Music Therapies: Alexander Technique

I am not a complete newcomer to Alexander Technique – during my training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama some 20 years ago, a limited number of free lessons were on offer as supplementary support to us, something which was quite rare at that point in terms of holistic support for training musicians.  When I meet Hilary King, she explains that not only is Alexander Technique embedded in the undergraduate Royal College of Music course but many schools – particularly music schools – are bringing in Alexander teachers to work with their pupils. 

At a first session, Hilary King takes a history and then asks me to show her the basic movements of sitting, standing and walking while she observes me. As I walk and then sit, King asks me to notice what is happening in my body. It’s difficult to pinpoint this but once I place my hands at the top of my neck, I can feel a tightening as I move to sit down, something I wouldn’t normally be conscious of. Once King places two heavy weights in my hands and tells me that those are roughly the weight of my head, I can see why my neck might be reacting in this way as I manoeuvre from standing to sitting. 

We look at some pictures of the human skeleton in seated positions at a desk and I can relate to one with shoulders and neck drooping forward, leaning over to a computer, Now that I know the weight of the head, I can see how this could put huge strain onto the neck and consequently the spine running down from it. Place a violin under the chin and the twisting, straining and clenching potentially become even more problematic with hours of repetition, which explains why King does see many musicians, often with repetitive strain injuries and tendonitis  – and in violinists, neck problems.  

As I sit on a stool, King begins to gently place her hands on my neck and shoulders and explains to me Alexander’s idea of ‘inhibition’ or the art of saying no to the way you would normally move or hold yourself. ‘We have to notice and address the habits and then think about saying no to them,’ King explains. ‘You may have habits which creep in when you perform but they probably relate to your everyday movement – so we look at that.’ 

One of the ways to get me to practise inhibition is by getting me to lie, semi-supine on the table, to allow my head, neck, back and limbs to feel the solid surface beneath and react to it. The idea is to get me to forget about holding any part of myself, for example letting natural balance keep my knees up. King asks to take my head in her hands and I need to get to a stage where I can allow her to do this without trying to assist her with my muscles. So we engage my thought process to help and I think about releasing my neck and feeling gravity beneath my head while she cups it in her hands. Having someone take the weight of the head off my neck is very relaxing but it does more than that: it allows me to think about how my neck and back might feel without having to cope with the head balanced on top. I can see how, with practice, this could translate into having a much freer body when playing the violin, albeit working though a necessity to keep the chin on the instrument. 

Next, I am asked to raise my arms while lying, but first to visualise doing so, keeping the neck free so that ideally it is just the arm moving with nothing else ‘interfering’. It takes a bit of getting used to but lying on the table allows me to have a good root and not to have to worry about the rest of my limbs while I am working one. Practising the technique works both standing, sitting and lying but this ‘active rest’ procedure is one which I personally find useful to come back to and it is also good to incorporate into practice breaks to reset things in the body. 

Interestingly, Alexander didn’t develop breathing exercises, instead raising an awareness of anything interfering with the breath, but this active rest gives me the chance to even out my breathing as well, freeing the diaphragm and breathing more deeply. 

As King says, ‘the physical symptoms express how we are in our thoughts and feelings’ so she sees her work, as F M Alexander did, as a psychophysical re-education. Some people consider that 20 sessions will give you the basic tools in the Technique but there is research to say that even just six can be beneficial. Inevitably, it’s about a willingness to allow oneself to change. As with all therapies and educational systems, it is really useful to have some sessions to see if it does help and to see which elements are useful to try and adopt into everyday life for healthier playing.