Often, when people clean, they brace their legs, tense their arms, hold their breath and go at it like crazy, making rapid, restricted movements. People think it's best to just get it over and done with quickly. But all that polishing, dusting, vacuuming, tidying...done in a frenzy can be rather exhausting and detrimental. I have never done Tai Chi but I've seen people practicing the slow, graceful movements, and I think if you could just pretend you're doing Tai Chi when yo

When I bought a new car... I had driven my old one for about 12 years. Children, cats, dogs and guinea pigs had been sick in it, gone to the toilet, dropped mud, hay, food and drink everywhere. My son had climbed on it, damaging the sunroof which therefore leaked. It was held together with bits of tape and it was also, at the end, very, very unwell. Smelly, damp, bashed and scuffed, it had something very wrong with it's engine, which meant I risked conking out in the middle

Recently I have had the opportunity to work extensively with a couple of men who are a challenge because they 'feel nothing'. Although they are able to release tension and reorganise the use of their muscles, they are unable to feel that happening in themselves. They can feel pain, discomfort, heat etc but not the more subtle stuff. In mainstream Alexander circles we definitely aim to 'feel'. Teachers have a highly developed, elastic way of using their hands to detect patter

I recall a pupil I worked with at Sherborne School for Girls who first came to me aged about twelve. She had recently moved back to the country from the Far East and had been signed up for Alexander Technique classes because of chronic back pain. She had a mysterious and highly troublesome problem in her lower back which so far nobody had managed to alleviate, or even identify. This girl stood out because of her size - tall, sturdy and fully grown, whereas her peers were al

People often have tension in the lumbar area of their backs which has the effect of pulling the back forward, sometimes accentuating the natural curve there. When I work with this sort of back it feels as though the person is dividing themselves in two - top half and bottom half. The same problem often occurs with horses, where the dip in their backs will be dropping, thus cutting off good coordination between the two ends of the animal. Trying to function with this distorti

Having met and worked with a number of people suffering from fibromyalgia, the thing I've noticed they have in common is excessive muscular tension, and I mean off the scale, accompanied by high anxiety. Nobody knows what causes the illness, or how to cure it, but it seems to me that dealing with these two areas must surely help. The difficulty is that by the time a person has got to a point when all movement causes pain, a weekly Alexander lesson cannot compete with the tho

In his book, 'The Use of the Self', FM Alexander wrote, 'End gaining is a universal habit'. What he was referring to is the tendency we all have to focus on an end result whilst losing sight of, and often at the expense of, the means-whereby that result is achieved. He viewed end gaining as a deadly sin but it's very difficult to avoid. As humans we have innate curiosity and drive; we have deadlines, responsibilities and important priorities. We get a lot done and many would

The late Alan Rickman was easily one of my favourite actors. There was never a role in which, in my opinion, he was not utterly spellbinding and brilliant. I loved the versatility with which he played such diverse characters, from the Sheriff of Nottingham to Colonel Brandon to Professor Snape, each time encapsulating a completely new, plausible and memorable entity. As is the case with many famous film stars he had training in the Alexander technique. He once said, 'With t

Of all the many different groups of people who train in the Alexander technique, the acting community is possibly the largest. This has a lot to do with the fact that FM Alexander was himself an actor. His physical training technique was initially devised in order to solve the problems that he himself was struggling with on stage. For over 100 years famous film stars have extolled the virtues of lessons which they very often receive as an integral part of the curriculum at t

Actors often talk about an 'outside eye' looking at them and judging them. It can prevent them from being present in the moment and therefore spoil their work. The outside eye is an imaginary critic and it's not just actors and other performers who feel it's gaze. People sometimes refer to a monkey or a parrot sitting on their shoulder, watching and whispering a negative commentary to them in their ear. It all amounts to the same thing - a destructive emotional force which