body isn't fixed into a single position of absolute balance but is constantly making tiny adjustments that keep it moving within a very narrow area of relative balance. What feels so strange when you start getting into this balanced standing state is that this dynamic balance is not simply of the whole body being balanced on the feet, hingeing at the ankles, but a similar dynamic balance existing at most other skeletal joints throughout your body. You feel parts of yourself moving independently as they make compensating wobbles, where you'd always imagined you were just one fairly solid lump.

It wasn't till I'd achieved this delightfully wobbly standing state that I understood that talk of achieving a 'balanced' state with the AT actually meant that and wasn't just figurative talk. Naturally, like so many of the better modes of functioning, this balanced standing state will feel very strange and maybe rather scary at first. But you'll find it very restful and exhilarating too, and, some months later, will no doubt be looking back in horror to the stiff, fatiguing way you used to stand.

Sometime in 1993 I read somewhere about the findings of a survey that had been carried out on people's swaying when standing. You might fondly imagine that, as your balanced standing seems to set you constantly on the wobble, people using the AT should have come out high in the swaying stakes. Not so. What made the survey result news was that the AT people all had a much lesser degree of swaying. When you're in a released, balanced standing state your senses have become very much more acute than they were with all the muscles locking you up, and what seem like very large movements to you are actually minute. To an outside observer your seemingly wobbly state would appear to be one of remarkable stillness and repose.

With the benefits of this balanced state you can start putting into use every occasion when you're standing in a queue or otherwise waiting for something. For myself, quite apart from queues, I make constructive use of my roadside waits while hitch-hiking to or from major hiking routes. After a hard day's walk I actually become quite rested and refreshed while standing thus while awaiting a lift, allowing all the muscular tensions to fall away as I regain that sense of effortless balance.

Looking around

Most of us move our heads too much and too harshly when looking around at things, and grossly overuse the neck. A good guideline is always to let your eyes move first. Can you see what you want in fact without moving your head at all? If not, then let your eyes lead your head - and only your head - round or up or down. Only if you still can't see what you want should you allow your neck and your back to become involved in the movement. Indeed, if you're on your feet it would be better to turn on your legs to minimize any need to twist your spine. As always, you need to keep all movements to the furthest parts of your body that can achieve the required task; involvement of any part of your torso (including neck) is a last resort.

In bed

Many books and AT teachers seem to have little to say about this, apparently having written the bed off as a useful situation to gain improved functioning. Yet you spend a considerable proportion of your life in bed, so it makes sense to improve your body state while you're in it. If you don't, you'll probably be allowing a wide range of misuses to retain their hold over you longer than necessary, lessening the effectiveness of gains made during the day.

For one thing, see that you have good pillow support. Most pillows are best chucked out, including the specially shaped ones that are supposed to be good for you through giving neck support (even the much-vaunted Pro-Pilo). In general, what is needed is not neck support but correct head support, with nothing pressing on the neck. Indeed, there's an element of risk about pillows that 'support' the neck, for if you're sleeping on your side, consequently with pressure against the side of your neck, you may suffer some degree of restriction of your head's blood supply. Food for thought!

The head needs to be resting at a height and orientation that maintains good alignment between head, neck and the rest of the spine. Ordinary feather or polyester pillows develop a dent which prevents the head from keeping a good relationship with the neck. The best pillow I've used so far was a thick polyester-filled one graded 'extra firm' (at a B&B in Fort William), which developed hardly any dent and enabled my head to rest horizontally when I was lying on my side. Of course, if you aren't suffering neck trouble you may not wish to be so exacting, but it would still be wise to have a better pillow arrangement than the standard highly dentable pillows. Only trial and error will show what is the optimum height for you.

A further complication of the pillow height issue is that at least for broad-shouldered people like myself, optimum pillow height for lying on one's back is less than that for lying on one's side. Yet a pillow shaped to attempt the two tasks leads to dreadful head positions because you're hardly likely to place your head exactly on the appropriate part of the pillow for your current lying position when you're asleep; usually your head gets into an unedifying and harmful half-and-half position.

