Q: How do you make it clear to the pupil that the Alexander Technique is not a therapy, particularly to those who’ve been on a Cook’s Tour of conventional and alternative therapies and think that this is just another port of call?

A: If anyone comes to me and says that they’ve got this, that or the other, I say, “Well, alright. But the fact of the matter is that the way you use yourself – the way you stiffen, pull down and fail to breathe – will inevitably make whatever you’ve got worse than it needs to be… In these situations, when somebody came in and said to FM that they had ankylosing spondylitis or whatever, he’d say, “If your doctor says that’s what you’ve got, then that’s probably what you’ve got. But I don’t know anything about that. What I do know is that you’re not breathing and you’re stiffening the neck and pulling the head back.”
(Taken from “Personally Speaking” – Part 3 “Teaching” p102)