“As we have seen, one of the serious obstacles to be overcome in helping pupils to change their manner of use is that any change from the old wrong use (the known) to the new right use (the unknown) feels wrong to them, and at each stage of change the new improving manner of use has to be experienced for some time before the pupil can feel that it is right and comfortable, and so develop faith and confidence in the employment of it.”
F.M. Alexander (The Universal Constant in Living – chapter 5 p89)

Patrick MacDonald

Do not forget that right and wrong change, and should change as your body and co-ordination change. What is right for you today should be wrong for you tomorrow. Do not, therefore, try and fix a picture of a specific co-ordination in your brain as the right one; it will have to be modified, perhaps many times, over a long period. You must learn to think in trends and tendencies, and not in fixed positions. Everything (so they say) is relative, not least the proper relationship of the neck to the head, the neck and head to the back and neck, and the head and back to the rest of the body. If you can learn to think in tendencies (which is the way I teach you) you may continue to teach yourself.
Remember, you are slowly eliminating the wrong. Finality, for most of us, and that includes me, is not in sight.
(The Alexander Technique As I See It – Notebook Jottings p2)

You cannot change and yet remain the same, though this is what most people want.
(The Alexander Technique As I See It – Notebook Jottings p17)

As one’s co-ordination improves there is usually a heightened awareness of what one is doing with oneself. In particular one notices, much more often, how frequently one is going wrong. This is disconcerting at first and brings about the condition known as “Alexander’s gloom”. Unpleasant as this is at first, it is a step in the right direction and, as such, is one to be welcomed.
(The Alexander Technique As I See It – Notebook Jottings p25)

Today [6 February, 1961] one of my pupils, who has suffered from a very collapsed spine and on whom I have done a very great deal of work, told me that when I got him to lean forward in the chair from a position with his back right against the back of it, the strain on his lower back was such that it felt like a punch in the kidneys. I would emphasize that when he came forward in the chair he was elongating himself and was doing it better than he had yet done. Yes, carry on. It is of interest to note that all the proper usages of his body at first felt uncomfortable and sometimes even downright painful, more so than any other pupil I have ever taken.
(The Alexander Technique As I See It – Notebook Jottings p36)

Walter Carrington

The way that people actually use their legs, what they actually do, is habitual, the product of any number of different factors and influences of which they are liable to be totally unaware when they come to you for lessons. You can see that they are using the legs all wrong and you’ve got to start to make change in the way that they use their legs. As you do begin to make change, you will find that you run up against all sorts of resistances that arise from their feelings. There is also quite a mental resistance to change. Sometimes, they even gain a sort of “eureka” experience when they suddenly find that the ankle and foot can be free and that they can use it in a totally different way. That is splendid except for the fact that they get so involved with that change, they start thinking more about their foot than about their head and their general use of themselves. They start doing a specific thing with the foot and, in the process, overlook the total pattern.
(The Act of Living – Knees Forward and Away p91)

What you are going to do is something that is utterly and totally different. If you can make this inhibition really effective in that way and stop off the old habitual pattern, then you have got the possibility of being able to generate a new pattern and get things working in a different way, in a way that you have chosen and a way that you want. Of course, this will take time. It will not be quick and it will not be easy. There will be a lot of uncertainty in it because the new way is going to be unfamiliar. Until you actually try and get into it you haven’t got the experience to know what it is really and truly like and what it involves. It doesn’t solve all the problem – you have effectively choked off the old but you’ve still got a tremendous lot to deal with to generate the new. What Alexander is saying and what we all find in teaching is that until you have effectively choked off the old, until you have really learned what inhibition means in that way, you’re not going to get any further and make the change that you want.
(The Act of Living – Saying and Meaning No p137)

Well, there’s no formal doctrine of change. At one level, the type of change depends entirely upon the individual. At another level, the type of change comes under the heading “general functioning”. Now, people might say that the term “general functioning” is extremely vague, and I suppose it is. For example, we’re not even going to claim that we’re going to improve someone’s blood pressure, the workings of the heart or, indeed, any sort of specific change that might be measured. I think as soon as you start predicting change, you can get into very deep waters. However, it’s a matter of common-sense that if you can get people to move more lightly and freely – so that they’re taking pressure off rather than putting it on – it must be beneficial. And I think it’s quite widely recognised, even in circles outside the Alexander Technique, that if you can get people to think about what they’re doing, what they’re going to do and so on, rather than behave thoughtlessly, it’s generally a better way of going about things.
(Personally Speaking – part 3 p103)

