Notes on Penelope Easten’s The Alexander Technique – Twelve Fundamentals of Integrated Movement

Easten’s book (The Alexander Technique – Twelve Fundamentals of Integrated Movement, 2021) postulates the existence of an “original” Alexander Technique, arguing that Alexander prior to 1915 taught a different technique, which he kept a secret later on and which became “lost” to modern mainstream Alexander Technique teachers. The existence of this “initial” technique is predicated on a large number of unsubstantiated claims, some of which are examined below, and hence this paper only examines Easten’s revised history of the Alexander Technique (AT), not her interpretations of the Technique itself.