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. |
