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 especially written for the music teacher.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
When I was training in New York to become an Alexander Technique teacher, a graduate said that working with some students in the “real world” was hard work. That was why he loved to assist in the training program – the technique was easy to teach to trainees. Looking back on what this graduate said, and in light of my experiences with students, I only sacrifice myself when I don’t take care of myself as much as my students.
Taking care of myself as well as my students is absolutely core to the Alexander Technique teacher training. From my perspective as an Alexander Technique teacher, I’ve come up with the following considerations in this ebook for music teachers that will help you take care of yourselves and your students.
In the sections of this ebook Alexander Technique Principles and Care of the Student, you are shown how to expand your teaching toolbox to help your students reach their potential lovingly. In the sections Care of Yourself and Conclusion: Faith in Becoming a Successful Music Teacher, Alexander Technique principles and more are used to show you how to take care of yourself in your music lessons, take care of your students without sacrificing yourself, and to be successful as a music teacher.
Being kind to yourself as a music teacher can be difficult sometimes. You are a helping profession, which usually means you help others but not yourself. You may exhaust yourself if you are trying to prove you are a loving, caring individual. I even see this with Alexander Technique teachers, who have been taught to take care of themselves in a lesson. They may remember to take care of themselves physically, but be so concerned with helping the student they still end up exhausted.
Being kind to yourself in a lesson is a thought with a feeling. If I think of being gentle to myself as I work on somebody, then my work feels whole. I truly want to be kind to a student, when I am feeling loving toward myself. This makes the lesson a place of teaching and learning and not a place to exhaust yourself. A music lesson offered where the kindness moves in both directions means you get twice as much as the student. You get paid, and you get the reward of seeing a student experience the joy of making music.
I’m also writing from my background as a concert guitarist. When I went to an Alexander Technique teacher with carpal tunnel syndrome on the guitar, I wanted to get out of physical trouble as soon as I could. And I did! It is this experience as a hurting guitarist that I never forgot. After I finished my Alexander Technique training, it is this remembered pain and fear of having to stop playing and performing that I bring to my writing and teaching. It makes it possible for me to write clearly about the physical problems that so many music teachers and students create in their bodies.
