A wide variety of teaching practices, ranging from traditional to improvisational, can be used to teach the Technique, and teachers are encouraged to be creative and flexible in their responses to each student's unique needs. Regardless of teaching style, however, teaching the Technique always involves helping students improve their observation and awareness, and helping them learn the skills of conscious inhibition and direction. The Alexander Technique can be taught privately, in groups, or in workshop formats. Most students want, and most teachers offer, a series of lessons over an extended period of time. Private and group lessons vary in length.
Workshops can be of any combination of private or group lessons.
Most teachers use some combination of verbal explanations and instructions, and their hands when teaching. They use their hands to clarify their verbal instructions, and to help students continue inhibiting their habitual response to a stimulus, by helping them continue to consciously direct themselves in a new way as they begin and ultimately accomplish any activity. Although many people report great physical and mental benefits from studying the Alexander Technique, the Technique is not a medical or psychotherapeutic treatment rendered by a practitioner to a patient or client for the purpose of restoring that person to mental or physical health. Rather, it is an educational process whereby people can learn how they are interfering with their natural coordination, and learn how to stop that interfering. It is only as a result of learning how to stop this interference, and learning how to consistently apply the principles of the Technique in their daily lives, that people experience any longterm benefits from studying the Technique.