There are limits to what you can do for your back while you are lying on it, for the bed is unlikely to be sufficiently firm and supportive. However, when you are on your side you can encourage lengthening of your spine. With your legs drawn up a little, ease your pelvis down towards the foot end of the bed, and thrust your head a little further towards the head of the bed. Check that you are maintaining the 'forward and up' relationship of head to spine (albeit now on a horizontal plane) which you would be maintaining if standing. If you wake up in the night, recheck this and correct the position if necessary. If you keep doing this it shouldn't be long before you find that any bad head position ceases to recur. Also readjust your torso as necessary to eliminate any twisting that has developed.

I find that, particularly while lying on my side, I can release a lot of neck and shoulder tension through simply allowing myself to feel the pull of gravity as fully as possible. Being a light sleeper who wakes up several times every night, I find this a very constructive and pleasant way of using those wakeful spells. Further, I note that as soon as I gain a more released state in neck and shoulders I become much more sleepy again, and it may well be that by allowing that release I am actually shortening the wakeful spells, which might at some stage even cease to occur.

Give thought also to how you get out of bed. As with getting up from a lie-down on the floor, aim to arrive at the standing position in as released a state as possible. My own particular sequence when I hear my bedside alarm starts with a moment's pause to yawn and stretch the various parts of my body (taking probably no more than five seconds). To some extent this often actually tenses and shortens my spine, so the next step is about another five seconds of encouraging release and lengthening. Then with a single arm movement I pull the duvet half-off the bed and allow a feet-first sideways roll out of bed and onto the floor, keeping attention on maintaining a released state in the neck and maintaining a good head position. I pause for a couple of seconds in the standing position to check my state before moving round to start dressing.

Brushing your teeth

A very good example of improvement in everyday usage is in brushing your teeth. Most people indulge in dreadful distortions and excessive effort in this activity. You can learn to stop interfering with your neck and your head's upright poised condition while you brush; you can check yourself in a mirror. You learn to use minimum movement to achieve the brushing, with virtually no head involvement in the brushing movements at all. The work can be done mostly with wrist movement and a small degree of oscillation of the lower arm. Little or no upper arm movement should be necessary, at least most of the time, and the shoulder should not need to be moved at all. You may well need to hold your toothbrush in a new way to achieve this lighter and more efficient method of operation; do experiment.

It's also worth bearing in mind that most people brush their teeth in a skimpy and inefficient manner and with too much force, so it's worth putting some thought to how you might make your brushing more effective while keeping the brushing action light and gentle. For one thing, even the most efficient brushing can't be expected to clean the teeth fully, so improving your brushing is only one step in attending to your dental hygiene.

It would be worthwhile to review carefully how clean and healthy you want your teeth and gums to be, and work out from scratch how you might achieve that. I find that I can't maintain what I regard as good dental and oral hygiene without the use each evening of interdental sticks, standard dental floss, a little bit of dental 'tape' (for cleaning under a bridge), thumb and forefinger for gum massage (to help squeeze gunge from under the gum line) and the flat plus an edge of a handkerchief, all in addition to the most efficient brushing possible with fluoride anti-plaque formula toothpaste. The somewhat blunt-ended interdental sticks (Boots own brand) are used not only between teeth, but are also used for gently scratching away hardened plaque from my lower front teeth, and in addition are carefully and gently run around in pockets that have formed between gums and teeth at certain sites. No doubt decomposing food left in such pockets is a major cause of many people's bad breath.

Use the oral hygiene review as an example of the principle you need to apply to all your everyday activities, and, bit by bit, apply the principle. Ultimately it's your choice how thoroughgoing you are about this - I know I'm extremely unusual in the lengths I go to for oral hygiene, for example - but the more you move away from habit and towards thinking-through in carrying out regular 'chores' the better will be your overall progress in assimilating the AT, and the greater will be the improvements in your life.

