Below are all the pieces of explanations, organised by:
The Alexander Technique is for everyone! From almost any perspective, it is hard to imagine someone whose life wouldn't be made better in some aspect through contact with the Alexander technique. From my perspective I would go even broader and suggest that most problems faced by humans can be reduced through the Alexander Technique (obviously for cancer, go to an oncologist, and for dismantling systems of oppression, change at the level of the individual alone won't be enough).
But this very breadth makes the Alexander Technique seem like snake oil. For a narrow description of the Alexander Technique it makes sense to start with a narrow pinning down of who the Alexander Technique helps and why.
Artists such as dancers, singers, musicians and actors often experience difficulties during performance related to
Because the Alexander Technique helps us gain agency over the quality of our presence and the focus of our attention, this can help with many of the qualities that can not be improved through technical practice alone.
Additionally, when seeking precise technical control of their craft, artists sometimes find themselves in a micro-managing mindset with a lot of excess mental and physical tension. The Alexander Technique helps with exploring what is helpful/necessary and what is not.
For athletes, it is important to not waste effort and energy where it is not needed. The Alexander Technique helps ask the question of whether any movement can be made more easy, freeing up energy that can be directed towards speed, endurance, faster recovery times and less risk of injury from strainful repetition.
Pain is strange. Sometimes it appears to be attributable to a direct physical cause. In other cases, scans and other medical diagnoses can struggle to identify the underlying issue. In all cases, pain appear to be a top-down perceptive construct created in the brain. The Alexander Technique can help by finding greater ease in movement, often reducing the excessive strain placed on an area where pain is experienced.
More than that, as it explores the question of where we have a sense of safety and agency in our mind-body experiences, the Alexander Technique can also bring about changes in how and when the brain constructs experiences of pain.
People with neurodivergence who habitually mask can find it difficult to know which parts of their behaviour are them and which parts are the mask (or the trauma of having to mask/interact with a world that is not designed for their needs). Autism and ADHD seem to affect how attention is regulated, in ways that can be experienced positively (the ability to hyperfocus) or negatively (the experience of distress from needing to rapidly shift attention). Last, current discourse around neurodivergence often suggests an essentialist “you have X, so you are unable to do Y”, which is unhelpful unless it is always true for a particular person. The Alexander Technique can help with all these aspects as it works with our sense of self, our regulation of our attention, awareness and perception, and the question of what is actually within our agency at any given moment.
Many branches of philosophy, particular phenomenology are concerned with the subjective human experience: what is it “like” to have free will, agency, perception, an embodied mind, etc.? As the Alexander Technique can be described as the study of thinking in relation to movement, many of these questions can be asked through the Alexander Technique, particularly in terms of having counterfactual new experiences that contradict what is assumed to be true.
As gender dysphoria is a sensation that is unpleasant and hard to address (even through surgery, clothing choices, etc.) it is often pushed away. The Alexander Technique’s approaches of self-compassion, allowing the “true self” to emerge, and bringing mind and body into alignment and freedom can help, as experienced for example by Jonathon Heather.
When learning or improving a skill, some degree of breaking down and cognitive control is required during the learning process that is the expected to transfer into “muscle memory”. Something at a subconscious, habitual level will take over.
Some excess tension from the learning process often carries over and is remembered along with the skill. Overly focused concentration while learning sometimes gets in the way of learning itself by reducing our mobility and adaptability.
The Alexander Technique helps shed whatever excess is not needed, both during and as a result of learning.
Chronic or long-term conditions tend to be multi-factor and to have a "limit" where the medical profession says "there's not really much more we can do". The Alexander Technique does not propose to cure or treat the conditions themselves (whether they be Parkinsons, chemotherapy, or hypermobility). However, it can help with managing the experience of living with the condition and finding the adaptability and resources necessary to renew the discovery of "what it's like today" so that it is no worse that it needs to be.
Sometimes, the Alexander Technique helps more than expected with some factor (for example finding a stronger sense of connection through the joints for people with hypermobility) and the impact of that factor can be reduced, resulting in an easier experience of daily life, even the though the underlying condition is still fully present.
Change is often conventionally thought of as a combination of goals, feasibility and discipline: once you have figured out what you want and how you’re going to get it, only lack of discipline can stop you! Yet people get stuck in a cycle, wondering if they are not trying hard enough, if they are using the wrong approach or if some goals are just unrealistic.
