What is Alexander Technique Anyway? 

We all have a million habitual ways of using our bodies and our attention most of which are entirely unconscious. While some of these serve us, many do not. Studying Alexander Technique systematically increases your awareness of these habits and teaches you to upgrade them. The results are far ranging including the relief of  tension, pain, stress, and stiffness and the development of ever deeper levels of ease, poise, balance, coordination, alignment, and relaxation.  

While this might sound vague, the process is anything but. Working, for example, with the intricacies of how to breath more easily or stand more upright ensures that the process is both specific and practical. There is so much to be said about the Alexander Technique, volumes. But all of the words can just be confusing and distracting without an experience to buttress them. It’s a little like describing Thailand, or an orange, or the benefits of fitness to someone. It is much more effective to just go there, eat it, or start working out to really understand what is being spoken of. That said, three domains that often draw people to Alexander Technique are health, peak performance, and peace of mind. 

Health: 
Alexander Technique can offer relief from physical ailments including back pain, neck and joint pain, poor postural habits, sciatica, muscle tension/stiffness, Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI), and headaches/migraines, and poor breathing.  It can also impart a general physical pliancy, buoyancy, and vitality that is remarkable to experience.

Peak Performance:
Many musicians, actors, athletes, and dancers have found Alexander Technique has helped them hone their craft. These people understand that their bodies are the tools of their trade, but it is not just reserved for such rarefied domains.  Whether or not we realize it we all use our bodies professionally. Public speaking, posture, general bearing and poise, dealing with the ins and outs of sitting at a desk, how we hold ourselves matters for doing what we do well. 

Peace of Mind: 
A great deal of stress, anxiety, depression, etc is rooted in subtle patterns of bodily tension and holding. By establishing greater flow and coherence through the body people often also in tandem find greater emotional and psychological well-being. Alexander Technique can also be extremely helpful when establishing a new meditation practice or honing an existing one. 

What Does a Lesson Look Like? 

One-on-one lessons last fifty minutes and employ both gentle hands-on-work and dialogue. Typically about half is done sitting, standing, and walking while the other half is done lying down on a massage table. These simple postures form the movement laboratory through which habits are explored and changed. Unlike massage which is fundamentally manipulative, in the sense of the practitioner doing something to you, Alexander Technique is educational, in the sense that you learn how to use your own body and mind differently.

“[Alexander Technique] gives us all the things we have been looking for in a system of physical education: relief from strain due to maladjustment, and consequent improvement in physical and mental health, increased consciousness of the physical means employed to gain the ends proposed by the will and, along with this, a general heightening of consciousness on all levels… if we seriously desire to alter human beings in a desirable direction, can we ask any less.” - Aldous Huxley 

Want to Try It?
I offer one-on-one lessons out of my studio in Cold Spring or NYC.
Intro session: $50
Subsequent sessions: $125
Four pack: $400 

My Background
I completed 1,600 hours of formal training in Alexander Technique with Ann Rodiger at the Balance Arts Center in Midtown Manhattan and am fully certified by the American Society for the Alexander Technique. I also earned a 200 hour yoga teacher training certificate through Yoga Alliance in 2010 and spent five months studying chi kung and tai chi fulltime in Wudang, China. More information on me can be found here.

A Few People You May Know Who Use Alexander Technique

“Alexander students rid themselves of bad postural habits and are helped to reach with their bodies and minds, an enviable degree of freedom of expression.” 

Michael Langham (Director of Juilliard’s drama program from 1979 to 1992)