I don’t think teachers can change people: the change is up to them. I think if teachers try to make people change they will revolt eventually. People have various ways of resisting.
(Personally Speaking – part 3 p120)

Lulie Westfeldt

After I had been having lessons for about two weeks, my back began to ache frequently and severely. Sometimes it ached almost continuously. It was here that I had my first and only period of fear. I remembered an orthopaedic doctor saying, ‘Well, thank goodness her back is rigid. If that rigidity went, I don’t know what would happen.’ And I thought to myself, ‘Here you are, going to a layman, who, so far as New Orleans is concerned, is totally unknown. You don’t know what is happening, really, and whether it is dangerous or not.’ I decided to have a look at my back in the mirror and was somewhat amazed as well as delighted by what I saw. My back was much straighter than it had been and appeared longer; and although my shoulders (one of which was very over-developed while the other was under-developed) were still structurally very different, the difference was not so noticeable. The shoulders were lower and wider than they had been, and the over-developed one did not hunch up with every movement I made, as it had previously. This look in the mirror reassured me a great deal; and then other things began to reassure me, too.
I was in the National Gallery one afternoon and looked at my watch. ‘This is impossible’, I said to myself, and looked at it again. But it was a fact. I had been there for two and a half hours, and my feet were not tired. Compared to what I was usually able to do, this was quite fantastic. Ordinarily my feet would have been troubling me in thirty minutes.
Then, too, other people began to notice the change. I went to tea one afternoon with a distant cousin. I was not very close to her, and so I had not told her I was going to Alexander. Although she seemed slightly hesitant and embarrassed about mentioning any improvement at first, she was finally unable to restrain herself. She said that my walk had improved immensely and that my whole frame had come into line and was poised differently.
When I saw my half-sister again, the change that struck her as foremost was the muscular development in my calves. They had previously presented a wasted, withered appearance, particularly the calf in the right leg.
An orthopaedic doctor once told me that I had no calf muscles and that the withered appearance of my calves was due to muscle wastage. In two months of lessons with Alexander my calves developed markedly, and they took on the look of legs that were used and developed – not normally developed yet but still developed – the withered unused look that they had previously had was gone. I should add that at no time in this series of lessons did Alexander touch my feet or legs or ask me to do anything about them.
(F. Matthias Alexander, The Man and His Work – chapter 2 p43)

There was something else that I myself noticed. Whenever I had debated at college, or presided over a meeting, or gone to a large party, I had been unpleasantly conscious of my arms. They had always seemed to hang in the wrong place, and I never knew what to do with them and was, therefore, uncomfortable and nervous. During this first session of lessons with Alexander I went to a cocktail party and suddenly realized, as I was entering the room, that I had a great sense of ease and assurance. Afterwards I remembered that I had not been aware of my arms at all. I looked at them in the mirror and noticed they were slung in a different way, the backs of the hands tending to fall outwards (as in illustration 5). Before, the insides of my hands were tending to fall inwards. Later on in the training course I was to learn that the pattern of the back determines the placement of the arms in their sockets, but at this time I knew nothing except that my arms were slung differently and they did not obtrude themselves upon my notice.
(F. Matthias Alexander, The Man and His Work – chapter 2 p44)

I now had a degree of tranquility that I had not experienced since I had had infantile paralysis, and together with that and possibly part of it, some increase in my ability to meet difficult situations.
(F. Matthias Alexander, The Man and His Work – chapter 2 p44)

Marjorie Barlow

Well, I was absolutely fascinated with the Technique but suffered quite a lot of pain from the lessons as well. It was a different sort of pain to what I’d been used to, however. In fact, that characteristic dull backache that had plagued me just disappeared. Also, the lessons helped my migraines. The interval between attacks gradually started to increase until the migraines stopped completely within a year.
(Taken from Alexander Technique: The Ground Rules – part 1 p26)

However, eventually I started having lessons with FM. I went up every day by tram from Streatham Hill to Victoria and was absolutely thrilled with it. It caused me quite a lot of pain, more pain, but different, in my back, as my muscles began to take up their job. Very often I used to go and lie down after my lesson, just because I felt so peculiar.
(Taken from Direction Magazine Vol 2 No 2 p14)

