the alexander technique

the how of doing whatever you're doing...

my experience with AT…

I was first introduced to the Alexander Technique (AT) in 1995 as part of the MFA Professional Actor Training Program at the University of Washington in Seattle. After I graduated, I taught classes in dialects/vocal production/text analysis, acting and Shakespeare at the University of Connecticut and Wesleyan University before taking on a full time teaching position as head of the BFA acting program at Ball State University in Indiana. I was tenured there, on faculty until 2016. During this time, AT was in my toolbox as a teacher and performer, but not at the forefront. 

In 2013 I’d begun to experience pains in my right hip. It was repeatedly misdiagnosed until late 2017, when I finally underwent arthroscopic hip surgery in Portland, Maine. Over a dozen bone fragments were removed from my right hip joint and the femur was reshaped. I had a second arthroscopic hip surgery in early 2019 in which more bone fragments were removed and the labrum (the cushion that is required for stability and lubrication of the joint) was entirely reconstructed.

Throughout all of this, I’d turned to AT to help me heal with ease, and redefine how I understood my whole self and how everything is designed to function, including the language I use to talk to myself and others.

I wanted AT to be a bigger part of my life, personally and as a teaching focus. So in 2015, after researching pathways toward certification, I chose the Alexander Technique International mentorship model, with Cathy Madden as my mentor and guide - the same woman who’d introduced me to the work 20 years prior. 

During, and post all the suffering and healing around hip surgeries, Brian and I were running the studio as I flew back and forth to Seattle to work personally with Cathy, attended intensives, observed her teaching and was observed teaching, attended conferences and congresses, and published in the ATI journal. After five years of working closely together, in January 2021, Cathy offered me a certificate of teaching from her studio. By April of 2021 I’d taken the final steps to officially certify in the Alexander Technique through ATI’s rigorous evaluation process. 

When we moved across the country to Cape Cod, I put teaching on hold - but continued to use AT every day. In the studio with power tools or wrapping a package, writing the notes that accompany each order - and in little moments like making coffee, walking Koko, chopping vegetables... Of course I'm using it right now as I write this... 

I was introduced to AT as a performer, and relied upon it when my body was in trauma. But my favorite way to use and teach it is for the every day moments. It's a biopsychosocial process - which means it's about wholeness. When all the pieces and parts of my life were flying about - cross country moves, running a small business, changing careers, and dealing with surgeries - AT was all about unification and a healthy way to approach change. 

influences + further reading