The Alexander Technique offers that trying too hard can get in our way. There is a discomfort in what is new and unknown that tends to resist being pushed through but can easily relax given the chance. There is also a tension in trying hard that forces existing patterns to bend… and then they bounce back. The Alexander Technique tends to find a new ways for needs to be met before asking the old ways to give way.
My strong belief in this approach is why my Alexander Technique practice is called “Quiet Change”.
When working with people who need (and are maybe paying for) our help, it’s easy to be overinvested. Therapists, body- workers, coaches and teachers are familiar with this problem. The self-care skills needed can be framed as having “healthy boundaries”, but how that is carried out in mind and body can be overlooked. Boundaries that are too visible or come into place with sudden force can be detrimental to the helping relationship.
The Alexander Technique teacher’s skillset includes being able to keep our own wellbeing as a priority, even as we enter into a helping relationship with another person. As the means whereby this is accomplished is applying the Alexander Technique, it is also a skill that can be taught as part of Alexander Technique lessons.
FM Alexander devoted much of his books, particularly Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual to hypothesising why humans got themselves in such a state that they needed the Alexander Technique to restore what seemed to be a birthright. He hypothesised that the increase in complexity of civilisation had outpaced human's evolutionary ability to keep up.
Although many would agree with this today, it's not an argument I've ever found persuasive. It also has something of a reactionary feel to it, hearkening back to the "simpler days of yore" (Though FM Alexander's solution is more progressive than conservative). What does ring true for me is that the Alexander Technique solves a deeply human problem that is felt particularly strongly in Western society. So I find it particularly interesting to speculate about what this problem might be.
The separation of mind and body as distinct dimensions of human experiences is strongly built in to much of our current culture, particularly in the Western world. Because of this, our body experiences are often described and felt as 'other', and it is considered relatively normal to have a limited relationship with our body and our senses, provided the 'mind' is able to use the body in a satisfactory manner for its own goals (work, play, relationships and so on). Even in modern somatic/embodiment methods, the body is often considered as a separate intelligence to be tapped into by the mind. People's experiences of the Alexander Technique (and of other approaches that clearly accomplish a similar objective) suggest that there is a complex relationship between thought, perception and movement that can be explored through a form of wholeness where mind and body are not distinct, but integrated into a single experience.
As we experience events throughout our lives, starting in early childhood, we develop habitual strategies, particularly for dealing with difficulty and uncertainty. Some of these involve forms of physical bracing, such as holding our shoulders or hips tight. Others invovle mental bracing, such as holding on tightly to our beliefs and identity. Although these bracings can be an effective strategy, providing us with a sense of safety and agency, they typically trade off a degree of movability and adaptability and often outlast their usefulness in the short or long term.
Maybe the way we made ourselves small to be unnoticed by school bullies no longer serves us in adulthood. Or maybe the degree to which we cut ourselves off from the overwhelm of a busy street in a big city carries over unhelpfully when we are home with our family.
The Alexander Technique allows us to question our habits of bracing and construct new habits where safety comes from being very quick to adapt to new circumstances, rather than being braced against them.
One of the human tendencies addressed by the Alexander Technique is “end gaining”, which can be described as allowing the desire for an outcome (“what”) to take precedence over the means whereby it is achieved (“how”). This is a bit like caring more for reaching a destination than how expensive the trip was, whether the route taken was optimal, whether the journey was stressful and whether any traffic accidents were caused along the way.
The Alexander Technique helps us explore how the end gaining tendency affects us in our daily activities and notice (and intercept) those times where we are so focused on the outcome that we use ourselves poorly, with unnecessary strain or without finding enjoyment in the process.
FM Alexander defines “sensory appreciation” as the processes responsible for the “feeling” which we experience. Nowadays we might describe this as perception, conceived as a combination of top-down and bottom-up processes: sensory input from our body and from the outside world is made sense of through the lens of our past experiences and current state. Alexander’s contention was that guidance (i.e. the way we bring ourselves - mind, body and spirit - into action, consciously or subconsciously) that is based on sensory appreciation in inherently faulty: the lens of our current habits distorts our sense of what feels right or necessary.
For example, someone who pulls their head back and pushes their pelvis forward when they “stand up straight” cannot effect change by relying on the feeling of “standing up straight”: if they had a good feeling of what “standing up straight” entails, they would already be doing it.
The Alexander Technique offers two paths to address this issue. The first is to work on guidance that is not based directly on what feels right or wrong but rather what is reasoned out to be desirable.
