Developed by F. Matthias Alexander in 1894 this Technique is essentially a re-educative self-help system that promotes better health by improving posture, coordination, and breathing. In this intensive workshop, students will be introduced to the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of the Alexander Technique. This includes observation of the ‘Use of the Self’, reflections on one’s own patterns, and application of the technique in daily life.

The Teachers

Robin John Simmons

ROBIN JOHN SIMMONS (SBAT, MSTAT) has been teaching the Alexander Technique since 1971 and training teachers since 1982. At present, he resides in Switzerland and is the Co-Director of his training school, ATLAZ, in Zürich along with his wife Béatrice. He also teaches T’ai Chi, Nordic Walking, Dart Evolution Procedures, and is the author of the pathbreaking work ‘The Evolution of Movement’.

Beatrice Simmons

BÉATRICE SIMMONS-HEIZ (SBAT, MSTAT) has been teaching the Alexander Technique and has led healing sessions based on Animistic Tradition Wisdom for over 25 years. Apart from training professionals, she also offers private Alexander Technique lessons as well as courses and consultations in Alchemy of Fragrances and in Healing Alchemy. She runs a private practice in Animistic Tradition and Ancestral Wisdom, and Alexander Technique in her Attara Atelier in Switzerland, and works worldwide

About the Alexander Technique

It is used by people from all backgrounds and all ages both in the arts, in offices and businesses, at home, and in all sporting activities. Doctors frequently recommend a course of lessons to their patients to assist with poor posture, whiplash injury, all kinds of back problems (including slipped discs), or with respiratory troubles. Many well-known celebrities and performers take lessons to manage stress and improve their performance in whatever they do.

Benefits

The Alexander Technique gives you a totally new experience of yourself—a harmonious integration of body and mind. Unconscious tension is released, you feel lighter, gain more energy, move with greater freedom, and breathe more deeply. This self-help method teaches you greater consciousness of your posture, breathing, thinking, and movement patterns; it has a therapeutic effect. You will be in touch again with your kinaesthetic sense, or as a client has described it: “You gave me my body back!”. It is widely used by people to:

1. Help relieve pain
2. Improve performance and coordination in any activity
3. Prevent injury and fatigue
4. Release unnecessary tension
5. Find a balanced, flowing, and powerful expression of self
6. Improve and enhance the practice of artists like actors, musicians, dancers, and performers

Workshop Details

• 3rd to the 28th of October 2022
• Monday to Friday, 10am to 130pm
• Fees include one 50-min 1-on-1 individual lesson as well

The workshop is appropriate for people who are new to the technique and those with prior experience. As the nature of the work is not linear, it is greatly beneficial for people to revisit to continue and strengthen their practice.

Additional Details

• The workshop in October can be attended as is and is also part of a professional teacher training programme, which will have intensive modules throughout the year in addition to online correspondence with the Heads of Training, Robin and Béatrice. Please contact info@shoonyaspace.com for more information on the training programme.
• A student may also sign up for the intensive and decide to join the full training programme during the duration of the workshop (fees will be adjusted accordingly)

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Alexander Technique?

Developed by F. Matthias Alexander in 1894 this Technique is essentially a re-educative self-help system that promotes better health by improving posture, coordination and breathing. It is used by people from all backgrounds and all ages both in the arts, in offices and businesses, at home and in all sporting activities. Doctors frequently recommend a course of lessons to their patients to assist with poor posture, whiplash injury, all kinds of back problems (including slipped discs) or with respiratory troubles. Many well known celebrities, sportspeople and performers take lessons to manage stress and improve their performance in whatever they do.

Why might I need a course of lessons?

You may have poor posture or troublesome tension. You may have quite severe physical pains or difficulties, coordination problems, or voice or breathing difficulties. Or you might wish to prevent yourself getting into difficulties from poor postural habits. You might wish to improve your performance at playing a musical instrument or in a sport activity. You may wish to present yourself better in a business setting or give more effective presentations. You may wish to look your best. You may wish to reduce stress effectively.

How is the Alexander Technique different from other methods?

The F.M. Alexander Technique is quite unlike anything else around in the psycho-somatic disciplines. Alexander discovered a centrally integrating principle that determines the way all vertebrates use themselves. By consciously employing Alexander’s principle together with the active positive prevention measures and the psycho-somatic conscious directions you develop your underlying postural support musculature and give yourself the freedom to act from choice rather than out of automatic habits. This process is one you can bring to bear on any activity in life which makes the Technique uniquely continuous rather than a therapist dependent or an intermittent process. The Alexander principle, the conscious psycho-physical directions and the continuousness of the process are unique to the Alexander Technique. The effectiveness of the Alexander Technique has been operationally verified for over 100 years.

What happens in an Alexander lesson?

The teacher helps you recognise and identify your habit patterns which often are not so obvious. By teaching you how to employ the Technique in daily life activities like sitting, standing, walking, breathing, bending and so on, you are easily able to apply a better way of functioning in whatever you do. So the Technique is more than a therapy because you learn how to master your own way of using yourself. Specific activities like playing a musical instrument or singing are given particular ways of working that are suitable to overcome individual difficulties and improve performance.

How does the F.M. Alexander Technique work?

By using the Technique you get taller and more self-aware so you can perform every routine daily action with better coordination and skill. It is applicable to any action and can be employed 24 hours a day 365 days a year. The Technique works by getting you more aware of the ways you usually hinder yourself in your everyday actions. Normally these habitual “misuses” (as they are known in AT) are so automatic that they are not observed or felt as anything wrong. By noticing these habits and learning how to stop them you transform your everyday actions.

Are there any exercises I can perform to change these habits?

The Technique begins to help you alter and improve your coordination, breathing and daily actions straight away. In this way your habitual ways of doing things are shown up and you soon discover alternative ways of carrying out any action with less effort and more awareness. You can begin to change these habits at once by applying the basics of the Technique. Teachers often give pupils ways of training so that habit patterns change in a general way by employing what Alexander called “positions of mechanical advantage”. These can be quickly learnt and practised.

Is there any method I can use at any time of the day that can help me improve the way I am doing what I am doing?

The F.M. Alexander Technique :)