The Alexander Technique and Asthma
By Philip Pawley
Asthma is essentially a breathing problem. No, I lie: asthma is not a breathing problem. Asthma is one’s own inappropriate reaction to feeling unable to breathe. This somewhat revolutionary statement (revolutionary to people who don’t know about the Alexander Technique) has important consequences for the treatment of asthma. Before I can consider those, however, I need to demonstrate the truth of what I say: the symptoms of asthma result from a very usual, but inappropriate, reaction to feeling that one is unable to breathe.