Young Australian actor F.M. Alexander faced a serious, concrete problem that had to be solved to save his career: While performing, he kept losing his voice. A big deal in 1892 when you have no mic, a passion for Shakespeare, and aren’t flush with cash. Strangely, voice-loss doesn’t seem to have been an issue for him in any other area of his life. Talking to friends? No problem. Acting? Problem.

When Alexander followed medical advice (vocal rest for two weeks and prescribed medicines), his voice would return, only to disappear again during the next performance. Although doctors could find no medical explanation for his difficulties, they continued as long as he continued trying to work on stage. So Alexander hypothesized that his voice issues might stem from what he was doing while acting. He began observing himself in a series of mirrors in rehearsal and noticed a complex pattern of unnecessary tension from head to toe (the pattern included: pulling his head back and down, lifting his chest, depressing his larynx, audibly sucking in air, and contracting his legs) which was triggered the moment he simply had the idea to speak a line.

This observation told him two things:
1. His “vocal” problem on stage was merely a SYMPTOM of a visible, whole-body pattern of chronic, habitual tension that he’d never noticed because it gradually had come to feel entirely “normal” to him. Yet when he looked in the mirror, he could see his sense of normalcy didn’t match reality. His awareness of his own body was inaccurate and unreliable.
2. Because this pattern started when he got the idea to speak in performance, it was just as much a “mental” issue as a “physical” one.

From there, he began to develop the Alexander Technique.