Frederick Matthias Alexander was born in Australia in 1869, and died in London in 1955.
He was a successful actor on the Victorian stage in Melbourne, but he
found that he kept losing his voice. Doctors were unable to find a
cure, and he realised that he must be doing something to himself when
he recited that was causing his difficulty.
He observed himself reciting in front of mirrors, and eventually
realised that he was pulling his head back and depressing his larynx,
and that this was linked to his voice loss. More significantly, he
found that he was not directly able to stop doing this. In time he
evolved his technique for ensuring that he maintained an integrated
relationship between head, neck and back which enabled him to speak
easily.
 Alexander
started helping others with voice and breathing difficulties, and began
to realise that not only were the habits he observed in himself
pandemic, but also that in changing these habits, many ailments seemed
to resolve themselves spontaneously. Over
the past 100 years, increasing numbers of people around the world have
benefited from learning his technique to transform and improve the
quality of their lives. |
