Jennifer Fox Eades: Alexander Technique Teacher
An Alexander technique teacher working for well-being and positive mental health
Experience the Alexander technique in a friendly group setting with Jenny and colleague Andrea Hughes https://www.alexandertechniquealtrincham.co.uk/
When? 4th Saturdays in the month – starting on 24 September 2022
From 2-4pm
Where? Union Chapel, Fallowfield http://www.unionchapelbaptist.org.uk/
Cost? £10 or less if you can’t afford that.
Bring? A blanket and a book to rest your head on
Booking essential. Please contact Jenny for more details.
Mindfulness for the Body – with the Alexander Technique @ Union Chapel
Ease back pain, stiffness, aches and pains. Move and breathe more easily and enjoyably.
New 10 week course starting Tuesday 14 January 2020
Covering the basics: Tuesday pm 1.00 – 3.00 All welcome
Applying Alexander: Tuesday am 10.30 – 12.30
For those who have already done the basic course
Bring a mat or blanket to lie on and wear comfortable clothes
Jenny Fox Eades
01625 614594
07974 944585
jennyfoxeades@gmail.com
Union Chapel Wellington Road, off Wilbraham Road
Fallowfield, M14 6EQ
Full fee £65 Students/means tested benefits £30
Facilitators: Jenny Fox Eades, Alexander teacher and Third Order Franciscan; Nick Eades, Qi Gong and Tai chi practitioner
Saturday 7 December 2019
St Peter’s Church, Windmill Street
Macclesfield, SK11 7HS
11am – 3pm
Wear comfortable clothes, bring a light lunch and a blanket or shawl
‘At the still point of the turning world, there the dance is’
An Alexander Class for Parents and Carers (babies welcome)
Mondays 1.30 – 2.30 £10 per class or £45 for 7 weeks
Learning the principles of mindful movement – working WITH our bodies, not against them. Help yourself to easier movement and learn how to support your developing child as they grow.
Clinical trials show the Alexander Technique provides substantial long term relief from lower back pain. It is in the NICE guidelines for Parkinson’s disease to relieve symptoms, including depression and improve balance. It is relaxing, grounding, stress reducing….it can be life changing.
New 7 week courses starting
Monday 14 October 2019
Macclesfield Methodist Church Westminster Road, Macclesfield, SK10 1BX
Call Jenny on 07974 944585
An excellent talk on movement and why the fitness industry gets it badly wrong from a fitness expert and male model, Roger Frampton. He highlights the ridiculous practice of Western cultures of taking master movers – also known as children – who squat naturally and with ease and then teaching them to SIT for 7 or 8 hours a day.
I suspect that this single practice, the practice of replacing the natural human positions of standing and squatting with sitting on that man made, modern and malign invention THE CHAIR probably contributes more to the epidemic of back pain in the Western world than anything else.
Sitting, slumped over, limits our breathing, contracts our spines, weakens our core muscles and probably much more. We used to squat – Frampton calls it the ‘pre-chair resting position’ – why were we made to stop???
Frampton says we should watch children to understand how our bodies want to move and try to get back our full range of movement – the movement we once had. He criticizes the outcome focus of the fitness industry – constantly measuring time, distance, repetitions, weight – and says we should focus instead on HOW we move – and focus on movement, not looks, not muscles. Work with your body, not against it, he says and prioritize the spine. You are, as a Chinese saying has it, as old as your spine.
So, the Alexander Technique – not about posture but about movement – put movement first, understand how your body wants to move, used to move – find an Alexander teacher or, perhaps better still, watch a small child.
On Saturday, 16 people turned up at St Peter’s Church, Macclesfield to explore the simple, yet complex movement of walking. We all know how to walk. What we don’t always know is how WE walk and how we might walk with more ease, more enjoyment. And that is what we explored together.
And it was immense fun – a really good workshop. And people learned a great deal. And we metaphorically covered a great deal of ground though we physically didn’t walk any great distances.
And looking back on any workshop or group session I COULD pat myself on the back, as the person running the workshop and say ‘well-done, I ran a good workshop’. Or, alternatively, ‘that didn’t work, I must not be a very good teacher’. And in these days of an education system that measures teachers on how well their students do, that is certainly a tendency. But that view, it seems to me, puts TOO much emphasis on the role of the teacher and not enough on the role of everyone else in the room.
It’s not that the teacher has NO role or responsibility. Of course they do. It was my job, yesterday, to ensure that the physical and emotional environment was as safe as possible – that people knew they weren’t going to be judged or criticized. I try to make sure the physical environment is as beautiful as possible too – that tells participants I value them. As does the fruit and treacle flap jack at break time. And it’s my job to be as skillful a teacher as I can be, to keep studying and learning myself and to teach as clearly as I know how. I am responsible for the pace of the workshop, the content of the workshop.
