Musicians Need Alexander Teachers to Improve

Musicians have studied Alexander’s discovery for more than a century.

Judith Leibowitz, a teacher trained by FM Alexander, joined the faculty of New York’s Julliard School of Music in 1968. Doing the math - that makes it more than half a century that Alexander’s work has taught at Julliard! 

It started even earlier at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London.

‘Postural homeostasis’ by Wilfred Barlow, was a paper read at the Annual Meeting of the British Association of Physical Medicine on April 26, 1952. Barlow’s study was based on 50 Singers and marked the beginning of Alexander’s work as part of the RCM curriculum for musicians.

Current Director at the RCM – Professor Colin Lawson – wrote this about Alexander’s work at the RCM:

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I am very happy with the way Alexander Technique has become embedded in the degree course at the Royal College of Music.

We broke new ground in their area after Wilfred Barlow’s extremely successful experiment in our singing department, about fifty years ago. One of the conclusions drawn by our teaching staff was

In our opinion, this approach is the best means we have yet encountered for solving the artist’s problem of communication and should form the basis of his training.

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What kind of Alexander teacher does a musician need?

Many musicians want to head to an Alexander teacher who is a musician – is this the best plan?

It depends. 

The first question is not – how well does this teacher know music?

No. The first question needs to be – how well does this teacher know Alexander?

A good teacher of Alexander’s discovery will train full-time for four years in Japan - if they go to BodyChance. 

BodyChance is still the largest and oldest school in Japan – with a competency standard more rigorous than STAT’s regulations. STAT schools usually rely on the decision of one or two Directors plus a visiting Moderator and attendance to 1,600 hours of training.

At BodyChance, we do it differently. 

There are 18 different standards that a student must fulfil to gain their diploma.

These involve things like attendance, examinations, essays, class presentations, giving workshops, teaching assessments -and (in the end) giving ten lessons each to 5 students each under the supervision of one of our Directors. A BodyChance Graduate will have already given a minimum of three public workshops and 50 individual lessons by the time they graduate. Most take longer than four years – the period often stretching to 8-10 years.

It’s a fairer system, and it produces competent teachers. 
Anyway, one of the innovations of BodyChance is two Online Programs for students to study outside of live classes. I wonder how STAT would count that?

One is BodyThinking – BodyChance’s course for engineering clear body mapping concepts in our students. The other is ThinkingBody – in this extensive course, I deposited every single thing I know about Alexander’s discovery from my 50 years of experience.

When you need to refresh, recharge and rethink your work – buy the course and study it.

For this month only - use this coupon to get 40% off the usual price:

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