Eating meals

Most people involve the neck and torso by sticking the neck out and bending the shoulders and upper back forwards. Train yourself to remain in a balanced upright seated position, and thus to transfer food/drink to a greater height than you've been accustomed to. When you must briefly lean forward, let yourself tilt forwards, hingeing at the hip joints, maintaining your head/neck relationship so that you aren't actually bending in the torso and can lightly hinge back to the upright balanced state.

'Monkey position'

Remember always to use the so-called monkey position, which your teacher should demonstrate at some stage, instead of leaning or bending over. This applies to all leaning or bending forward or down, however trivial. Check frequently that you're hingeing correctly at the hip joints, not in the lower back. Also check that in your concern not to let the latter happen you aren't overdoing things and actually bending your lower back into a concavity by pulling your bottom up. A mirror will help. Remember too that 'monkey position' is a misleading term, because we aren't talking about a fixed position; it's really more of a dynamic state. Your body will not like a fixed Monkey position.

Indeed, it would be better to drop the term 'monkey position' altogether. As I say, to me it is not a position at all but a sort of dynamic state - in which, with good functioning, all the transient positions we go through (including standing, lying and sitting) could be seen as expressions of "monkey state", which therefore might be renamed e.g. "better human state". 

Breathing

It's a normal habit to catch or hold your breath and to make various quiet grunts or sighs when you indulge in any sort of effort. It's time now to let go of all such practices. Your tasks will be less effortful without them, and you will be allowing release to occur in the chest muscles. For the most free and released breathing, allow yourself to feel that the air you inhale at each breath is spreading out the sides of your chest, not the front or the back. However, if you are aware of the need for more release and broadening to occur across the front or the back of your upper torso, then within your mind direct the air flow into the front or your chest or your upper back, as appropriate. While this presumably makes no difference to where the air physically passes in the lungs, just to allow yourself to feel as though you're filling your back during an inhalation will encourage actual release and broadening there. You can then revert to directing the broadening to the sides of your chest, so balancing release in front and back.

Learn also to use both diaphragm and chest while breathing. Different AT teachers tell you different things about this. Some emphasize diaphragm breathing, some emphasize chest breathing, some insist on extremely deep breathing. For everyday purposes it's a pretty good assumption that normal breathing will use both chest and diaphragm and will be a little deeper and slower than you were accustomed to before taking up the AT. Certainly practise extremely deep breathing, especially to gain release during lie-downs, but for everyday use this would probably be reserved for situations where you'd otherwise have got out of breath. When making good (walking) speed up a steep mountain slope I do find myself breathing very deeply, and virtually never nowadays get to the point of panting.

Walking

The better mode of walking feels effortless, and relies on reflex anti-gravity responses. To walk in the better way, firstly you need always to pay attention to maintaining a lengthened spine and lightly poised head. While doing so, you let yourself start falling forward in the required direction. You should be hingeing forward at the ankles only, without any bending or sagging forward. In response to this falling, one leg and then the other swings forward (as distinct from being put forward), with the knee leading and the foot swinging loosely from the ankle. Each trailing leg receives a powerful push forwards-and-up from an involuntary strong flick of the foot caused by a reflex response of the big calf muscle. This mode of walking gives you the sense of your head leading you, even though it isn't being stuck out in front; propulsion is felt to be coming from behind. This is such an efficient means of walking that I find I can even walk up steep mountain slopes without losing that delightful sense of falling forward and being propelled forwards-and-up from behind. Walking like this gives optimum leverage to and puts minimum stress on the knee joints, too.

When you start trying out this better mode of walking you may well find that it sends you racing off in a crazily uncontrolled way. No cause for alarm, though; I did just the same in my first experimentations. At least it shows that the crude principle does indeed work, and all one has to do then is gradually to refine it. That sense of letting yourself fall forward is actually an extremely subtle thing; it's something that you need to think but hardly do physically unless you're in a hell of a hurry.

It struck me that even when my pace is very leisurely, the initiation of walking is remarkably like an upright and looser version of the way that competition sprinters start. This has an interesting advantage, in that as you start moving, if you suddenly find that you need to move off unexpectedly quickly or even run, you're already moving in the right manner to start running efficiently without putting a sudden heavy stress on the knees.

