Further reading: One can find the best explanations of the Alexander Principle in books
Alexander himself never even heard of. In particular, Lao-tzu and Chang-tzu in the East,
Nietzsche, Dewey, and Merleau-Ponty in the West, and Krishnamurti (in a class all by
himself) have described very clearly the social, political, philosophical, and spiritual import of
the Technique. The scientific foundations of the Alexander Principle and the Alexander
Technique continue to emerge, and the work of second generation cognitive science has
demonstrated its veracity very clearly. But if anyone were to ask for a handbook on the
Principle, I would say Shambhala: Sacred Path of the Warrior is hands down the best
introduction for students of the work. Zen in the Art of Archery is also very good, as are
Martin Buber's I and Thou (the Kaufmann translation), Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching (the Mitchell
translation), and the Gita. Two good books about the Principle by teachers of it are The
Alexander Technique: a Skill for Life by Pedro de Alcantara, and Body Learning by Michael
Gelb. Any of these books should be read in conjunction with having lessons. There is no
substitute for concrete experience.
Below are a few quotes that illustrate the spirit of the Alexander Principle. I present them at
great risk, because the mind tends to treat such material abstractly, as concepts to be
wrangled, analyzed, batted about by the heavy hands of what one knows. In short, one makes
the classical mistake of reading a menu and thinking one has tasted the food. The best way to
inquire into these quotes is not to ask what is correct and what is incorrect, but rather to ask:
What would that be like in practice? How would one experience that? What would one DO
with that? In short, one does best to accept (even temporarily) the invitation to move beyond
good and evil, beyond right and wrong, and instead look for what is elegant, graceful,
conducive to a life lived well.
from John Dewey (Dewey had many lessons with Alexander, and he wrote the introductions
to three of Alexander’s books. The effect of the Principle on his philosophy becomes clear
by reading works like Human Nature and Conduct. But these selections from the
introductions he wrote give a clear sense of his thoughts and feelings regarding the work.)
“To come into possession of intelligence is the sole human title to freedom... True
spontaneity is... not a birthright but the last term, the consummated conquest, of an art... to the
mastery of which Mr. Alexander’s book so convincingly invites us.”
“... benefits include a changed emotional condition and a different outlook on life.”
“The principle is badly needed, because in all matters that concern the individual self in the
conduct of its life, there is a defective and lowered sensory appreciation in judgment, both of
ourselves and our acts, which accompanies our wrongly-adjusted psycho-physical
mechanisms. It is precisely this perverted consciousness which we bring with us to the
reading and comprehension of Mr. Alexander’s pages, and which makes it hard for us to
realize his statements as to its existence, causes and effects. We become so used to it that we
take it for granted. It forms, as he has so clearly shown, our standard of rightness. Influences
our every observation, interpretation and judgment. Is the one factor which enters into our
every act and thought.”
“... Mr. Alexander has demonstrated a new scientific principle with respect to the control of
human behavior, as important as any principle which has ever been discovered in the domain of
external nature. Not only this, but his discovery is necessary to complete the discoveries that
have been made about nonhuman nature, if these discoveries and inventions are not too and by
making us their servants and helpless tools.”
“No one would deny that we ourselves enter as an agency into what ever is attempted and done
by us. That is a truism. But the hardest thing to attend to is that which is closest to ourselves,
that which is most constant and familiar. And this closest ‘something’ is, precisely, ourselves,
our own habits and ways of doing things as agencies in conditioning what is tried or done by
us. Through modern science we have mastered to a wonderful extent the use of things as tools
for comp ocean results upon and through other things. The result is all but a universal state of
confusion, discontent and strife. The one factor which is the primary tool in the use of all
these other tools, namely ourselves, in other words, our own psycho-physical disposition, as
the basic condition of our employment of all agencies and energies, has not even been studied
as the central instrumentality.”
“Never before, I think, has there been such an acute consciousness of the failure of all external
remedies as exists today, of the failure of all remedies and forces external to the individual
man. It is, however, one thing to teach the need of a return to the individual man as the
ultimate agency in whatever man kind of society collectively can output, to point out the
necessity of straightening out this ultimate condition of whatever humanity in mass can attain.
It is another thing to discover the concrete procedure by which this greatest of all tasks can be
executed. And this indispensable thing is exactly what Mr. Alexander has accomplished . . . .
But the method is not one of remedy; it is one of constructive education.”
“It is commonplace that scientific technique has for its consequence control of the energies
to which it refers. Physical science has for its fruit an astounding degree of new command of
physical energies. Yet we are faced with a situation which is serious, perhaps tragically so.
There is everywhere increasing doubt as to whether this physical mastery of physical energies
is going to further human welfare, or whether human happiness is going to be wrecked by it.
