The Alexander Technique teacher does some of the same things, that is, she observes with her eyes what movements you are making. But mainly she feels with her hands what you are doing. The process is not in fact so localized, but rather her hands act as the terminals of a neurological circuitry between your body and hers that helps her to recognize with her more finely tuned apparatus what is going on in yours. Different distributions of muscle tension give characteristic patterns of strain or ease. When muscle fibers contract, pulses of energy are given off. Relaxed muscle is quieter. Recognizing the best mix of quiet and noisy muscle in a body is the equivalent of recognizing from experience the optimum consistency for a cake mix, or the qualities that render a sonata more musical.
Using her hands to bring your attention to different parts of yourself, the teacher guides your musculature towards a new consistency. She uses some verbal instruction, but mostly she is showing you with her hands where you are holding where you shouldn’t be and where you are not holding where you should.
A good pair of Alexander-trained hands gives you a feeling of load shedding. Lengthening and widening gives you an experience from where you can discover what you habitually do that pulls you down. You learn how to tune in to your body so you can collect more reliable information from your proprioceptive and kinaesthetic senses. The teacher’s aim in tuning in to her pupil’s body is the same as that of the tennis player who is acquiring the fine co-ordination that will hit the ball plumb in the middle of her racquet every time.
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