While walking in the better way you may be able to correct or at least minimize certain extant or developing foot problems. Pay attention to where on the sole of your feet your centre of gravity passes over. Many people, particularly as they get older, allow the centre of gravity to pass over and press heavily on the ball of the foot - the basal joint of the big toe - which can result in painful problems. As you walk, the foot that is taking most of your weight needs to be oriented so that as the pressure moves to the front it becomes pretty evenly spread along the foot's hingeing axis, that is the line of basal joints of the toes. You may need to turn your feet a little inwards or outwards to make this adjustment. As with other improvements of usage, it may feel awkward at first when you walk with your feet so adjusted, but persistent attention to this will soon lead to the improved way being easier and feeling better than the old habitual way. However, this can be quite a complex matter and it should be discussed with your AT teacher.

Even that isn't the end of the story. I find that this mode of walking seems to give me some additional sort of awareness of the state of lengthening of my spine, which I don't have nearly so much while standing or sitting. While walking, even just around town, I use a particular image of mine: I imagine that I have a little tail that is a rigid extension of the bottom of my spine, and I allow it to drop down, so by lever action gently minimizing the hollow in my lower back and allowing release and lengthening there. In that lengthened state I get an exhilarating feeling of a levitational force rising from each propulsive flick of my feet, up my legs to the base of my spine, which transmits it up to the top of my head, which in turn draws me out perpetually in a slightly forward-of-'up' direction. It's not only a wonderful feeling that gives an almost transcendental quality even to ordinary town walking, but it's also a clear indication that a very good body state is being easily maintained - and maintained by the elimination of effort!

Looking at my reflection in shop windows as I walk, I hardly see an overall tilt unless I'm hurrying, but what is more noticeable is the looseness of my legs, which can clearly be seen to be applying propulsion more from the rear than in 'normal' (i.e. bad) walking.

Two further advantages I've found in the better way of walking are: (1) once the method was reasonably mastered, my feet were not hitting the ground heavily on the heel as they used to, and (2) there is less up-and-down and virtually no side-to-side motion with each step, which means that less effort is being wasted and my forward motion has a smoother, straighter quality.

Train yourself to walk in the better way all the time. Your teacher should demonstrate it to you sometime or other. While walking, let your arms hang and swing loosely, letting the wrists and finger joints be loose too. Imagine even that you're allowing all the bones to fall right out of their joints. Really free arms will very likely feel a trifle out of joint until you've got thoroughly used to that state.

If you go hiking, you may be able to use your rucksack to give you tactile feedback on the state of lengthening of your back. This depends on the design of rucksack. Back-hugging ones will probably be wrongly shaped to hug a healthily lengthened back properly and so may encourage a new bad shape for the back. For a long time I used a Karrimor Condor 50-65 rucksack, whose only contact with the back is the lumbar pad against the lowest part of the back, and shoulder-blade pads on the shoulder straps, and this worked extremely well as a gauge of the state of my back while walking. Whatever rucksack you use, it's important to resist all the old urges to hunch your shoulders against the weight of the pack, and to let them just sit where they belong. I myself achieved a great deal of release and improved functioning in back and shoulders on long hard hikes during my first six months of applying the AT, thanks to my rucksack, even over terrain fit to wreck a king, such as roughest Dartmoor.

Back against wall

This could loosely be described as an exercise as it involves a little movement (a very slow bending and unbending of the legs from a standing position). The aim is to encourage lengthening and widening while upright. The point about lying down is that you remove virtually all the normal gravity stimuli that trigger your ingrained misuse patterns. As soon as you're upright, however, old habits of response to gravity start taking over again, and the spine relapses into considerably more than the gentle residual curvature which it should have. Working on yourself with your back against a wall enables you to work against those misuse patterns in a more active way than you can during a lie-down, and is probably most appropriate when you've already made a fair amount of progress. It can also help you refine your Monkey position. Some AT books describe this procedure in detail; read up from one of them before trying it, as its usefulness depends on careful attention to yourself.