For example, without interference on our part and given an intent to stand upright, the most logical thing a human body-mind will do is rebalance to the most “upright” that can be achieved that day. It will “feel” wrong because it is inhabitual but will have other qualities. This is the second path. Our sensory appreciation improves and qualities such as ease, adaptability and even “newness” come to feel “right” over time.
Modern life is notorious for its sedentarity. Katy Bowman has coined the concept of a “movement diet” and notes that even quite active people tend to not have a very nutritious movement diet. Everything is flat and smooth and cushioned. This lowers our adaptability and limits the variety of movements we can engage in, making our usual experience of life less sensory and quite still. This is particularly obvious for people who spend a lot of time sitting on couches or in front of a computer.
The Alexander Technique recognises the lack of physical adaptability this way of living induces and offers an exploration of the question “what would happen if you didn’t brace”? From there an experience of greater mobility and richer sensation to emerge that makes us more able to either cope with long periods of sitting, it recognise that we are not coping and need to move.
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Humans appear to be animals with an exceptionally rich inner experience. We spend a lot of time imagining futures, making up stories and remembering the past.
One tradeoff is that we spend less of our attention anchored in the present moment and must develop habits that allow us to compensate for any unexpected changes. These habits tend to include unnecessary tension and bracing. Another tradeoff is that our rich imagination is very quick to anticipate what might happen next and to rush our movement into it, causing our response to be proportional to what we imagine will happen, rather than what actually happens.
Our brain can be thought of as a constant prediction machine that models the world and chooses appropriate actions based on what it has done previously in similar circumstances. As the outcome of such a choice is almost always some kind of physical movement (even the tiny movements our eyes and forehead make while we are thinking!), any regularly made choices will show up as patterns of movement, which in turn will feed back into the brain's model of the world. To make the process more efficient, some of these choices get bundled together in sequence, creating the basis for habits.
Because this is a predictive process, the brain is often planning actions in anticipation of what is happening, particularly where such anticipations have been effective in the past. So when we go to pick up a kettle, rather than wait to find out how heavy it is, the brain is already expecting it to be a certain weight (or more) and prepares accordingly. By time the weight has been perceived any excess tension is already there. Worse, while carrying out habits, new sensory information is perceived less. This makes sense. But it also creates an environment where the brain (and its control over our thinking and movement) is often not adapting fluidly to what is actually happening, so long as our intention is carried out: we picked up the kettle successfully, albeit inefficiently.
In addition, we have the kind of brain that is regulated by a pre-frontal cortex. It intervenes to keep our behaviour in line with our longer term goals, social niceties and so on. Part of this regulation appears to use some level of motor control, literally inhibiting or slowing down certain reactions by adding tension in the body to prevent it and other parts of our brain from running off and do their own thing.
The Alexander Technique works on applying inhibition without bracing. It gives the experience of having 'space' between stimulus and response, as if the predictive brain is be simultaneously more responsive to new sensory information, but less likely to jump ahead when it doesn't need to
There is some consensus that the Alexander Technique can be partly defined as the principles and skills that FM Alexander was teaching. There is consequently substantial disagreement as to what those skills and principles are (or at least whether various reframings of them are correct or not).
Both typically and slightly ironically for the Alexander Technique (which is particulary interested in means and ends), some of the skills below are more a desired outcome and others the tools to get there. But these roles can flip. The tool of having greater awareness can become a pleasure to be enjoyed for its own sake. The outcome of having less reactivity can be the skill we bring to the table in a difficult meeting. With this in mind, most teachers probably have a succinct outcome as their primary objective and multiple favourite tools of how to get there.
Overall the skillset brought by the Alexander Technique is peculiar because of its embodied and experiential nature: the knowledge cannot be explained purely with words or read in a book or a website.
The Alexander Technique can be described as mainly teaching two core “thinking skills”. The ability to inhibit and the ability to direct.
Inhibition is the ability to not respond in a habitual way to a given stimulus. This can happen in a general sense (we have come to a state of “quiet” where we do not respond habitually to any stimulus unless we choose to), or a more specific sense where we are able to withhold consent to responding in a certain way to a specific stimulus. Inhibition allows a new response to emerge, using our mind-body’s intelligence to find a way of responding that is not the habitual one, without having to know or micro-manage what the new response should be. For example, when my boss asks me why I have not yet finished the task I started last week, my habitual response might be to become defensive and over-explain the complexity of the task. By inhibiting that response I can hopefully find myself with the resources to understand an explain with clarity what the underlying issue is: the task is partially done, I have competing obligations, I don’t have sufficient knowledge, etc.
