For many centuries, we humans have known that the pursuit of our wholeness is necessary for the education, healing, and strengthening of the whole person. Alexander taught us that the real significance of his Technique lies with the fact that humans function as a whole and can only be fundamentally changed as a whole. will truncate it to two lines.

The jigsaw puzzle of pain in the United States has a whopping piece missing. This piece impacts millions of adults and kids, contributes to costs greater than cancer, heart disease and diabetes combined and has repercussions for every future generation. Now lost, the part was actually in our hands a century ago.

I respectfully disagree with Larry Ball’s statement "the Alexander Technique has suffered great harm for decades because of the rejection by our Alexander community of the value of our wholeness in our Alexander work". What part of the Alexander community is Larry referring to? I think that most Alexander teachers I know would agree that while teaching, we do our best to address the whole "psychophysical" person: not just how they sit, stand, and move; but their emotional reactions as well - is this person anxious and fearful? Are they shy? Are they breathing freely? Are they very self-critical? What is their primary learning style - visual, kinesthetic, or aural? Are they analytical or intuitive? That, to me, is wholeness in teaching.

For me, the primary purpose of the Alexander Technique is to help educate, support, and heal the whole individual. Today we know that our wholeness is a necessary element in the education, support, and healing of the whole individual. I join with John Dewey’s belief in the profound value of Alexander’s work: “The technique of Mr. Alexander gives to the educator a standard of psycho-physical health – in which what we call morality is included. It supplies the ‘means whereby’ this standard may be progressively and endlessly achieved, becoming a conscious possession of the one educated…. It bears the same relation to education that education itself bears to all other human activities.” (emphasis added.)

For more than 100 years and since FM Alexander began his trials of communicating his work to others, lessons, teaching, and training have focused on a hands-on approach. Alexander discovered that to properly communicate his principles of good use, he needed to combine vocal communication with touch and direction through the use of his hands placed on the recipient. From our earliest days of taking lessons, training and teaching, this has been the bedrock of the study of the Alexander Technique.

There you are working at your desk and your back starts to hurt. So you sit up “straight” and after just a few minutes you are in pain and so you hunch over again and that doesn’t work either. This is “computer posture”! This hunched over pattern can become so entrenched that even when you are standing up you might feel and be hunched over. No amount of pulling yourself upwards or collapsing downwards into relaxation offers a SUSTAINABLE solution. So what to do? Here is one great way to reduce pain:

When students come to the Alexander Technique to deal with pain they are experiencing, that pain can come from many different sources, i.e. lingering effects of trauma, chronic pain from mis-use or a congenital condition. Oftentimes the student is faced with pain that persists even after steps have been taken to correct misuse or an injury has healed. It is not uncommon that when working with such a student at the chair, the act of sitting can set off the student’s pain. This pain might be anywhere, the joints of the legs, the back, the neck, even the (seemingly unrelated) shoulders. When the pain occurs, the student reacts to the pain by tightening in protection, as is only natural.