One of the aims of an Alexander lesson is to give the pupil the experience of a balanced working of the Primary Control. This is not an end in itself but rather a preparation for activity. I know from my own experience that when this balanced Use is maintained in movement the quality of action changes. Movement becomes lighter and easier, breathing

Alexander does not suggest that we should return to more primitive, ‘natural’ conditions of life but rather that we should take more care about the manner of our reactions.

he would consciously project a psychophysical pattern that can be described in words as ‘allow the neck to be free to let the head go forward and up so that the back may lengthen and widen’,

His experiments taught him that the best conditions of Use were brought about when he released the tension in his neck, so that his head could go forward and up and his back could lengthen and widen.

the ‘startle pattern’, a stereotyped response elicited by a sudden noise. The characteristic response starts with a disturbance of the head–neck–torso relationship, followed by a raising of the shoulders and a tensing of the chest and knees.

It is interesting, however, that the most successful form of treatment, that provided by Alcoholics Anonymous, sets out to put an individual in touch with his own sense of responsibility and integrity and to give him enough support to enable him to face facts and use his power of choice.

Alexander employed the word Use to describe the process of control over all those actions that he seemed to have the potential to control.

The biologist Rudolf Magnus (1873–1927) demonstrated that the head–neck–torso relationship was the Zentralapparat (central mechanism) in orienting an animal in its environment.

In order to allow his reasoned direction to dominate habit, Alexander concluded that he must give up all thought of the end for which he was working and focus instead on the steps leading to that end (the ‘means-whereby’).