Frederick Matthias Alexander > Quotes

“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.”
― F. M. Alexander

“It is not the degree of 'willing' or 'trying', but the way in which the energy is directed, that is going to make the 'willing' or 'trying' effective.”
― F.M. Alexander

“One of the most remarkable of man's characteristics is his capacity for becoming used to conditions of almost any kind, whether good or bad, both in the self and in the environment, and once he has become used to such conditions they seem to him both right and natural. This capacity is a boon when it enables him to adapt himself to conditions which are desirable, but it may prove a great danger when the conditions are undesirable. When his sensory appreciation is untrustworthy, it is possible for him to become so familiar with seriously harmful conditions of misuse of himself that these malconditions will feel right and comfortable.”
― F. Matthias Alexander, The Use of the Self

“... the delusion that because we are able to do what we "will to do" in acts that are habitual and involve familiar sensory experiences, we shall be equally successful in doing what we "will to do" in acts which are contrary to our habit and therefore involve sensory experiences that are unfamiliar.”
― F. Matthias Alexander, The Use of the Self

“You translate everything, whether physical or mental or spiritual, into muscular tension.”
― Frederick Matthias Alexander, The Alexander Technique: The Essential Writings of F. Matthias Alexander