Ultimately there is but one sure way of answering this question in the hopeful and constructive
sense. If there can be developed a technique which will enable individuals really to secure the
right use of themselves, then the factor upon which depends the final use of all other forms of
energy will be brought under control. Mr. Alexander has evolved this technique.”
“ . . . [Mr. Alexander’s conclusions] make evident what knowledge itself really is.”
from Aldous Huxley (Huxley went to Alexander in the midst of writing Eyeless in Gaza. By
all accounts, Huxley was in a terrible physical state, literally unable to sustain the work of
writing. The transformation he experienced was remarkable. According to his wife,
"[Alexander] has certainly made a new and unrecognizable person of Aldous, not physically
only, but mentally and therefore morally. Or rather, he has brought out, actively, what we,
Aldous's best friends, know never came out either in the novels or with strangers." As a result
of his experiences, Huxley became an avid supporter of the Technique, and the character of
Miller in Eyeless in Gaza is based on Alexander himself.)
"[It is] now possible to conceive of a totally new type of education affecting the entire range
of human activity, from the physiological, through the intellectual, moral, and practical, to the
spiritual--an education which, by teaching them proper use of the self, would preserve children
and adults from most of the diseases and evil habits that now afflict them; an education whose
training . . . would provide men and women with the psycho-physical means for behaving
rationally and morally; an education which, in its upper reaches, would make possible the
experience of ultimate reality . . ."
from Nietzsche (Nietzsche was born about 20 years before Alexander, but died quite young.
Had Nietzsche lived long enough, he most likely would have wanted to take lessons with
Alexander. In a general way, the quotes below come very close to a description of the kind of
education one receives by means of the Alexander work.)
“I put forward at once – lest I break with my style, which is affirmative and deals with
contradiction and criticism only as a means, only involuntarily – the three tasks for which
educators are required. One must learn to see, one must learn to think, one must learn to
speak and write: the goal in all three is a noble culture. Learning to see– accustoming the eye
to calmness, to patience, to letting things come up to it; postponing judgment, learning to go
around and grasp each individual case from all sides. That is the first preliminary schooling
for spirituality: not to react at once to a stimulus, but to gain control of all the inhibiting,
excluding instincts. Learning to see, as I understand it, is almost what, unphilosophically
speaking, is called a strong will: the central feature is precisely not to ‘will’– to be able to
suspend decision. All un-spirituality, all vulgar commonness, depend on the inability to
resist a stimulus: one must react, one follows every impulse. In many cases, such a
compulsion is already pathology, decline, a symptom of exhaustion – almost everything that
unphilosophical crudity designates with the word ‘vice’ is merely this physiological inability
not to react. A practical application of having learned to see: as a learner, one will have
become altogether slow, mistrustful, recalcitrant. One will let strange, new things of every
kind come up to oneself, inspecting them with hostile calm and withdrawing one’s hand. To
have all doors standing open, to lie servilely on one’s stomach before every little fact, always
to be prepared for the leap of putting oneself into the place of, or of plunging into, others and
other things – in short, the famous modern ‘objectivity’ is bad taste, is ignoble par
excellence.”
“Learning to think: in our schools one no longer has any idea of this. Even in the universities,
even among the real scholars of philosophy, logic as a theory, as a practice, as a craft, is
beginning to die out. . . . there is no longer the remotest recollection that thinking requires a
technique, a teaching curriculum, a will to mastery – that thinking wants to be learned like
dancing, as a kind of dancing.”
“ . . . a breeding of feelings and thoughts alone is almost nothing . . . one must first persuade
the body . . . It is decisive for the lot of a people and of humanity that culture should begin in
the right place—not in the “soul” . . . the right place is in the body, the gesture, the diet,
physiology; the rest follows from that.”
from Krishnamurti (Krishnamurti never met Alexander and never had lessons in the
Principle, but his words resonate strongly with the spirit of the education the Principle
provides. One could cite many passages. The following is the tiniest sample.)
“Essentially, deeply, that should be the aim of education and of every teacher: to help you . . .
be completely free of fear . . .”
“Learning about behavior, the way of action in relationship, is the freedom to look at yourself,
at your conduct.”
“What is important is to consider life not as an inner and outer, but as a whole, as a total
undivided movement. Then action has quite a different meaning, for then it is not partial . . .”
“How is man to extricate himself from this confusion, violence and sorrow? Certainly not
through the operation of the will with all its factors and determination, resistance and strife . .
. . not the action of will which is the product of thought. Thought is not intelligence.
Intelligence can use thought, but when thought contrives to capture this intelligence for its
own uses, then it becomes cunning, mischievous, destructive.”