Customer Reviews

Alexander Technique: Original Writings of F.M. Alexander

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F. Matthias Alexander was certainly one of the great creative geniuses of this century, although he is still comparatively unknown. In part his obscurity is due to the novelty of his ideas and in part to his very difficult writing style. This book is a very lightly edited version of his second book and still makes for fairly difficult going. On the other hand, time spent digesting the material in this (and Alexander's other books) is well worth it. And the book includes an introduction by Professor John Dewey, a great admirer and supporter of Alexander.

If you don't know much about Alexander and the Alexander Technique, I'd suggest one of the many other introductory books as a first read. Body Learning by Michael Gelb, Fitness Without Stress by Robert Rickover and How to Learn the Alexander Technique by Barbara Conable are all excellent choices.

This book will be of tremendous use to you only if you manage to take it as a whole. People don't like that these days, they want instructional books as a collection of easily digested factiods. Alexander's book matches the conception of the human self that it describes: it cannot be broken down into different parts but must be dealt with as a whole. You come to understand more and more as you read, but you don't really see what he's saying until you can consider the whole book in retrospect. So it takes some work, but in that regard it's a brilliant analog to the ideas it contains: you must read this book holistically, just as you must deal with your self holistically.