This ebook, Taking Care of Yourself and Your Students: Alexander Technique Guidelines for the Music Teacher, is published on this website in a PDF format. It is very detailed and practical. It will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to create a wonderfully taught music lesson.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
Primary Control is the basis of comfortable coordinated music teaching in the Alexander Technique. When a music teacher is teaching students with the most organized postures and movements possible, then the head is leading the music teacher’s spine into lengthening, as the arms and hands move from a decompressed, vertically balanced, and aligned spine, as you demonstrate what you want from a student.
This means that all of the nerves that radiate from the spinal cord have no pressure on them. So, the nerves can send the signals from the brain for movement and/or muscular support, as you teach music, without being slowed down by the vertebrae and muscles pinching the nerves.
The brain and spinal cord always organize the movement that the body produces, but when the Primary Control is interfered with by muscular tension and compression and poor posture, then that organization is poor organization. THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE IS ALL ABOUT THE QUALITY OF A MUSIC TEACHER’S POSTURE AND SELF CARE.
The Alexander Technique recognizes that a huge amount of wear and tear and physical pain to the music teacher is caused by how you teach, not by what you teach or how long you teach.
The assumption in the Alexander Technique is that we are born with an innate ability to move with beautiful Primary Control, and that babies crawl with the head leading a lengthening spine naturally, given that the baby is healthy in a healthy environment.
If you were to observe a 1,000 music teachers teaching, you’d be hard put to see one music teacher teaching with beautiful Primary Control (given that none of them had done any Alexander Technique work). What does teaching music without a compromised Primary Control look like?
The music teacher stands or sits fully upright with a completely mobile body (not trying to stand or sit straight). The music teacher’s neck is free and the teacher is aware that as his or her head is leading a lengthening spine upward, so that the music teacher is able to see and communicate with the student without getting into physical trouble.
This means that the music teacher is completely engaged in teaching without hunkering down to communicate with the student. This fully upward mobile posture balancing on free legs on grounded feet or the sit bones, gives the shoulders and arms of the music teacher a balanced torso to float on, so that the teacher can effortlessly communicate with the student.
When the music teacher’s shoulders are floating on a fully upright torso or a diagonally aligned torso, then the shoulder girdle is free to back up the arms and hands as the music teacher teaches, and the shoulder girdle doesn’t have to tense up to support itself.
When the music teacher’s body is organized by the Primary Control, then the teacher is free to place all of his or her awareness on teaching music, and the teacher’s posture isn’t being compromised by a compromised Primary Control. In other words, if the music teacher’s body is collapsed or over-tense with poor head/neck/spine organization, then teaching music can leave you exhausted at the end of long day of teaching.
WHEN THE FOUNDATION OF COORDINATED HUMAN POSTURE AND MOVEMENT IS COMPROMISED, THEN TEACHING MUSIC WILL NEVER BE AS EFFORTLESS OR AS JOYOUS AS IT COULD BE.
