27
Sep
2024
Rebalancing: How Alexander Technique Helped Me Embrace My Voice & My Vulnerability
My voice and I were not always friends. She often made me feel fractured, directionless, and so riddled with anxiety that singing became almost impossible. I was seriously considering giving up on performing when a colleague recommended the Alexander Technique. She was in training at the Mind Body Music School and thought it might help. I always wanted to study this method. Why not give it a try?
The Alexander Technique quickly took hold and profoundly changed my singing and teaching. It has provided a stable yet flexible framework to view myself, my students, and my relationship with music.
The Alexander Technique focuses on improving movement and physical coordination through awareness of how we use our bodies. It was developed by Frederick Matthias Alexander, initially as a way to address his own voice problems, which he believed were related to habitual tension in his body. Alexander discovered that the relationship between the head, neck, and spine is crucial to coordinating the entire body properly.The technique also emphasizes that how you think about an activity affects how you perform it. Basically, if you think something will be difficult, then it becomes difficult. If you think that something will be easy then it becomes easy. Your body shows you the quality of your thoughts. I had to ask myself to change my thinking.
