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| About Us |
Robert Taylor was a Chartered Civil Engineer with a large international
multidisciplinary consultancy when he took a course of lessons in the
Alexander Technique.
The effect was a sensation of lightness,
openness and contentment hitherto unknown. Life could be enjoyed.
However, this effect was not sustained so Robert decided to investigate
this further and took the three year training course at the Fellside School
in Kendal, eventually becoming a teacher himself in 2002. This is a new
way of being which is available to inform every activity of his life.
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Robert Taylor MSTAT, PGCE, BSc C.Eng is an Alexander Technique teacher and member of the society of teachers of the Alexander Technique. Robert Taylor has completed a 3 year full time STAT approved training course in the Alexander Technique.
The S.T.A.T was established in 1958 and is internationally recognised representative body for the Alexander Technique. The Alexander Technique is a discipline for developing a more conscious awareness of the reflex patterns by which we maintain balance, initiate and co-ordinate movement.
Up to the 1930s, Alexander taught his technique to pupils solely as a means of their helping themselves. A few of his keenest pupils gradually became assistants and teachers in their own right by apprenticeship. Then, in 1931, Alexander opened a formal teacher training course, so that an entire group of students could learn the skills needed to teach the Technique to others. He kept his three-year training courses running until his death at the age of 86. In 1958, three years after his death, his graduates founded the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (STAT), to preserve and continue the work according to the standards Alexander had created
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| About the Alexander Technique |
Any one can learn the Alexander Technique. You learn to get a degree of conscious influence over how your muscular system works. So you deal with what might be called your "background muscle tone" and how you use your muscles to stand sit walk etc. By background muscle tone, I mean how released your muscles are when not being used. Over time your muscles might have stayed contracted without you realizing and maybe now you perceive, certain holding patterns as normal. This influences your muscles' ability to perform. A contracted muscle requires a lot more effort to do the same work as a naturally lengthened muscle. So even the task of standing can become hard work if your back muscles are not at a good background tone.
To learn the Alexander Technique is to discover how you can consciously influence your muscles both at rest and in action. You can particularly learn to affect the state of the muscles in your neck for these have important consequences for how your spine works. Alexander, the man who founded this Technique, discovered that we have a natural relationship between how our head releases at the top of the spine and how our spine functions. All vertebrates have this and we see it working well when we watch an animal lead with it's head and move with it's spine in an elastic lengthened way that looks effortless and graceful. As two legged vertebrates we have the same functioning but our life styles often interfere with it.
There are many good reasons for having this conscious ability to influence your muscular system. One of these is handling stress. If you are in touch with your background muscle set up you have a sort of feedback arrangement that lets you know when you are "doing" too much. You also know how to release muscle that you have unconsciously shortened. So you can prevent unnecessary stress and become more in charge of living and working at a pace that works for you.
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