"I don't have time": Adapting to your student’s learning style

"I don't have time": Adapting to your student’s learning style

"I need results. Tell me what to do."

When I began my career as a new Alexander Teacher, this question used to throw me for a loop. The Alexander Technique is about doing less. It's about learning to pause, taking a thorough inventory of what you are actually doing, and finding a way to accomplish the same things in a more efficient way. It takes time to learn (hours, weeks, months, years, depending on how deeply you learn). And it takes time to apply the skills you develop (half a minute, seconds, mere moments.)

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How are you doing?: Looking at how Allostatic Overload is Impacting Our Well-being

How are you doing?: Looking at how Allostatic Overload is Impacting Our Well-being

When I began my Alexander Technique teaching practice in 1989, my focus was on performing artists and helping people improve their posture and live with less pain.

Fast forward to 2020, when the Covid-19 Pandemic upended a way of life, and - perhaps for the first time- people who historically weren't so vulnerable to the ebbs and flows of resources and economies, found themselves part of the global trauma.

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Step 2: Exploring F. M. Alexander's 5-Step Process

Step 2: Exploring F. M. Alexander's 5-Step Process

"Project in their sequence the directions for the primary control which I had reasoned out as being best for the purpose of bringing about the new and improved use of myself..."

Alexander applied this to speaking, I will continue to apply this to reaching to lift my cup. You can apply this to any activity you choose.

In practice, this part is the same regardless of your stimulus, although you may develop your own specific directions that assist with particular activities. For instance, I think more detailed directions when I am preparing for a fine motor task, like typing, than I do when I am walking.

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Step 1: Exploring F. M. Alexander's 5-Step process

Step 1: Exploring F. M. Alexander's 5-Step process

“Inhibit any immediate response to the stimulus…”

For our purposes, you can choose any activity you like.

Alexander was particularly focused on speech and oration, his profession. He was suffering from chronic hoarseness which put his livelihood at risk. He began his exploration to solve problems with speaking, thus his stimulus was “to speak a certain sentence”.

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Anatomy of the head and top of the spine

Anatomy of the head and top of the spine

In this video blog, I show you where the head rests on the top of the spine. Having a more detailed understanding can facilitate your self-work and what you are exploring in lessons with your teacher. I am currently offering video sessions until it is safe for us to meet in person.

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Awareness: A blessing and a curse

Awareness: A blessing and a curse

There is a saying: The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

Studying the Alexander Technique is an invitation to discover you may be doing things you aren’t aware of. Much of what is taught and learned begins with physical action. However, all of our actions and perceptions, whether intellectual, emotional or physical (or a combination of all) can be brought to a higher level of awareness and can become more accurate, including our perception of the world around us.

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The Power of a Hug: Why Alexander hands-on work may be good for your health

The Power of a Hug: Why Alexander hands-on work may be good for your health

I ran into a college classmate the other day, who I had not seen in close to 40 years, although we “see” each other on Facebook. She lives in another state, so it was an extreme coincidence that she was crossing a busy intersection in Manhattan just as I was crossing the other direction. We both went in for a mutual embrace in the middle of the crosswalk, at which point I joined her to double back and walk a bit, so we could catch up. We were not that close during my short time at the same college, and don’t know each other that well, but I know she is a kind-hearted, loving person and the immediate availability, as well as the warmth of her embrace definitely lifted my mood.

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Seeking Enlightenment?: The Alexander Technique may help you get there, faster

Seeking Enlightenment?: The Alexander Technique may help you get there, faster

Many years ago, I was teaching a first lesson to a young woman. Her first statement was “I am an Evangelical Christian.” Her first question was “Does the Alexander Technique promote any religious or spiritual ideology that will conflict with my beliefs?”

I told her no, because the Alexander Technique is not a philosophy or a religion. It fails a key element of cults, in that Alexander Technique promotes the individual learning a process for assessing and revising belief systems through self-exploration. F. M. Alexander implored the teachers he trained to teach and innovate based on their own lived experience, not to copy him.

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Alexander jargon: using language in a non-habitual way

There are many folks who are critical of the jargon* we use in the Alexander Technique. I understand their point. Semantics (the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning) can muddy communication. Our terminology can be confusing, de-legitimizing, off putting and inaccessible.

However, consider the definition of jargon: * “special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand”. Alexander students gain skill from the process one goes through to understand the jargon. Alexander’s directions and concepts can invite someone to think in a new way. Language can be used to trigger novelty in perception, making it possible for someone to access change. Alexander Technique is about change. We are looking for ways to bring habituated, automatic responses to a level of awareness where we have more agency to choose how we respond.

I offer Alexander’s main instructions in many variations, in my self work and with my students:

  • Neck free, head forward and up, back lengthening and widening, knees forward and away.

  • Allow your neck to be free, to allow you head to move forward and up, to allow your back to lengthen and widen, to allow your knees to release forward and away.

  • I allow my neck to be free, to allow my head to release forward and up, to allow my knees to release forward and away from each other, to allow my shoulder to widen, lengthening through my arms and out my fingers.

  • I don’t have to tighten my neck, I don’t have to pull the base of my skull back and down towards my tail, I don’t need to shorten or narrow my back, I don’t need to pull my arms and legs in.

I find this keeps me from becoming habitual and automatic, reciting words by rote without perceiving their meaning. After all, I can recite the alphabet, count, repeat song lyrics and any other number of string of words without needing to let them register. This is very to the experience that I can drive a familiar route and have the sense that I don’t remember passing the previous three exits. That kind of automated behavior is what the Alexander Technique seeks to remedy.

Another benefit of having a glossary of jargon in the Alexander paradigm is that it brings an awakening to our auditory processing during lessons and in our self-work.

Try This:

  • Imagine your head getting lighter and easing towards the ceiling. What do you notice?

  • Say to yourself: “I don’t have to hold my breath” as you think of your head being light. What do you notice?

  • What does it mean to let your head move forward and up? Does the image below illustrate what you would understand from those words?

The movement Alexander meant by “forward and up”

The movement Alexander meant by “forward and up”