What Does an IAT Lesson Involve?

Initial Alexander Technique (IAT) is modeled after the method of visual self observation and experimentation Francois Delsarte and F.M. Alexander used to recover healthy vocalization. An IAT lesson takes place with a student being filmed over an online video platform, such as Google Meets or Zoom. Students of IAT learn how to prevent the behavioral causes of pain, breathing difficulties, clumsiness and other problems. The IAT lesson also provides a training ground for students to use speech to plan their own behavior, carry out the plan, and check the result for accuracy.

The student learns to prescribe movements to improve their posture, and conform to a model that adequately stretches the fascial system. They will learn to see cause/effect relationships between these movements and improved balance, breathing, and control of movement on video. The student will learn to define these movements with clear language in geometrical terms. To the extent that their problems are caused by misuse of the body, the student is enabled to solve them and prevent their recurrence.

Student's are encouraged to express doubts about why the IAT model of posture is preferable to those proposed by other methodologies. These questions may be answered during the lesson, or via email. This may require acquiring very basic knowledge of physics, anatomy, bio-mechanics, and psycholinguistics.

Why psycholinguistics? Many methods for improving posture use vague instructions, such as "relax your shoulders", or "keep your back straight". Such vagueness is present in many exercises assigned by physiotherapists, along with visual demonstrations with instructions like "expand your ribs like this". "Relax" means something different to everyone, the entire back cannot be straightened, and "this" is a word that fails to convey the complexity of 12 ribs moving in different directions all at once. Students learn to identify such vagueness of language and to clearly describe the movements they want to see. If they are lucky and diligent (I was), they can apply this clarity of thought to other areas of life.

After the lesson, the student watches the video, filmed from the teacher's perspective. They will see if their movements matched their intentions, or if they did something with their body they didn't realize they were doing. The new way of carrying themselves will initially feel uncomfortable. They will have to choose between movements they have reason to believe will help them with their problems, but go against their habit, and movements that feel familiar, but cause them problems. As the muscles and fascias involved in creating the new posture adjust and strengthen over time, it eventually becomes comfortable.

The student gradually advances from reorganizing their body in static gestures (e.g. sitting and standing), to using this organization in dynamic gestures, such as the movement from sit to stand and vice versa, walking, running, squatting, working with one’s hands, breathing, speaking, and singing.]