ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE QUOTATIONS

“Alexander’s work is of first class importance and investigation by the medical profession is imperative.” - British Medical Journal

“Mr. Alexander’s method lays hold of the individual as a whole, as a self-vitalizing agent. He reconditions and re-educates the reflex mechanisms and brings their habits into normal relation with the functioning of the organism as a whole. I regard this method as thoroughly scientific and educationally sound.” - Professor George E. Coghill, award-winning anatomist and physiologist

“The Alexander Technique transformed my life. it is the result of an acknowledged genius. I would recommend it to anyone.” - Tony Buzan, author of Use Your Head
The Evolving Brain

“The Alexander Technique helped a long-standing back problem and to get a good night’s sleep after many years of tossing and turning.” - Paul Newman, actor

“Alexander established not only the beginnings of a far reaching science of the apparently involuntary movements we call reflexes, but a technique of correction and self-control which forms a substantial addition to our very slender resources in personal education.” - George Bernard Shaw, playwright

"Mr. Alexander has done a service to the subject by insistently treating each act as involving the whole integrated individual, the whole psycho-physical man. To take a step is an affair not of this or that limb solely, but of the total neuromuscular activity of the moment - not the least of the head and neck." - Sir Charles Sherrngton, Nobel Prize winner in medicine

“I find the Alexander Technique very helpful in my work. Things happen without you trying. They get to be light and relaxed. You must get an Alexander teacher to show it to you.” - John Cleese, comedian and actor

“It is one thing to teach the need of a return to the individual man as the ultimate agency in whatever mankind and society collectively can accomplish. 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.” - Professor John Dewey, American philosopher

“The Alexander Technique gives us all things we have been looking for in a system of physical education: relief from strain due to maladjustment, and constant improvement in physical and mental health. We cannot ask for more from any system; nor, if we seriously desire to alter human beings in a desirable direction, can we ask any less.” - Aldous Huxley, author

“The Alexander Technique really works.” - Roald Dahl, author

“If there can be developed a technique which will enable individual to secure the right use of themselves, then the factor of which depends the final use of all other forms of energy will be brought under control. Mr. Alexander has evolved this technique.” - Professor John Dewey, philosopher

I submit that Alexander demonstrated a principle of supreme importance for a holistic world-view. He made a breakthrough which is nothing less than an evolutionary step forward, when a single human being learned to take constructive, conscious control of the direction of his own use of himself. He discovered man's supreme inheritance and the universal constant in living. He overcame the reliance on faulty sensory register and taught himself a central general habit of use of his entire body working as an indivisible psycho-physical unity. - Sir George Trevelyan, the "grandfather" of the movement for spiritual regeneration in Britain

“I was dubious about the effects of the Alexander Technique when I first went in to experience it, but I found out almost immediately that the benefits were total - both physically and mentally - and, happily, have also been long-lasting.” - Joanne Woodward, actress

“It (the Alexander Technique) bears the same relation to education that education itself bears to all other activities.” - Professor John Dewey, philosopher

“Every man, woman and child holds the possibility of physical perfection; it rests with each of us to attain it by personal understanding and effort.” - F. Matthias Alexander, developer of the Alexander Technique

Suggestions for additional quotes? Email Contact

Click here to go to The Complete Guide to the Alexander Technique