Frank Pierce Jones

Subjects regularly report that the movements are easier and smoother and that they feel lighter and taller while they are doing them. “More ease and lightness,” “a feeling of ease, of competence – very different from ‘relaxation’,” “a greater degree of ease and consequent pleasure,” are expressions that subjects have used to describe the experience. The feeling of pleasure in an everyday movement takes most subjects by surprise, and their faces break spontaneously into a smile as they notice it. “It’s a funny thing,” one of them said. “It’s as if my arms liked moving this way and wanted to do it again.” To some subjects the idea of moving against gravity (as in getting up from a chair) without effort is difficult to grasp – “a source of wonderment.”
(Freedom to Change – chapter 2 p5)

In describing their experiences pupils are apt to emphasize physical changes – so much so that the Technique is often thought of as a kind of posture training. I think this is natural, especially for intellectuals who tend to be overawed by the physical changes that lessons produce. In my case, the discovery that physical activity could be a source of pleasure was like waking from a bad dream. In the past I had taken exercise of one kind or another, because doctors had recommended it, but I did not enjoy it. Now the situation had changed. Using my body even for such tasks as shovelling snow or mowing the lawn became pleasurable. I supposed that other people had these experiences routinely, but for me they carried the fresh appeal of newness – like a new spectrum of colours.
(Freedom to Change – chapter 2 p11)

The physical effects of the Technique are the easiest to describe and measure, but the psychological effects are of greater importance. Some of them can be explained merely as side effects – changes in mental attitude which follow an improvement in health. You are less depressed when you are not physically weighed down. Your image of yourself improves when you feel physically more competent. You find that you like other people more when you become more relaxed about yourself. Such changes, which are regularly reported by pupils, are not unlike changes that are reported for other therapies. In addition to automatic changes of this nature I experienced an almost immediate increase in mental and emotional control.
(Freedom to Change – chapter 2 p12)

The changes that I observed in myself were often unexpected, but they were never accompanied by any sudden or violent release of emotion and never left me feeling defenceless. The Alexander Technique provides the knowledge and freedom to change, but it is change within a developmental model. There is no “must.” Changes take place when you are ready for them and can permit them to happen. Habitual tensions that have grown up over a long period of time limit development and prevent the free expression of personality. They serve as a protection, however, in situations where, rightly or wrongly, a person feels vulnerable or incompetent. The Alexander Technique does not deprive one of this “character armouring” as long as it is needed. Lessons in the Technique release an organic process of change that gradually replaces old rigid habits with new habits which are flexible and can themselves be changed. The process of change is not mindless. It can be directed by intelligence into paths that lead to the best development of the individual’s own personality.
(Freedom to Change – chapter 2 p14)

To claim that a person’s health improved after lessons while denying that the Technique was presented as a cure for disease may seem like a quibble over words, but I do not believe it was. There is a real difference between a “cure” that is achieved by a remedy specifically designed to treat disease, and a general improvement in health which brings with it the disappearance of particular disease symptoms. The “cures” were significant because they illustrated a general principle. Alexander promised his pupils that if they learned the Technique old motor habits would be broken up and “an improved efficiency” would “follow as a matter of course.” This would bring with it an increased resistance to infectious diseases and “an ability to check the formation of any bad, incipient muscular or mental habit.” In other words, the Technique was not curative but preventive.
(Freedom to Change – chapter 5 p35)

A habit cannot be changed, however, without intelligent control of an appropriate means or mechanism. To believe that it can is to believe in magic. People still think, nevertheless, that by passing laws or by persuasion, by “wishing hard enough” or “feeling strongly enough” they can change human behaviour and get a desirable result. That, Dewey says, is superstition.
(Freedom to Change – chapter 11 p100)

The hammer thrower kept a journal of his experiences, starting with his first lesson. He made a number of interesting observations, the most interesting having to do with his specialty. He knew that he was doing something with his shoulder that interfered with his throw; the coach had pointed it out to him; and he had seen himself doing it on a television play-back; but he could not make a change during his performance. With lessons he found that he could perceive kinaesthetically what he was doing wrong and inhibit it; and he was able in this way to add six feet to his maximum throw. This happened quite early in lessons. The journal entries from this point on increase in interest as he notes his tendency to turn his knowledge “into a doing” (as the Alexanders used to say) and as he realizes that the Technique, if it is going to give him full Value, has to be applied to everything, not just to athletic performance.
(Freedom to Change – Appendix D p191)