Goodbye Elisabeth Walker

Elisabeth Walker, the last living teacher who completed with Alexander then went on to teach, died yesterday. She was 98 years old, still living by herself, and still giving Alexander lessons. This marks another milestone in the march of Alexander's Discoveries to the final prominence I believe they will one day occupy in the history of human thought. Elisabeth, with her husband Dick, were the innovators that we can thank for plunging into (what must have been then) a really weird kind of thing to do. You needed a special kind of courage and daring to study with FM. Back then, when Alexander was laying the groundwork for the future of his work, Elisabeth turned up in 1937 for her first lesson. 65 years later Elisabeth told me about that first lesson with FM: She remembered that after the lesson, as she was walking down the street… "I could only think about one thing." "What was that?" I asked curiously… "How can I ever get this back?!" By that time, FM was like a magician with his hands, and Elisabeth, encouraged by her future husband Dick Walker (an accomplished amateur golfer at the time), decided to join FM's school in 1938. My guess is that I can count on one hand the number of my readers who were even born then, I know I wasn't. However, because of the war, she finally qualified as a teacher of Alexander Technique in 1947. At the time, Elisabeth had been working as a Radiographer, at one time being paid £2 per week to work with one of the leading specialists in Upper Brook Street. She once wrote about this:

I got to know the bony structures of many well-known people, notable Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen Mother, Mrs Simpson (Duchess of Windsor) and my favourite actress Vivien Leigh.*

Elisabeth was an original, a hippie before the term had even been invented. With her husband Dick, on an adventure that came naturally to them both, in 1948 they took their two children to South Africa, bought a run-down lorry, then drove overland, doing some mountaineering in the Hoggar Mountains and at Mount Kenya on the way. It was the start of 12 years of teaching Alexander Technique, along with Irene Tasker, in South Africa. Many of her students were witnesses in the notorious libel case involving Dr Jokl, including famous anthropologist and AT enthusiast Raymond Dart. In those heady days, the political left took to Alexander's work best, and which is how she met Nelson Mandela, before his famous incarceration. He impressed Elisabeth then as someone who did not need to study Alexander Technique – he already had the use that exemplified a teacher at that time. However, it was the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 - Dick was at risk of being arrested - that finally convinced them both to return their five children to Putney in London. Feeling cramped, they finally decided to settle in Oxfordshire, where Elisabeth continued to live until her death yesterday. It was there that she met and taught Nikko, Lies and Janet Tinbergen. Nikko of course would go on to give his famous 1973 Nobel Prize Oration, based on his experience of just a few lessons with Elisabeth at the time. Elisabeth regretted that it was only after his Oration that she finally convinced him AT was education, not therapy! In later years Elisabeth became a fixture at International Congresses – starting in Sydney in 1994 - and visited America many times to teach on Michael Frederick's Sweet Briar residential. She also made a video on "Alexander's Procedures" for us in Japan, while teaching there in 2002. She continued to teach in private practise in Oxford right to the end. When her youngest daughter Lucia Walker – also well know to the Alexander Technique community – wanted to become a teacher, Elisabeth and Dick opened their own school in Oxford in 1984. Another daughter, Julia Cowper, also later trained to be a teacher of Alexander Technique, making it a real family business. In all, the Walker family consists of six children and several grandchild. Many fine teachers also passed through Elisabeth's school before it closed, and I am sure we will be privy to many inside stories as other teachers celebrate the life of this wonderful woman. *Taken from an article I asked Elisabeth to write for "The Barlows" edition of DIRECTION Journal in 1995.