The Initial Alexander Technique returns to the way F.M. Alexander first worked — on himself, with no teacher's hands to rely on. It is a practice of conscious guidance and control: learning to observe your own habitual manner of moving, to reason out a better use of yourself, and to direct that use through clear verbal instruction — thinking in words, in order, before and during activity.
Rather than receiving an experience from a teacher, you build the means to direct yourself. The lessons give you a working model of how your coordination is organised, a vocabulary of directions suited to your own pattern, and the discipline of applying them — so the technique becomes genuinely yours, available in any activity, with nobody else in the room.
Most Alexander Technique taught today is hands-on: the teacher's touch conveys a new experience of lightness or ease, and the pupil returns, lesson after lesson, to receive it again. That work can be valuable — but the experience tends to belong to the lesson, and to the teacher's hands.
The Initial approach works the other way around. The teacher's role is to help you reason — to examine your habits, construct accurate models of what you are doing, and compose the verbal directions that change it. The change is produced by your own thinking, so it does not fade when the lesson ends.
Michael Avery has worked with the Alexander Technique for more than two decades, and trained in the Initial Alexander Technique with its originator, Jeando Masoero. He lives and teaches in Melbourne, where he also directs the Michael Avery School of Music and the Richmond Music Academy. He is a trained classical guitarist and a passionate outdoor climber, and takes curiosity and flexibility of mind as central values in his teaching and in life.
A lesson is a working conversation and collaboration. Together we observe how you carry out a simple act — sitting, standing, speaking, playing — examine the habits at work in it, and compose the directions that address them. You leave each lesson with a reasoned sequence you can practise on your own, because the practice between lessons is where the technique is actually built.
The natural first step is a single introductory lesson — enough to see how the work proceeds and whether it suits you. Book a time below, or get in touch with a few lines about yourself and what brings you to the work.