Human Beings have very large brains. The human brain has about 100 billion neurons which can connect up in different configurations that we call pathways. As babies, children, teenagers and adults we go trough different phases of development learning how to use our organism. During this time, we learn to sit, stand, move, speak, sing, think and perform
As we discover things, often through trial and error, we begin to develop strategies to deal with situations that occur regularly so that we don't have to think about them in detail each time we do them. Let's call these repeated tasks habits. Often, we develop strategies that are quite successful and we stick by them and they become our ways of doing things. Some habits, however, are not good for our health. Yet these harmful patterns become etched in our brains and we do them without thinking about them.
The Alexander Technique is a method of discovering and modifying these patterns to improve our functioning. An Alexander Teacher is trained to help the student learn their own patterns of use of themselves and to teach them how to change them. To do this, a teacher uses hands-on to receive a person's muscular patterns and then transmits new messages to allow muscles to lengthen and work with better coordination.
Since it is the brain that is responsible for the coordination of the muscles, the teacher re-educates student's brain to establish new patterns of movement.
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