Frederick Mathias Alexander (1869-1955) was an Australian actor who had problems with his voice and breathing. Unable to gain relief from medical treatment or conventional voice training methods, and convinced that his problems were to do with the way he was using his voice, he set out to discover for himself what he was doing wrong and how to change it.

His investigation took him over ten years! He had continual setbacks which forced him to observe more closely and think more deeply. The discoveries he made in this time not only enabled him to overcome his original problem, but also led to the eradication of a number of other disorders from which he had suffered since childhood.

He came to see that most people had the same underlying problems that he had discovered in himself. He also found they had the same lack of awareness as he had when he began his research. He began to teach others his technique, first in Australia and then in Britain and America, and continued to do so until his death at the age of 86, by which time the Alexander Technique had become recognized throughout the world as an original and distinctive branch of the study of human behaviour and a major contribution to preventative medicine and health education.