The joy and the challenge of teaching and studying the Alexander Technique in groups is, of course, that everybody is at a different place in their learning but that you need a topic, a theme, an activity, that everyone can relate to and benefit from thinking about.
And I work with more than one group – and each group is different! So, the way I am working at the moment is to look at each half term as a whole – that is five weeks of study, with each group lasting two hours – and I plan an overall theme for that half term with a slightly different focus for each week. Then, the specific content of each group will differ, depending on the personalities and experience and wishes of the members of the group- and probably my mood and the weather! But the overarching theme will be constant.
Last half term I took the theme of ‘making friends’ – with each other, with standing, with walking, with sitting…and we played and studied and talked within that theme. This half term I am thinking of ‘Going Deeper’ and we will be looking in more detail at hands and how we touch, feet and how we walk, arms and how we lift or carry or stretch up and down….And I will write up those workshops here as I plan them – for any of my group members who would like to refer to them, for any Alexander Teachers who wonder how they might work in groups – and for any passing dinosaurs who wonder why all my group members talk about dinosaur tails 🙂
Jennifer Fox Eades: Alexander Technique Teacher 