by Robert Rickover

Within days of my first Alexander Technique lesson, I was experiencing so many dramatic changes in my body – most spectacularly a gain in height of almost an inch – that I just knew this strange new process was something I was going to pursue as deeply as I possibly could.  I scheduled regular lessons and immediately set out to read everything I could find on the topic.

I managed to get a couple of F. Matthias Alexander’s books from the library and prepared to plunge right in.  And almost immediately fell soundly asleep!

This happened every time I started reading one of the books.

There was something about Alexander’s writing style and my inability to grasp his ideas that pretty much soured me on his books.

This continued into my 3-year Alexander Technique teacher training course in London.  Whenever it was time to discuss “The Books” I’d discretely slip out for a nice cup of tea at a nearby cafe.

After I had been teaching for a few years, I finally read them all – aloud to myself, cover to cover – as part of a voice project inspired by my work with the Tomatis listening therapy Method.  That turned out to be a valuable exercise on many levels, particularly the discovery of so many gems of wisdom tucked away in unexpected locations.

The books are certainly not easy to take in. Alexander sometimes veers into strange territories and makes pronouncements that seem odd, in some cases ridiculousness, by today’s readers.  Particularly in his first book, Man’s Subprime Inheritance, he spends a lot of time with a long xenophobic rant about how awful Germans were.  There is also a (mercifully) short section in which he combines racism and  ignorance about the situation faced by blacks in the American south at the turn of the century,*

And yet…there is an enormous amount of wisdom as well.  When I was doing my systematic reading program I began to wonder: How can at least some of that wisdom be more widely shared despite the built-in barriers?  And, more recently, despite the fact that fewer and fewer people are reading any books.

Over time I came up with the idea of creating short illustrated quotes by Alexander. They have proven quite effective at reaching large numbers of people on social media. You can find them here and they are free to use by anybody.

More recently, I created summaries and key elements of all 4 books: The Man Who Watched Himself in Mirrors: F. M. Alexander’s Four Books

I should add that there is also a sort of a “fifth book” authorized by F. M. Alexander – Ron Brown’s  Authorised Summaries of F. M. Alexander’s Four Books, which I highly recommend. It can be purchased from the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique and from Mouritz. It is very well done and can serve as a step towards reading FM’s four books.

Finally, John Macy, an Alexander Technique teacher and Physical Therapist, has written about his experience with Alexander’s books. It includes a podcast he did with me on the topic: Tuning Into FM: Have You Read Your Alexander Lately?

Here’s a podcast interview I did with John some years ago titled “The value of reading all Four of Alexander’s Books”: