Alexander Technique (personal impressions)

1995: I heard about it

Some Health Magazine published in Portugal (Sommer 1995) brought out a special issue on Back Pains and included a Video cassete with a BBC report on something like "Back pain handling methods": surgery, drugs, psychology, you name it.

As at the time my back was in constant pain I was interested: A.T. was one of the methods described there and it seemed to be the only one which without surgery, drugs or psychology alone seemed to work.

My pains were based on a real birth defect, so I did not believe psychology could really solve them. What I understood then about A.T., it seemed to have some psychlogical aspects but it seemed to work at the body level and without "gymnastics exercises" so it should be the thing for me and I understood I could possibly learn to accept and live better with my pains (something psychology could probably do also but I liked the fact it worked on the body and mind together not on one or the other).

Thanks to the replay key I was able to replay the cassete enough times until I got the STAT address and wrote asking about teachers in Portugal and books.

Teachers in Portugal were none (and as far as I know still are non-existant) but I ordered and read my first book on A.T: "Body Learning" by Michael Gelb.

Actually I did not read all because I soon understood I would not get much far without a teacher.

Please send any comments to António Guerreiro. Last updated on 08.02.2004.