How I came to the Alexander Technique and how it helped me
While I was studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University I became very committed to dance. I had never considered dancing as a serious practice, but I found that it brought together in a wonderful way my existing interests in theatre, music and sport. It also gave me a focus that was a great relief from the demanding academic work and from the social dynamics associated with being a student at Oxford. I felt a considerable confusion, alienation and dislocation arriving from Portstewart to Oxford in 1980. It wasn't long before I had set my heart on dance as something that I really wanted to pursue seriously after I finished my studies and I was taking many lessons every week and being involved in performances of various kinds. Unfortunately the pressures of training seriously in dance at the same time as studying and dealing with the social and emotional stresses led to persistent and continuous physical problems. I was getting more and more frequent migraines and I had back trouble that often prevented me from doing anything much at all, let alone dancing and studying seriously.
At one point I had daily physiotherapy for two periods of three months. The physiotherapy helped the back pain temporarily, but as soon as I got active with dancing or playing sport it returned. One of my dance teachers had been suggesting for a long time that I should take lessons in the Alexander Technique as this might help with my back problems. Eventually, having tried all sorts of "magic bullet" approaches I accepted the offer of lessons in exchange for odd jobs made by Dick and Elisabeth Walker, highly experienced teachers who had trained with F.M Alexander himself in the 1930s and 40s. My first lesson was interesting but confusing. The language and ideas, the particular approach to guidance with the hands, the whole feel of the experience, was very unfamiliar. It was, however, intriguing and there was something appealing about the sense that the disposition proposed by the technique was clearly something very different to anything I had experienced before. In my second lesson I felt some clear physical changes and a sense of easing off myself, lengthening, balancing, releasing effort and tension, but the main experience was the revelation that learning was about what I didn't know, not what I thought I already knew.
Of course I couldn't exactly name that at the time but very quickly, in retrospect, I came to realise that I had always somehow considered knowledge and skill as things to demonstrate rather than doors that open up richness in life. The concepts of "end-gaining" and "inhibition" in Alexander's work were like lights that gave me a view of previously unknown possibilities.
I continued to have regular lessons with Dick and Elisabeth, who, knowing that I had very little money, continued to let me pay them by doing odd jobs around their house. My problems with stress, back pain and migraine didn't disappear but the Alexander Technique gave me an autonomy and independence in relation to dealing with them. I had realised that to a large extent these were happening because of things I did to myself. My reaction to my context, not just the difficulties of the context.
The Alexander Technique made it possible for me to continue with my dancing. It gave me a way to manage my physical and mental problems and gradually they improved. Without the technique I am convinced I would have headed for some form of serious breakdown.
Most importantly the technique gave me a way to access pleasure and joy in life and movement that I could not have imagined. It also opened up my imagination, grounded my somewhat intemperate enthusiasms, and gave me a way to be more attentive at moments when courage was needed.
I had one very strange experience that stays with me. I had played the guitar from my teenage years but hadn't played for a long time when I started my Alexander lessons. After about a year of lessons I took my guitar out of its case and started to play. I played better, with more sensitivity and detail, and with more pleasure, than I ever had. I'm not suggesting that it is possible to get good at something without practice, but the experience certainly led me to the realisation that the disposition towards an action is of utmost importance. That's Alexander's "means whereby".
I went on to train as a teacher of the Alexander Technique with Dick and Elisabeth and their amazing cohort of guest teachers. That was a wonderful three years. Spending every morning for 3 or 4 hours at the training course in Oxford for 30+ weeks of the year, and fitting in dance work around it to put bread on the table. The training was very simple and straightforward and all the more rigorous for that. I'm sure that it was the best training I could possibly have had.
My dad lent me the money for the fees and when I graduated at Christmas 1987 he just said not to bother paying it back but to "pay the gift on" as and when I could.
I taught for a few years in Oxford and then in Amsterdam as my dance work became increasingly international. I moved to Derry with my dance company Echo Echo in 1997 and began teaching Alexander Technique in the city and developed a practice that ran very happily alongside my local and international dance work. Around 2011 I had to gradually withdraw from taking new Alexander pupils as my work with Echo Echo became more and more demanding on my time and attention. Of course Alexander Technique had become absolutely central to my approach to dance, as a teacher, performer and creator and choreographer and as an Artistic Director so I didn't leave it behind. It became more and more influential on my work, particularly in finding ways to create high quality, socially inclusive, work.
In 2025, for reasons that remain unclear, Echo Echo lost its core funding so I found myself with time to re-dedicate myself to teaching people the Alexander Technique in one-to-one lessons. As I began to take more pupils and to introduce the technique to them I have been struck by the experience of feeling that I have become a better teacher of the technique through not teaching it directly for over a decade. That is what reminded me of the experience with the guitar. I have also been reminded that the technique is immediately and directly helpful for an incredibly wide range of people no matter what their life background. One very significant difference that I have noticed is the effect of the digital, screen, computerised world that we live in - almost everyone that arrives for lessons has some physical and emotional stresses associated with the need to spend a large part of life sitting, "attached" to a screen. I'm coming to the opinion that this is for most of us by far the most challenging thing for the way we "use ourselves" and, from both the feedback I am getting from pupils and from my own observation of myself, I'd say that the Alexander Technique is all the more important and helpful in our current times.
I am now developing my practice in Derry and am available for proposals to teach elsewhere on a regular basis.
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