Hands on back of chair

This is another 'exercise' described in some books, and which some AT teachers teach. It is supposed to be very powerful if carried out with sufficient attention to detail, but to my sensibility it is so incredibly boring that it could put some people off from the AT for life! If I believe anything at all, I believe that application of the AT should never be boring and should even be fun; I haven't used this exercise, at least yet.

11. Some common problems and questions.

I don't see how I can possibly 'just let go' of lifelong habits!*

No cause for alarm! No two people progress at the same speed, and each lets go of her habits of misuse at whatever rate is possible for her. In practice many habits fall away almost or even completely unnoticed as the body is introduced to better, freer modes of functioning. On the other hand all of us also have habits of misuse that are much slower to eliminate, and these require constant vigilance to step out of them again as they recur. It's still true, however, that for each area of misuse a time comes when the body recognises the better mode of functioning as feeling right and anything else as uncomfortable and wrong - at which point you've won that particular battle.

* Later note (March 2007) - I now strongly recommend use of The Work to enable you to let go of such beliefs, for by doing that you help free yourself for release of the lifelong habits that you'd thought you couldn't let go of.

How do I tell when muscular release is occurring?

This can be quite a puzzler for people in their early stages of learning the AT - especially as different people seem to get subjectively different experiences from the process of muscular release. It's all very well to say that it's a sensation of a sort of letting-go or softening, but if you haven't experienced it, you're not really that much wiser. If you're such a person, try the following little demonstration.

Clench a fist firmly and hold it like that for perhaps 30 seconds or even a minute, just until you've got used to that degree of continuous effort being exerted on the closed hand and hardly notice it. Now slowly let go of the excess force, leaving your hand still closed but lightly so. As you release that excess force, notice the sensations in the hand and lower arm. In a rather crude way, that should give you some idea of the sensation of the releasing of chronically tense muscles. It's a delightful soft gentle feeling. Note that this is only a suggested demonstration, not an exercise you have to do!

I thought my pains were supposed to go, but I'm actually getting new ones!

So, you started using the AT with, say, certain neck and back pains and the first thing you wanted to happen was for you to become pain free. Novices to the AT are often rather taken aback at the lack of attention the teacher seems to give to the presence of particular pains. In fact very often AT teachers direct attention away from the painful area and may seem to give more attention elsewhere. This is because the AT is a whole body technique because of the interrelated nature of all the muscular tensions. You cannot achieve much by concentrating on just one part of the body, and indeed if that part is hurting, you are probably making it more difficult to achieve release there by concentrating on it in preference to the rest of the body.

There's no telling how quickly your original pains will go. In some cases such pains disappear dramatically at the first application of AT principles, but even if yours take a long time to go you'll almost certainly find yourself much less troubled by them in the meantime. However, you should expect to get new pains from time to time as underused muscles are brought back into service and certain bones move back into better alignment at the joints. Such pains are to be regarded as very good signs of progress, and they would go away again as the particular muscles, tendons and ligaments become strengthened as they are applied to their original function once more.

It's worth keeping in mind that even your original pains can reappear to some extent, long after you thought they'd all gone for good. It may serve as a warning that you're getting a little careless and allowing a particular misuse to creep in again (in which case the remedy is obvious), or it may be that something has happened which has temporarily increased a level of tension that you can't yet address directly. I know about this because it's happened to me very occasionally with my neck pain. The pain recurred for a few weeks each time following particular situations that increased my basic level of anxiety. This sort of thing is bound to happen less with time as one's level of tension continues to reduce.

I haven't felt any of those signs of release and positive change you were talking about.

