Oct 1
2008

“….every single thing we are doing in the work is exactly what is being done in Nature… the difference being that we are learning to do it consciously.”                    - F. Matthias Alexander

“… we had only to ‘come to full stop, and return to conscious simple living, believing in the unity of all things”     - F.M. Alexander

“When you’ve got it, be prepared to throw it away.” - F.M. Alexander

“The conscious mind must be quickened.”   – F.M. Alexander

“The right thing does itself”    -  F.M. Alexander

‘Learning is our nature. The Ancient Masters didn’t try to educate the people, but kindly taught them to not-know.  When they think that they know the answers, people are difficult to guide. When they know that they don’t know, people can find their own way…’  Chapter 65  Tao Te Ching

“People imagine that their bodies are disobedient and unreliable in carrying out their wishes, whereas nothing could be further from the truth.”                                                    - Walter Carrington

“The Alexander Technique is a method for improving motor performances by integrating the voluntary and reflex components of a movement in such way that the voluntary does not interfere with the reflex and the reflex facilitates the voluntary.”

“It is a method for playing the violin or looking through a microscope without getting a stiff neck-—or playing the piano or sewing without low back pain—for studying or listening to a lecture without mind wandering.  While allowing the individual to take advantage of specific learning techniques it leaves him free to change behaviour patterns which for any reason have become undesirable.”

“The Alexander Technique] doesn’t teach you something to do.  It teaches you how to bring more practical intelligence into what you are already doing; how to eliminate stereotyped responses; how to deal with habit and change.  It leaves you free to choose your own goal but gives you a better use of yourself while you work toward it.”   – Frank Pierce Jones, ‘Freedom to Change’

“The Alexander Technique opens a window onto the little known area between stimulus and response and gives you the self-knowledge you need in order to change the pattern of your response — or, if you choose, not to make it at all.”                             - Michael Gelb, ‘Body Learning’

“The Alexander Technique is a simple and practical method for improving ease and freedom of movement, balance, support, flexibility, and coordination.  It enhances performance and is therefore a valued tool for actors, dancers, and musicians.  Practice of the Technique refines and heightens kinesthetic sensitivity, offering the performer a control which is fluid and lively rather than rigid.  It provides a means whereby the use of a part — a voice or an arm or a leg — is improved by improving the use of the whole body.”                                                                      -  Barbara Conable,  ‘How to Learn the Alexander Technique’

“It is the discovery by F. Matthias Alexander of the natural rhythm within the human body which exists in the sensory and motivating nerve circuits.  This essential rhythm has become distorted in most people, and such distortion becomes the principal cause of most of the ill-health and distress of many so-called mental and physical diseases.”                                                                                                             -  Patrick Macdonald,  ‘The Alexander Technique As I See It’