Alexander Technique Articles:

'The Personal Account':

A personal account of a three year Alexander Technique teacher training course.

Part 5 - The significance of Imperfect Sensory Appreciation:

Alexander’s first instruction to an Alexander teacher is to observe the habitual manner in which the pupil uses and organises themselves when carrying out an activity. Alexander warns that virtually everybody’s sensory perception becomes faulty and develops defects. This is what I had finally accepted with the mirror. Alexander went through this process himself when he was trying to solve his voice problems. He noticed that what he thought he was doing, which was based on what he felt he was doing, and what he saw himself doing in the mirror were not the same.

It is from here on that I felt I was reading completely revelatory information.

Alexander then says the teacher should ‘awaken’ the pupil to their unreliable sensory appreciation. He says that there is absolutely no point trying to teach the pupil anything new whilst faulty sensory perception still guides and informs the pupil of how to do things.
I had not appreciated this before. I had wanted to go straight to being able to do something right, both with myself and in my experimental work on others. I had not recognized end gaining for what it was at this stage.

From now on I listened to the talks, and phrases from the books started to make sense.
“You are not here to do exercises or to learn to do something right, but to get able to meet a stimulus that always puts you wrong and learn to deal with it.”