Note that although the “stimulus” and ”response” are used here, I am not making the strong claim that this is an accurate description of how we relate to the world.
Direction is the ability to organise our mind-body through thought that is typically directed at our physical organisation. FM Alexander described this as giving “guiding orders”. He distinguished primary directions from secondary directions.
Primary directions contribute to the inhibition of certain typical human responses that disorganise the body and allow a natural organisation to emerge (typically thought of as an expansive organisation of the head, neck, back, legs and arms where the head goes forward and up of the neck and back, the back lengthens and widens, the legs go forward and away from the back and the arms and shoulders widen). These thoughts can be carried through into movement, so that whatever movement happens, it does not disrupt the organisation.
Secondary directions are specific to a person or activity and involve the thoughts that deepen the whole pattern of organisation, or allow the inhibition of certain specific responses.
As the experience of successful direction is that it furthers inhibition, and the experience of successful inhibition is that it furthers direction, they can be thought of as being two sides to the same coin or of being in a mutually beneficial relationship. Although direction and its result may be described in purely physiological terms of how the mio-fascio-(neuro)-skeletal system is organised, it is often experienced as something deeper so that our engagement with the world integrates mind, body and spirit.
FM Alexander defines “sensory appreciation” as the processes responsible for the “feeling” which we experience. Nowadays we might describe this as perception, conceived as a combination of top-down and bottom-up processes: sensory input from our body and from the outside world is made sense of through the lens of our past experiences and current state.
Because our ability to respond to the world and to ourselves is only as good as our perception, the Alexander Technique offers the potential to improve it. Under improved sensory appreciation, our mind-body will naturally adapt to match our intention where it might previously have failed to register the mistmatch.
One of the ways we can experience ourselves is “reactive”. In the sense that something happens or someone says something and our response feels immediate and outside of our control.
To a degree, this is a desirable feature. When something happens, we want to be able to quickly respond and adapt if necessary. But we feel on edge and overwhelmed, or lash out at our partner, the response feels disproportionate.
The Alexander Technique offers the tools to withhold consent to a specific reaction, become quieter and less reactive in general and orient to ourselves and to the world in a way that gives us greater agency.
This can be thought of like manually starting an engine. At first the crank must be turned so that the engine will turn. But once the engine fires, it creates the turning necessary to the next turning. In this metaphor, the cranking can be the help of a teacher, or a deliberate pause taken together with the application of inhibition and direction.
Although the Alexander Technique is often described in terms of physical organisation, it is often experienced as something more. The qualities of mind, body and spirit become united and coherent and this coherent self is brought fully into the present moment.
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One of the human tendencies addressed by the Alexander Technique is “end gaining”, which can be described as allowing the desire for an outcome (“what”) to take precedence over the means whereby it is achieved (“how”). This is a bit like caring more for reaching a destination than how expensive the trip was, whether the route taken was optimal, whether the journey was stressful and whether any traffic accidents were caused along the way.
The Alexander Technique helps us explore how the end gaining tendency affects us in our daily activities and notice (and intercept) those times where we are so focused on the outcome that we use ourselves poorly, with unnecessary strain or without finding enjoyment in the process.
This description has not yet been written.
This description has not yet been written.
“Constructive conscious control” is the phrase that FM Alexander used to describe the aim of his technique. He contrasted it with “unconscious” control: when we seek to control our movements and thoughts to achieve a goal, unconscious habits take over. Alexander’s proposal involves constructing new, conscious habits with consideration for how we can best use ourselves in our totality, without micromanaging or applying unnecessary strain.
Although the phrasing does not have direct appeal in the 21st century, it’s worth considering that a lot of our unnecessary strain happens when we are experiencing a lack of agency, be it in a conversation or in trying to accomplish a physical task. It is then a frequent pattern that we brace and hold on tight, in an (often misguided) effort to gain more agency or certainty (i.e. control). Having conscious constructive control enables us to seek agency and certainty without losing adaptability and resilience in the process.
When used in the phrase “conscious guidance and control”, FM Alexander may also have meant that when seeking greater agency over our movement, the phases of guidance and control should be separate. Guidance refers to the thinking applied during the movement, whereas control refers to finding out after the fact whether the thinking achieved the desired movement goal. Jeando Masoero in particular claims that it is of particular importance to distinguish these phases and to have the control be observation in a mirror or a video, rather than the usual 'feeling whether it's right' that people tend to attempt to apply during the movement itself.
