My name is Bob Clay and I have lived and worked at Loch Arthur Community since it began. Some years ago I trained as a teacher of the Alexander Technique and now teach both people who live here and students who come from the surrounding area.
What is the Alexander Technique all about? Put simply, it helps you to go about your life with less unnecessary effort and harmful tension. Once you let go of tension and effort which you don't need, then you can cultivate positive qualities, such as freedom, poise and confidence. Life today is so demanding that we can easily lose touch with ourselves and find we are tense and exhausted and not knowing what to do about it.
Many people start to learn the Alexander Technique because of a particular problem or pain. Those who are helped by it often carry on with it as part of their lives because of the continuing help, pleasure and insight they experience. It engages the whole person, developing physical awareness of yourself and giving more control over how you respond. So it can help with muscular stiffness and tension, with back and neck pain, and with problems to do with posture, but also with more general 
conditions of anxiety and stress. The aim is that the student becomes both more in control and more open and spontaneous. Lessons are usually one-to-one or in small groups and give the student the chance to be guided into a clearer understanding and experience of balance and freedom in movement, and of how to work with and change individual habits which you recognise as harmful.
Lessons feed into life, so that the skills you learn become natural to you. It's a simple but demanding discipline, practical but personal. Lessons are, I hope, as interesting and enjoyable as learning a language or a musical instrument, but with a clear opportunity for students to develop a healing understanding of themselves.
