Speaking to Students
I recently attended the ATTGP Online Summit, a yearly event that I highly recommend if you’re interested in Alexander Technique. During a class offered by Judith Saxton, we did a thought experiment that really influenced me. We said specific phrases and performed the action of each phrase. For example, we’d say “I am turning” and while we spoke the phrase, we turned around. We did the exercise twice--once emphasizing the word “I” and once emphasizing the word “turning”.
When I emphasized the word “I”, I had a much greater awareness of how my body was moving in space than I did when I emphasized the word “turning”. We gave our feedback in the Zoom chat, and I saw that many people had a similar experience to mine, while others actually had greater awareness of their body when they emphasized the word “turning”.
Dr. Saxton proceeded to tell us that the verbal center is in a different part of the brain for all of us, so that’s why our experiences were so different.
I’ve been teaching for a long time, so I know I have to say things differently depending on the student. But having this experience in Dr. Saxton’s class taught me that even the most basic language can have different effects depending on the receiver. It’s something to keep in mind as we work with our students.
If you’re curious, try the experiment with any phrase. You could say something like “I am turning” or “I am walking”, and then perform the action. Do it twice—once emphasizing the word “I” and once emphasizing the verb. See what happens for you.
We’re very careful with language choices when we work with Alexander Technique because how we think is how we move. And of course, the way we ask our students to think will influence how they’ll move. So we try to use language that implies movement rather than a fixed position. For example, we’d say “use of the torso” instead of “posture”.
In addition, Alexander Technique offers us practices that can sometimes replace language with experience.
Offering our students an experience so that they can come to their own realization can foster a deeper level of understanding for them. Many piano teachers I work with find practices like the one below help their students form good habits of sitting at the piano.
If our students become accustomed to practicing an exercise like that, we probably won’t need to talk to them quite as much about how they’re sitting. In addition, offering our students exercises like the one above can help to make them more independent during their time between lessons.
That said, when we do use language to communicate with our students, I’ve learned that we really need to choose our words carefully! I hope that the thought experiment in this article gave you a more thorough understanding of that as well.
If you’d like to learn more about basic Alexander Technique ideas to help your piano students, download our free PDF, “5 Ways to Incorporate Alexander Technique into Your Piano Teaching”. It will provide you with practices that can incorporate right away to help your students move with more ease at the piano.