FM Alexander coined the term “use of the self” as a way of describing the quality of how we “use” ourselves, drawing the parallel with how we use tools. The outcome of learning the Alexander Technique is improved “use”.
As he developed his understanding of use, he found that it has a general quality that affects all more specific functioning (such as how we breathe, how we move, or how we tell a joke). He also found that improved use goes hand in hand with an improved coordination or organisation of the relationship between the head, neck and torso.
In his book “The Use of the Self” he concluded that “use” and “manner of reaction” are the same thing: use is how we respond to and interact with the world. Someone with good use will tend to be perceived as poised, settled, unflappable and well-regulated.
Margaret Goldie used to describe this quality as “quiet throughout, yet more alert than ever before”.
FM Alexander employed the terms "conscious control" and "manner of reaction". He wanted people to be able to have conscious control over their manner of reaction, as opposed to responding to the world with habits that had been subconsciously constructed and carried out. In today's terms we would probably call this agency.
Although it is quite trendy to say that we are all responsible for how we respond to the situations we find ourselves in, this can feel like an unhelpful admonishment. Some situations have no good options. In other situations we find ourselves unable to choose what seems to be our preferred option.
Rather than claim absolute agency, the Alexander Technique offers a method of exploration: what choices are and are not available to me right now? How can I expand my range so that I have more choices available to me tomorrow?
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How the Alexander Technique should be taught is where the major disagreements amongst teachers lie. Should we teach primarily through "chair work" or through an activity the student would like to improve? Should we teach using hands, presence or instruction? Can the technique be taught online? Can the technique be taught to groups?
As I understand it, most teachers teach with a combination of the methods below, and will consider some of them to be a necessary part of teaching the technique. Others will disagree. I personally rejoice in having many options to adapt to my students, even though I have preferences for my own learning and teaching.
The classical explanation for teaching the Alexander Technique is that the hands of the teacher are placed on the student in the form of gentle adjustment so that they may have an experience of what is desired as an outcome. This might be 'correct' organisation of the head, neck and back, a sense of newness, or a sense of lightness and greater ease. Having familiarity with this outcome, and some experience of how it has been achieved, the student is then more able to reproduce it for themselves.
The way the teacher puts hands on their student involves a high quality of 'staying back'. The teacher stays connected to themselves and does not allow their interest in the student to pull them out of that connection. Simultaneously, the teacher allows themself to enter into relationship with the student and have a sense of where the student is experiencing fragmentation and where a greater degree of wholeness of mind, body and spirit could emerge.
As a result students tend to experience the space to be themselves without feeling obliged to change. Simultaneously when their thoughts and movements take them into greater wholeness, the hands on provides support, reassurance and encouragement, so that this unfamiliar pattern has the chance to develop.
FM Alexander considered it essential that his teaching not “unduly excite the fear reflexes”. A felt sense of safety is likely one of the fundamental needs met by our current habits. If my standing stance is sitting back into one hip for stability and I want to replace this with a more mobile stance, the safety of stability will need to be replaced with a different safety. But the first time I experience it, it will likely feel quite frightening.
This is where Alexander Technique teachers comes in. They of course provide cognitive reassurance during unfamiliar movement and thought. But the also provide emotional co-regulation and anchoring communicating to the student, with their whole body-mind: “together, in this experience, we are safe”.
Beyond any single potentially scary experience, the teacher’s quiet presence allows the student’s nervous system to step back from the degree of escalation it is currently in and to develop their capacity to experience a variety of emotions, including fear, with less overwhelm.
Within the “zone of proximal development” (ZPD) model of learning and teaching, the ZPD is the range of things that a student cannot do alone but can do with the help of a teacher. The teacher’s role can then be thought of not only as providing instruction, but keeping the student within their ZPD on any given day.
Most Alexander Technique teachers do not frame their work in these terms, but a large amount of work is providing situations (sitting, standing, picking something up, playing an instrument, etc.) and asking students to inhibit going into their usual pattern. They recognise that some habits are easier to inhibit than others and make teaching choices accordingly. A musician who associates a lot of their identity with playing their instrument will find it easier to inhibit when it comes to simply picking up the instrument than playing it. And they will find sitting and standing (“chair work”) easier still.
