My Story with the Alexander Technique:
I was in my first year of undergraduate studies when a professor suggested I take his Alexander Technique class. I thought it would make me a better dancer. But there was no dancing. Just sitting up and down in a chair. Moving slowly. Paying attention on purpose. Not quite what my nineteen year old self expected. Still, there was something there. It was good to do a lesson. I felt organized and present. My body was releasing a grip that I never knew was there. It was both new and deeply familiar at the same time.
I felt at home. Which is perhaps a strange thing to feel sitting up and down in a chair, being gently moved, and reminded to do less here, to send that there. Perhaps the armor so many of us carry keep us at a distance from ourselves.
From that first invitation I kept coming back. The work pointed me toward something I didn’t quite have words for: the possibility of being present and free in my own life.
That was over twenty years ago.
I spent nearly half of that time learning from my teacher Luc Vanier, and for a semester studied with his teachers Joan and Alex Murray, while I floundered and eventually dropped out of graduate school, realizing that the Alexander Technique was enough.
After training, my wife and I moved to Oakland, California. We wanted to live in the sun and to build our practices. Those years were formative. Another almost decade of teaching, learning, failing, and trying again. With the constant reminder that the best way to learn about the work is to do the work. To make the small choices that compound over time.
Most people come to the Alexander Technique because something hurts.
But they stay because it’s more than that.
Sitting up and down from a chair, noticing… making choices.