For some people, such as myself, the release and resultant feelings of deep relief which speedily followed the taking up of the AT have proved to be a powerful and wonderful - one could almost say dramatic - experience. Many people, however, experience their changes in a much gentler and less spectacular fashion, and some don't get any particular feelings that they could relate to beneficial change. But if you're one of the latter, be assured that this in itself doesn't mean that the AT isn't working for you. As long as you are genuinely applying the AT and are at all open to change in your life, the changes will be occurring, whether or not you can feel them. Check yourself periodically for positive change, by observing your poise and alignment in a mirror, and reviewing the way you're living your life and responding to people and situations. The chances are that when you do such reviews you will realize that despite no particular feelings of release, positive changes have indeed been occurring. Your AT teacher should be able to help you confirm that such changes have been occurring.

I feel that I'm not doing very well; perhaps the AT is really too difficult for me.

Teacher problems

Apart from the exceptions noted below under Student problems, if you feel that you're not doing well in your lessons it's unlikely to be any fault of yours. Unfortunately some AT teachers unawarely apply teaching methods that are based on the 'trying-to-do' that blights our educational system. An AT teacher with this problem tends to be in a continual state of frustration as he gets his students to try to do things right, to try to let go fully of habitual interference with a limb, and so on. He may well expend a lot of energy coaxing and encouraging his students to get things right, so appearing to his students to be in the right himself. His act is likely to be so convincing that nobody has ever told him of his problem, though many of his students would feel that they're not doing well, and would assume that the apparent difficulties are their fault, not the teacher's. When compared against other AT teachers he may well be regarded as something of a 'fundamentalist', and be looked up to by many as a true expert. Nonetheless what such a teacher is putting across is in a subtle way the very antithesis of the basic principles of the AT, and should not be accepted. The underlying problem is an ingrained 'authority' or 'teacher' pattern, and such patterns are very difficult to interrupt and release*. Unfortunately making sure that your teacher has full professional qualifications gives you no guarantee that you won't encounter this problem**.

* Actually, any such teacher, if motivated to do so, could dissolve such a pattern simply and easily, using The Work and/or (but preferably 'and') the EFT.

** Unfortunately it appears that there are many qualified AT teachers with this sort of problem, who hadn't been filtered out as should have happened during their their training courses. This actually puts a great big question mark over the integrity of the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (STAT) in its implementation of its training courses. The STAT tries to keep AT teaching restricted to just those who've been on its training courses, yet they charge big fees for those courses and, I can only surmise, are reluctant to deny qualification to any of their students except in cases of gross problems - not understanding that an ingrained 'authority' or 'teacher' pattern is a serious contra-indication for teaching the AT, and cannot readily be dissolved by use of the AT.

If the STAT made ongoing use of The Work and the EFT part of the training for all their students, then a much higher and more consistent standard of new AT teacher would result.

Actually, with the AT as in any true healing or self realization method, what really counts is not professional qualifications but the experience, awareness and integrity of the individual teacher - something which cannot really be taught. I myself have had no professional AT training and do not run a formal AT teaching practice, yet I have informally taught the AT to the odd friends and healing clients, and this is extremely effective. There must be other people who have a deep understanding of the AT, based in experience, who are already effectively or potentially AT teachers, who actually wouldn't be much improved by professional training because they've already 'got it' and are already better than the many AT teachers who are professionally trained but still haven't really 'got it' (i.e. who have learnt all the rules and methods but still lack the deep awareness and insight which makes a truly good AT teacher).

The only reason why I've not offered to teach the AT formally is that then I would need to have insurance for it, and, as I understand it, I wouldn't be able to insure such a practice without having a formal AT qualification.

If you have a teacher with such an authority or unawareness issue, just more encouragement is not what you need. Sure, it's best for you to tell the teacher of the problem, just in case he or she can change his/her whole teaching approach, but you'll almost certainly need to change to another teacher. Any good AT teacher would not have you trying to get things right (and thus feeling that you're failing). Trying to 'do' an un-doing is an absurd contradiction. In good AT teaching, the teacher takes you as you are and rejoices with you in whatever degree of release and new insight you do achieve. In each lesson a good teacher would be taking you on an enjoyable journey of self-discovery, which is far removed from trying to do things or get things right. Such a teacher will sometimes point out particular habits of body misuse that you have which interfere in your gaining improved functioning, but would encourage you to regard these observations as good news because they represent areas in which you will eventually get great improvement.

