Who was FM Alexander?
Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869-1955) was an Australian actor and reciter whose career was threatened by persistent hoarseness and loss of voice. His doctors prescribed rest, but this failed to help. 
Rather than accepting his fate and giving up a career he loved, Alexander decided he must be doing something to cause his loss of voice and embarked on a painstaking process of self-observation and experimentation.
Eventually, he concluded that the key to good neuromuscular co-ordination, and therefore to good health, lay in re-establishing the correct relationship between the head, the neck and the back, which 20th century human beings had largely lost. He resolved his own voice problems and greatly improved his own health. He then went on to develop his Technique to help others.
Although he was known in the early days as 'the breathing man', he extended the use of his Technique to help people with difficulties as various as stuttering, asthma, back pain, high blood pressure and muscular wastage following a long illness. Other pupils included what we would now call a 'hyperactive' child and a man with a poor golf swing!
Alexander's work was supported by several eminent doctors, and writers like Aldous Huxley and George Bernard Shaw were among those who went to him for lessons. Alexander was his own best advertisement. He led a lively and interesting life and was still teaching in his eighties, despite having suffered a stroke a few years previously. He used his Technique to restore himself to normal functioning. Some of the teachers who worked with Alexander towards the end of his life are themselves still teaching, despite being well beyond what is normally regarded as retirement age.
The Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique (STAT)
STAT was founded in 1958 by Alexander's assistants and teachers trained by him. It approves and regulates training courses for Alexander Teachers and maintains professional and ethical standards. All members of STAT have completed a three-year, full-time training course and have reached a standard approved by the Society.