On this particular afternoon I was also lucky enough to have two other Alexander technique teachers to help me, the lovely Janey Goodearl and the wonderful Su Harrison.
But – and it is an important but – the other people in the room play an absolutely essential role in the success of any workshop. Their openness to learning, their generosity to one another, their courage in being willing to change and look at new ways of doing things are things the teacher or workshop leader can encourage but not actually give. Only the participants can do that.
So, as I look back on Saturday’s workshop and reflect on it, I have to pay tribute to the open-hearted, warm, friendly and open-minded participants for the learning that took place. To Janey and to Su, for their invaluable help and to all the lovely people who came together to form a community of learning the Alexander technique together.
If we learn, we change. And at the end of four hours, people had changed. They said,
‘I feel safe and more stable and more appreciative of the ground’
‘I learned how strong my lower body is’
‘when I went for a walk I thought more about the process of walking instead of being in my head’
‘I felt more grounded, more connected with the ground’
‘I felt a lot more stable, I looked up, I enjoyed going for a walk!’
‘I’m taking away a sense of freedom and stability’
‘I’m taking away the need to slow down’
‘I’m going to be a bit gentler with myself about change’
‘I learned that holding yourself rigid is a silly waste of effort’
Well done, those students of the Alexander work. And thank you for a good afternoon’s learning.
Sometimes, running Alexander Technique groups is the MOST enjoyable, satisfying and above all, funniest job I can imagine. And today was one of those days. There aren’t many groups of people where I can picture myself saying, ‘Let’s imagine we are a pelvis, and then paint ourselves a pelvic floor!’ but my Union Chapel Alexander groups are that kind of group so today we did precisely that.
First, though, we began with me deciding and admitting that I need to learn how to teach voice as an Alexander technique teacher and that I need my groups to teach me how to do it. There are singers in my groups and other voice users – that is, other humans! So why would I not use these experts to learn from?
We are language using animals. On the radio today I heard a paleo-linguist say that speech is finely controlled breathing. And the Alexander technique is, first and foremost, a breathing technique. So, with the help of Harriet Anderson’s excellent The Thinking Teacher’s Body we first thought about standing in a quiet, balanced way so that our musical instrument, i.e. our body, was as aligned and relaxed as possible. And while John, (thank you John) read aloud an extract from Harriet’s book I went round and used my hands to help people explore that quiet standing.
Then we did one of Harriet’s ‘Explorations’ and attempted to vocalize in a really good slump. And we explored how that sounded and how that felt. Linda said it felt like a large fat cat trying to squeeze through a small cat flap! And then we explored vocalizing while in a more balanced and open state – and the difference that made.
But it was after coffee that we became a pelvis! Martyn and Linda were the ischial tuberosities, Fiona the pubic synthesis. John was the sternum and spinal column, other group members were the iliac crests. And I painted in a pelvic floor.
When we could stop laughing enough to think about what we had done, we agreed that this was a funny, powerful way to explore our mental body maps – and to learn about and think about the extraordinary miracle that is the human body. So my thanks to one of MY teachers, Bruce Fertman for both the ideas and the confidence to try them out.
We did a LOT of voice work today – and I felt I learned a huge amount from my committed and generous students. And we all felt we had started to explore a way of studying the Alexander technique together – and breath and voice – that we can extend and develop in future sessions. And we laughed – a lot. And I LOVED the session. As always, I feel grateful and privileged to teach this work.
So, here’s to more pelvis building….. and to more tuning of the musical instrument that is the human body.
This week we are going to take some time to consider what the founder of our work called the ‘primary control’ and which others refer to as the ‘primary pattern’ – that is, that the body is an integrated whole, not a collection of disconnected parts, and that it needs to move and work as a whole. What I do with my neck affects my feet – what I do with my feet affects my head. It sounds obvious but humans manage to forget this because we are SO absorbed by….where we are going, the facebook page in front of us, butting into the conversation, pulling up one more weed….etc, etc. And then we wonder how we hurt ourselves 🙂
Those in my groups who are new to the work this term will revise what we have learned so far about standing easily, about sitting easily and we will coach one another (a teaching technique I use a LOT) to remind us what we might remember to make life as easy as possible.
And we will look in our anatomy study at the amazing, incredible structure that is the spine. 
Those who have done this work for a while will ALSO revise what we can usefully think about in order to sit/stand easily and then take that knowledge into movement, into transitioning between sitting and standing and standing and lying down and lying down and standing up, while remembering to remember ourselves as well as what we are doing.
AND for the first time I am teaching a shared lesson on Monday afternoon in WhaleyBridge at Riverside Wellbeing. The lesson is full but email me if you would like to be kept posted about future chances to come along.
Yes, seriously.
To explain…..
I have recently been introduced to the work of Ido Portal , inventor of The Movement Culture. His basic idea is that we don’t move enough. And when we do move we ‘exercise’ within a fairly narrow range of movements and then, because we only do one sport, we injure ourselves by overspecializing.
