by Imogen Ragone

“One to one lessons in the Alexander technique…have
long term benefits for patients with chronic back pain.”
– British Medical Journal, 19 August, 2008*

This was one of the basic conclusions of a study conducted in the UK, and published by the British Medical Journal, and something many Alexander Technique teachers and students have known for a long time.

This video was made to accompany the trial, and does a good job of describing the Alexander Technique and how the study was conducted, as well as explaining how it’s used to help people with back pain:

You can get full details of the study, which was a randomized controlled trial of Alexander Technique lessons, exercise and massage for chronic and recurrent back pain, at the British Medical Journal’s website.

I’m very excited that now a new study (again in the UK) is being done to look at the effectiveness of Alexander Technique lessons (and acupuncture) for relieving neck pain. I can’t wait to see the results. Chronic neck pain was the reason I started having Alexander Technique lessons in the first place, and learning the Technique completely turned things around for me.

Even though I know the Alexander Technique worked for me (and then some!), and have seen it help many other people, I think it is really useful to have the backing of properly conducted, large-scale studies like these.

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Imogen Ragone is an Alexander Technique teacher and website designer in Wilmington, Delaware.  Imogen’s website: ImogenRagone.com  This article was taken from her blog at
ImogenRagone.com/blog

Image: sixninepixels / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

More information about the Alexander Technique:
The Complete Guide to the Alexander Technique

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