You would thus come out of an AT lesson feeling that you've had a most enjoyable and both relaxing and invigorating experience. You would come out of the lesson feeling good about yourself. Both in and outside of lessons your AT experience would be one of allowing and observing, not trying. It's up to you to ensure that you have a teacher who helps to make it like that for you.

Student problems

Any AT teacher, whether good or indifferent, may recognise that a particular student has seemingly intractable problems in coming to terms with the principles of the AT - perhaps a student who through no fault of her own and despite the teacher's best efforts persistently misunderstands certain key elements of the technique. In such cases there are limits to what even the best of teachers can do. In some cases it may be possible to enable the student to gain release in certain areas which actually result in a clearing of the mental block, but a teacher may decide to ask a student to discontinue the lessons if it appears that the problem is going to continue blocking progress for the foreseeable future. No responsible AT teacher would keep accepting fees from students who are clearly wasting their time and money.

There can also be another situation, where everything seems to be going right with the teacher, except that you feel that you're not getting enough expressions of approval by way of encouragement. You long for lots of 'Well done!' and 'My, you have grown since last week!' comments on your progress.

In all fairness, the problem there may be that you have the wrong expectations of your teacher. The sort of accolades that you treasured or longed for from your parents and schoolteachers were part of an oppressive end-gaining power game. With your AT teacher you need to set aside the expectation of that sort of personal approval (which implies the possibility of disapproval), because if your teacher is any good she inherently accepts you and delights in your progress as a voyage of self-discovery rather than the achieving of particular goals as part of an end-gaining strategy. Nothing in the AT is about striving to please Teacher, so it's not appropriate to expect specific 'pleased Teacher' responses to encourage you. Of course, if your teacher really doesn't seem delighted in you, or actually communicates frustration over your difficulties, then refer back to the previous paragraphs on teacher and student problems.

Your everyday progress

From time to time it may seem that the momentum has gone from your progress. You're 'doing' all the right things - lying down sessions and operating in various improved ways in everyday life - yet little more seems to be releasing or opening out now. If that's the case, don't despair! There are several possible reasons for your observation.

It's very, very normal to have surges of progress and then rather disconcerting periods of apparently little change. However, if you've finished your regular lessons and so are not normally taking lessons any more, a period of apparently little progress might be a sign for you to book a one-off 'booster' lesson to help check that you're still operating on the right lines. It might be, too, that at that point the teacher could put you in touch with a new area of release which was unavailable before but is now ready and just awaiting a gentle prompting from outside. In the meantime you can rejoice in the fact that you're consolidating previous gains, and, in whatever time is right for you, new major releases and other changes will occur.

An apparent plateau in your progress could also be a sign that your next important step is some new and positive decision in your everyday life. You may well find that by making some bold decision that you'd not quite dared to before (or maybe hadn't even thought of!), you set off a whole new layer of release and physical improvements.

It's also worth checking that you're not stifling your progress by fixing yourself in stiff facsimiles of 'Alexander positions'. Quite a lot of people do. Such people are sometimes referred to as Alexandroids. These are people who have got it fundamentally wrong about the AT, and follow all the rules and tips to the letter, except that they've failed to understand the flexible and dynamic nature of the free, balanced state or of the process that gets you there. A lesson with a good AT teacher should quickly point you in the right direction if you are beginning to get stuck into 'Alexandroidism'.

Another cause of apparent lack of progress which might explain your problem is that - paradoxically - you've fallen into the very common habit of trying to make progress. Even an AT teacher who doesn't overtly urge students to try to make progress or get things right can inadvertently trigger your own 'trying' habits. Usually a good teacher will recognise that this is happening and direct you to set aside the whole idea of trying to make progress or trying to get muscular release, etc. But even if your teacher has not addressed this possibility, it's up to you, if you want to maximize your progress, to check and recheck that you're setting aside the trying urge. The mere stopping of the 'trying' habit is an important un-doing which will allow further physical release to occur. Think about that!

Finally, it may