Term is coming to an end soon at Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London where I teach young people the Alexander Technique.
The curriculum I have devised for them is fun, varied, practical and multi-media, using poetry, literature, images and videos (this Charlie Chaplin clip is brilliant, for example). The students come in pairs and they explore so much together in quite a short time, with and without their musical instruments. Below is a flavour from this year’s curriculum; a hint of what we covered in the first ten weeks.
Week 1: Do Pause: you are not a To Do list by Robert Poynton. ‘Between the stimulus and the response there is a space, and in this space lies our power and our freedom.’ Viktor Frankl
Week 2: ‘A Peaceful Body’ by Bruce Fertman. Inspiring art from Finding Quiet Strength on Instagram.
Week 3: The ‘Primary Control’, the relationship between your head, neck and back. James Sholto’s fun explanation.
Week 4: The ‘Primary Control’ again, and some body mapping. Three types of ‘startle pattern’.
Week 5: The Science of Stress. Three ways we can dial down our stress response.
Week 6: Alexander’s Direction. ‘Directing is having the wish, the intention, the aspiration, to be going in those directions that are expansive rather than contractive, but the wish must be expressed through muscular release rather than tension and effort.’ John Nichols.
Week 7: ‘Performance of the Parts depends on the Health of the Whole’. For example, ‘I tense up in my back, and my arms and hands don’t move well’, or ‘I get stuck in negative emotions and my practice is unfocused and unproductive’.
Week 8: The Shoulders Week. ‘Shoulderblades are not attached to the ribs, or to the spine, or the skull, or each other! So they can go all over the place!’ (What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body by Barbara Conable).
Week 9: How you pay attention changes everything. ‘Attention changes what kind of a thing comes into being for us: in that way it changes the world’ (Iain McGilchrist). The Open Focus Life by Les Fehmi and Susan Shor Fehmi.
Week 10: An Alexander Technique summary. Before and After the Alexander Technique. Poetry Time: ‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost.