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Why is the Alexander Technique so Poorly Represented on the Web? — 6 Comments

  1. Well said. I get the feeling that some think an internet presence is dirty and invasive. I personally prefer Facebook and a blog site to communicate my thoughts rather than a formal website. I occasionally dabble with twitter. Of course there is the issue of privacy, how much you are willing share with others, much of your own identity is known by banks, stores and by the search engines every time you click on something on the internet.
    So I think Internet privacy is a red herring.
    Alexander Technique teachers by their nature are open and honest, hence hopefully have nothing to hide and should be making more of the Internet however my issue is what is the Alexander Technique to the general public;
    It fixes back pain
    Shoulder pain
    Manages stress
    Manages anxiety etc. We confuse the public with what we fix, how can it do all this!
    Are we marketing AT right? I don’t have an answer
    If we write about that we change help people to think differently, are we a cult!
    What we do cannot be written fully in words as the words can be misconstrued. Perhaps the idea of niching works better, back pain specialist, breathing specialist, violin specialist etc and our second tag line is Alexander Technique. I don’t have the answer.
    I would be great if we had a huge web presence, we need some influential evangelists perhaps in the media to get some air time so we get noticed; anyone out who is one or knows one?

    • I think your last line about needing influential evangelist in the media is absolutely the best way forward. This is how FMA managed to do as well as he did. Evangelist from the medical and educational sectors. How I’d love to get my hands on Dr Rangan Chatterjee or Dr Michael Mosley. 😂😍

    • I think part of the answer to your question re how best to describe Alexander Technique on a website, ie most effectively in terms of attracting people, is to look at what attracts people using Web 2.0: ie use of “keywords” in search engine optimisation.

      If the major concern of people likely to benefit from AT is looking for pain relief, particularly for back pain, then what qualifiers might attract those people? DIY and self-help? Re-education of damaging postural habits? A mindbody approach?

      There are ways to test the likely impact of “keywords” by using free or paid-for SEO software that uses “web crawlers” to look at words used on websites against the number of searches and click-through rates for links in search results. Currently AT doesn’t make it anywhere near the first page of search results on Google (and probably other search engines too) when searching for “back pain” — despite this being the biggest cause of work disability, and hence the biggest pool of potential AT clients.

      I first came to AT in 1985 via appalling back pain. But now my last AT teacher has moved into absentee “spiritual healing” instead — I found him on the web in 2018, from which he’s now dusappeared — it’s intensely frustrating trying to find, on the web, a new AT teacher locally.

      This is despite my living in a city of nearly 300,000 people with the highest per capita number of “alternative” therapies and practitioners and protest groups — and the only Green MP in the UK parliament. It also has two universities and a big technical college, and a long established and highly regarded AT teacher training course.

      So it shouldn’t be this difficult to find local teachers: yet only the same three or so (web-savvy) names keep coming up, whatever my search terms.

      And the only really local teacher I found was in the very small print of a local freebie advertising magazine. I emailed her: she didn’t reply.

  2. Thanks as always Robert! When anyone asks what they can read to learn more. I always recommend a few books and Our Website, AlexanderTechnique.com. How did you come up with that name?

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