As an Alexander Technique teacher I love watching his videos – his movement is beautifully. But I also love that he has developed a philosophy of movement which I find very compelling. Basically he says move more, in more ways. Be less of a specialists, more of a generalist. Humans are designed to move in many, many ways.
And I could not agree more. Children naturally move through a wide range. When out walking they also skip, jump, run, climb, swing, lean down, reach up, clamber, slide. As we age we narrow this range of movement – we just walk, on one level, at one speed.
And the modern world, with it’s ‘labour saving devices’ contrives to save us from moving even more. Cars mean we don’t walk, lifts mean we don’t climb stairs, remote controls mean we don’t even get up to change television channel. We hire a cleaner to clean our windows and our house, we get a dog walker to walk the dog. And then we go to the gym, or yoga class to ‘exercise’ the body we have stopped moving.
Perhaps the problem is the word ‘exercise’. Exercise seems to be a chore, a duty, more about health than about pleasure. If we stopped thinking of ‘exercise’ and instead thought of ‘how can I move more today?’ How can I enjoy movement more? Not, how can I reduce my movement, ‘save’ time and energy, but how can I treasure every opportunity to move my incredible body?
So, a New Year’s Resolution – exercise less and move more. Find movement classes, enjoy moving. Oh and consider learning the Alexander Technique to refine your movement and make it even more enjoyable, easy, free – beautiful, even. Happy New Year everyone.
What I LOVE about teaching the Alexander technique in groups and workshops are the WONDERFUL people who rock up to them! AND how much I learn. And last Saturday’s workshop, Be Still and Wait: Prayer, the body and the Alexander Technique, was no exception.
A few were people I knew already – including my husband who was an extraordinarily kind, unobtrusive, supportive gofer. Mostly, they were people I didn’t know – from Manchester, from Whaley Bridge, from Wildboarclough.
I was nervous. I hadn’t run a workshop on prayer and the AT before. But mostly I was thrilled that people had come to explore and to be open – and above all to PLAY – with these most important topics. And I opened by saying that I am not an expert on either the Alexander technique nor prayer. But I am a student of both and that I was grateful for fellow students to study with.
And my first question could have generated another workshop just on its own. What, I asked, does the Alexander Technique mean to you now, in one word or short phrase? And what does prayer mean to you now, in one word or phrase?
And they said, after time for thought and discussion, that the Alexander technique means……openness, friendship, skeletons (!), balance, rootedness, awareness, posture, environment, connection, self-awareness, embodiment, harmony, alignment, poise, possibility.
Honestly, I was in awe of those responses! From people with a very little, or in some cases no, previous experience of the technique. Those who are relatively new to a discipline sometimes see it with a freshness and clarity that those who have studied for longer can miss.
And they said that prayer means ……silence, stillness, deep silence, laughter, connection, alignment, comfort, openness, harmony, uncertainty, conversation with God, environment, spiritual awareness, spiritual connection, balance, and friendship.
And we looked at our lists with some amazement, all struck by the overlap, the similarities and connections between them. And I COULD have asked – are there any words or phrases from either list that could NOT go on the other? But we had sat and talked long enough and I wanted them up and moving 🙂
So I will save that question for another workshop.
So what did we do then? Well, we did some contemplative anatomy, something I have learned from one of MY teachers, Bruce Fertman, Peaceful Body School. We looked at the fact that we have, not two arms but one arm structure and at how wide and spacious that arm structure is. And then, in threes and in silence, we made bread, softly, creatively, with love and gentleness and awareness of that spacious arm structure. It baked while we ate lunch, filling the space with a wonderful aroma and waking up the sense of smell as our morning activities had woken up our senses of touch, sight, hearing, kinaesthesia and proprioception.
And I read, after lunch, from a book by Kabir Helminski Living Presence: A Sufi Way to Mindfulness and the Essential Self. And we engaged in patient, waiting, open listening and discussion. And we went for a walk, channeling our inner dinosaurs because the room was quite chilly by that time. And then we gave one another bread, the bread that we had made with love and attention and openness.
And we used our senses of touch and sight and kinaesthesia and proprioception to explore and choose and add a Christmas decoration to the Christmas tree in the church we were meeting in.
And then we said our goodbyes and said what we were taking away from our four hours together, four hours of playful exploration of the Alexander technique and prayer. And mostly what I take away is a memory of how beautiful humans are, how kind, how generous, how thoughtful, how funny. We are not all like that all the time. But we all CAN be like that, some of the time. And that, in this season of Advent, of waiting, gives me hope.
My workshop plan – a playful plan for a playful workshop. And no, for students who know me well, we DIDN’T get through a fraction of it!
Jennifer Fox Eades: Alexander Technique Teacher 