Our way to the Alexander Technique

Frank Thelen

What shaped me after my child­hood and adolescence?

  • First, our fami­ly with our three children.
  • My stu­dies in eco­no­mics and then 25 years of work in various manage­ment positions
  • My stu­dy of the prac­ti­ce and phi­lo­so­phy of Japa­ne­se mar­ti­al arts over a peri­od of over 25 years
  • At the same time, I was invol­ved with various so-called Wes­tern methods of body­work, with the Alex­an­der Tech­ni­que fasci­na­ting me the most.

What impres­ses me about the Alex­an­der Tech­ni­que is how seam­less­ly it can be inte­gra­ted into all are­as of my life. Apart from the prac­ti­ce ses­si­ons with the tea­cher, the Alex­an­der Tech­ni­que is part of house­work, part of Aiki­do trai­ning, part of pro­fes­sio­nal work, part of dri­ving a car, etc.. Sin­ce after a while you can work inde­pendent­ly with the prin­ci­ples of the Alex­an­der Tech­ni­que, they flow into all are­as of life.

As ear­ly as the mid-1990s, I had con­side­red start­ing a trai­ning cour­se to beco­me a tea­cher of the Alex­an­der Tech­ni­que. But I did­n’t do this for pro­fes­sio­nal and fami­ly reasons. It was the­r­e­fo­re very nice to start the trai­ning tog­e­ther with my wife in 2018 and to suc­cessful­ly com­ple­te it in 2021.

Petra Lorz

It is always important for us to empha­si­ze that tea­ching the Alex­an­der Tech­ni­que is not a medi­cal pro­fes­si­on, but like so many other AT stu­dents, I came to the Alex­an­der Tech­ni­que becau­se I had per­ma­nent mas­si­ve tension/pain in the should­er and neck area and lower back. All attempts to free mys­elf from it were not sus­tainable. How did the­se ailm­ents come about? After gra­dua­ting from high school, I stu­di­ed eco­no­mics to then take on a job in a lar­ge com­pa­ny. All my life I’ve been sit­ting in front of a desk and a screen.

I got my first mas­sa­ge for acu­te back pain when I was 16. Of cour­se, I fol­lo­wed the recom­men­da­ti­ons of phy­sio­the­ra­pists and ortho­pe­dists and did a lot of sport to streng­then my back. But that did­n’t help much and some­ti­mes made the pro­blems even worse. Later I also tried acu­p­unc­tu­re and osteo­pa­thy. The results were bet­ter, but it was still just working on the sym­ptoms. The tur­ning point for me came in Sep­tem­ber 2017: My first Alex­an­der Tech­ni­que les­son. I will never for­get this expe­ri­ence. It was almost like an awa­ke­ning expe­ri­ence. My neck, my should­er felt so light after­wards. I would­n’t have thought that pos­si­ble. After initi­al­ly taking one-to-one les­sons, in Febru­ary 2018 I deci­ded to start my Alex­an­der Tech­ni­que tea­cher trai­ning at Irma Hesz’s Alex­an­der Tech­ni­que Insti­tu­te in Febru­ary 2018 and it’s real­ly no exag­ge­ra­ti­on to say that this has chan­ged my life.