Resources
I made this channel to help increase awareness of this work, as well as to serve as a content library for current students. I cover a wide variety of AT topics, offering tips from my years working with AT. While I strongly maintain that AT is not a subject that can be adequately learned through YouTube alone, there is still advice to be had there.
Teaching Helpful Thoughts, by Jess Albertine
For my final project of AT teacher training, I wrote and illustrated (but never published) a children’s book about the profession of teaching Alexander Technique. It helps kids understand what I do. I read it to a class of 2nd graders (around age 8), and watched every one of them immediately implement the book’s suggestions by floating up from their curled positions and smiling at how much better it felt.
The link above is a PDF version. You can also contact me to purchase a paper copy for the cost of printing and shipping.
AmSAT is the American Society for the Alexander Technique. They’re the professional organization I’m certified under. The site has a lot of information about AT. If you’re looking for a teacher outside the Denver area, they have a page for finding teachers. While there certainly are many excellent teachers who are not currently AmSAT members, and so would not appear on the website, I am not aware of any other list of teachers in the US who are guaranteed to all be certified through a full 1600-hour training course. Other lists and professional organizations do exist, but there is not necessarily regulation about the training that the teachers have received. There will be further discussion of this in a future video on my YouTube channel, which I will link here when posted.
Studies on Alexander Technique
The British Medical Journal published an article on the long-term effects of Alexander Technique for chronic back pain
A peer-reviewed scholarly article on the current understanding of the mechanisms behind why Alexander Technique works
The Victorinox factory implemented regular Alexander Technique lessons and found a 40% reduction in workplace injuries.
The Alexander Technique Science website has an extensive research set. The AT science group is led by certified AT teachers with doctorate degrees in neuroscience.
AmSAT’s research page with more articles
Alexander Studies Online maintains an entire library of publications. I recommend the list of 84 peer-reviewed articles.
A note about the Alexander Technique Wikipedia article
It’s wildly inaccurate. There appears to be someone with a vendetta against AT who keeps hijacking it. If you’re up for reading a lot of nasty internet arguments, you can scroll through the extensive debates about editing the article which also contain yet more scholarly resources posted by actual subject matter experts. AT is absolutely not an alternative medicine therapy. I am a teacher; I teach skills. No AT teachers should be claiming to diagnose, treat, or cure anything whatsoever. It’s also blatantly untrue that there exists no proof of AT’s efficacy.