In addition to teaching verbally with explanations or instructions, Alexander Technique teachers use the quality of their presence, particularly through their hands and their voice. As this quality is informed by their own ability to embody the Alexander Technique skills they are teaching, it serves as an example, a guide and form of co-regulation to help bring the student into a similar state of presence. This allows for a less cognitive form of learning where the resulting skill is then available to the student. This is also one of the ways the Alexander Technique can be taught online, using other forms of presence than hands.
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Many movement and somatics teachers use cues to obtain desirable outcomes: "allow the head to float up like a balloon", "imagine you are moving through honey". Alexander Technique teachers are interested in outcomes that involve the pyscho-physical organisation: the whole mind-body coming together to let our intention efforlessly be carried through into activity. As such, they use cues that they might call "directions" or "(favourite) thoughts" that tend to organise the body or the thinking or both into a present, quiet, inhibited state in which our habitual reactivity is lessened.
This includes using classical directions and newer styles of direction:
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FM Alexander was an immensely practical man. He developed his technique by using what worked, rather than by starting from some theoretical perspective. This only came later as he wrote books to attempt to share what he had discovered.
I would contend that the major advantage of starting in this way is that the Alexander Technique does not appear to be confined to any sub-system of the human experience. When a teacher is working with a student they are consciously or intuitively working simultaneously with the student's musculo-skeletal system, their nervous system (comprising their felt sense of safety, their ability to perceive and orient to their surroundings, their attention and awareness, their emotions, their body schema, their habitual responses, and more), their ability to witness and regulate themselves, their sense of identity and self, and their relationship to the world and others.
It is because no single one of these systems is primary that I suspect that the Alexander Technique is tricky to explain (be it as a story, a rigorous scientific account, or anywhere in between). This is why I don't believe any single one of the explanations below to be sufficient on its own.
My own background as a researcher makes me intensely curious about why the Alexander Technique works. My rigour and desire to offer methods with proven scientific backing to the people seeking my help also push me to seek out evidence-based explanations. However for applying the Alexander Technique to the problems of my own life, I have found the search for explanations to be something between a distraction and a hindrance. At best, plausible stories allow me to suspend disbelief long enough to try something different and see what happens. I also would prefer to be able to explain what I do as something other than magic, or fundamentally challenging to people with a rational mindset.
This is the explanation for which there is most support in the scientific litterature around the Alexander Technique, not least because it is an operationalisable, measurable outcome that is cared about by researchers outside of the Alexander Technique community. Skilled Alexander Technique practitioners re-organise their postural tone better in adaptation to their surroundings. The Alexander Technique skills of inhibition, direction and sensory awareness are hypothesised as coming together to enhance the adaptivity of postural tone as an outcome.
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In the brain, habits show up as “action sequences”. They are patterns of neural pathways firing one after the other, almost likely as once the “train track” of a given habit is engaged, it gets followed through to the end. These action sequences are resilient to new sensory information, sometimes even when it would render the action null and void. This is probably why you don’t notice when you forget to put a cup under your coffee machine in the morning.
An explanatory mechanism for the Alexander Technique could be that it disrupts the action sequence by bringing in greater sensory awareness, giving the action sequence a less “single track” quality, or not even engaging in the action sequence in the first place.
The brain has the capacity to adapt itself (neuroplasticity) through a combination of intention and error: intention allows the brain to act while creating predictions of what ought to happen as a result and errors in prediction allow the brain to adapt and act differently. Left alone, and in concert with our incredibly efficient bipedal musculo-skeletal system, and all the other systems of the body, the mind-body adapts and finds efficient ways of moving and interacting with the world.
For various reasons (wanting to learn faster, less neuroplasticity in adults, social norms, lack of movement in daily life, habits that have outlived their purpose, trauma, etc.), we interfere with this natural organisation that can be observed in young children and animals. The Alexander Technique is simply a way of thinking that allows us to interfere less so that our natural organisation can take over.
Aside from the meaning of 'inhibition' specific to the Alexander Technique (in which non-doing is a key component), 'inhibition' also describes part of the role of the pre-frontal cortex, whereby it intervenes to suppress and regulate behaviour that is being planned by other brain regions. Part of this control may involve muscular bracing, particularly around the neck and shoulders. Such bracing is often particularly visible in pre-teens who are just learning how to regulate their behaviour according to social norms.
This kind of braced control continues throught to adulthood, even as the pre-frontal cortex develops further and seems more capable to inhibit without muscular bracing. The Alexander Technique may work by helping relearn ways of exerting this kind of non-braced inhibition.
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