Colin Beattie, Alexander Technique, Belfast

AT is education for breath, balance, performance and poise. I have been a STAT registered teacher since 2001 and specialise in applying the AT to swimming.

F. M. Alexander (1869 - 1955) discovered that a certain relationship between the head, neck and back is associated with the efficient coordination of movement, breathing and postural support in all the activities of life.
This relationship is both delicate and dynamic and can be seen operating in many young children and skilled performers. The head is free to move on top of the neck and leads the body in all activity.

When this relationship is disturbed by our reactions to injury, pain, stress or repetitive movement, we often do not realise it has happened or give ourselves the opportunity to recover our poise and grace. We can gradually become used to a more disorganised, effortful, breathless state of being. Our heads become more fixed and pulled down into our necks, our necks become more rigid and our spines become stiff where they should be free to move, and collapsed where they should give postural support. We lose our elasticity.

Alexander developed a practical method of observation and experimentation with oneself that helps to replace the downward spiral of increasing pain, stiffness, effort and collapse with an upward spiral of increasing awareness, breath, balance, and poise.

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

"Stop doing the wrong thing and the right thing will take care of itself. " F. M. Alexander