The distinguished Dutch scientist, Nikolaas Tinbergen, Professor of Animal Behaviour in Oxford University, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973. He surprised and somewhat outraged the scientific world by devoting half his acceptance speech to praising the Alexander Technique.
He had been so impressed with the effect Alexander lessons had on his daughter, a cello-player, that he and his wife had signed up for lessons themselves. He told his audience of scientists that "...between the three of us, we already notice with growing amazement, very striking improvements in such diverse things as high blood pressure, breathing, depth of sleep,, overall cheerfulness and mental alertness, resilience against outside pressures, and also in such a refined skill as playing a stringed instrument."
There is no doubt that the AT works. But despite the interest of Tinbergen and other scientists we still lack a thorough understanding of what is happening at a neurophysiological level when a pupil has a course of Alexander lessons. But we have pointers. In 1925, the physiologist Professor Rudolph Magnus published his classic study of the postural reflexes on which he and his research team had begun work seventeen years previously. The results of this study helped Alexander crystallise his own thinking on what he came to call "the primary control".
In 1941, Sir Charles Sherrington, the founder of modern neuroscientist and its greatest thinker, praised Alexander for "insistently treating each act as involving the whole integrated individual, the whole psychophysical man. To take a step is an affair not of this or limb solely but of the total neuromuscular activity of the moment - not least of the head and neck".
In the last sixty years other distinguished scientists and the general progress of science have provided further insights into how the AT works and delivers its benefits. The attached paper Towards a neurophysiology of the AT attempts to draw together the work of Magnus, Sherrington and subsequent researchers into a preliminary neurophysiological overview within which the AT can usefully be considered.
You will find the latest draft of the paper here or through the neurophysiology link in the sidebar. It is a work in progress and any comments will be gratefully received.
Lund University Research into the Head-neck Relationship
Early this year Steven Hallmark told me about about the research work being carried out in the Departments of Neurosurgery and Oto-Rhino-Laryngolgy at the University of Lund, Sweden. During the 1990s a series of studies led by Dr Mikael Karlberg focused on the functioning of the head-neck relationship with a particular emphasis on how it relates to the broad syndrome of "cervical vertigo". A summary paper entitled The neck and human balance was published by Lund University in 1996.
Although this work is of obvious relevance to the AT, it is little known among AT professionals. Nor has there been any input to the studies from the AT. This is regretable from the AT point of view since such studies, by subjecting our work to the rigours of scientific analysis and testing, provide a sounder foundation for what we do and how we go about it. I also think we have something useful to contribute to such studies and their analysis.
I have prepared a paper summarising the body of work by Dr Karlberg from an AT perspective. It is available at the link here and from the sidebar above. My hope is that making the Lund work more accessible to AT professionals will increase understanding between the scientific and AT communities and facilitate an explicit AT input into future scientific studies such as those carried out at Lund University.