Alexander discovered that your entire body operates more efficiently when the relationship between your head and your spine is balanced. It doesn’t just affect how your head and neck move, it affects your nervous system, your digestive system, your cardiovascular system, your pulmonary system, everything. This is the big one and that’s why we start here to understand that the way you think about your body affects your ability to do everything that you do with more or less effort, which of course, affects the quality of your entire life. We will pair this work with the Alexander Technique principle of beginning to notice how we are using our bodies in everyday activities that may be getting in the way of our ability to be artistically free.

A misunderstanding of how our arms connect to our body, how they move, and from where, can create a lot of neck and shoulder tension. In week two, we will explore the arm/body connection and learn to release habitual holding in the neck and shoulders that can be very freeing for the voice and to your expression as an artist. We will combine this with the Alexander Technique principle of finding your pause…of slowing down so that our nervous systems can catch up to our thoughts and release what is unnecessary so that you can be free to express your true self.

In week three, we will explore all of the vocal and emotional freedom that there is to be found by unlocking your hips and your pelvis. We are a nation of butt-tuckers - and this posture tightens our hip flexors. When people have tight hip-flexors, they have trouble dropping in - trouble accessing their deepest emotions. We will learn some exercises and tricks to unlock this crucial area of your body. We will pair this with work on the Alexander Technique principle of using a powerful intention to achieve more profound and lasting results.

When our joints are locked, we don’t have a lot of choices. We’re stuck. Our feet are our connection to the ground and the ground is where we get all of our support, so in this week we will learn how to release our feet, our knees, and our ankles so that our bodies have soft and sturdy connection to the ground, which is the foundation for all of the other work that we have done in this class. A strong sense of ground will yield a free head and neck relationship, so we end the class where we began. Operating from a sense of wholeness allows a more nuanced, dynamic, artistic, and grounded performance.