Yesterday a student told me that he thought it 'took energy' to sit or stand using the principles of the Alexander Technique. If he just sat the way he always sat, he said, it took very little effort and felt comfortable. I can't disagree that it is comfortable to sit, stand, move and walk in our habitual way. A lot of our habits, though comfortable, aren't beneficial for us. Slumping is one of those habits, and slumping also takes energy because...
In 1973, Nicholas Tinbergen and two others won the Nobel prize for Physiology-Medicine. He dedicated a good portion of his acceptance speech to F.M. Alexander, the Alexander Technique and it's benefits. He was an Alexander Technique student, as was his wife and daughter. They all took Alexander Technique lessons with different Alexander Technique teachers. What follows is the beginning of the portion of the speech relating to the Alexander Technique: …My second example of the usefulness of an ethological approach to Medicine has quite a different history. It concerns the work of a very remarkable man, the late F. M. Alexander. His research started some fifty years before the revival of Ethology for which we are now being honoured, yet his procedure was very similar to modern observational methods, and we believe that his achievements and those of his pupils deserve close attention...
