Work with Lindsay and discover your inner confidence and authority
Lindsay’s Story
In the past, when meeting new people or in group conversations, I would lose my confidence — even if I felt I had a lot to say. I’m not shy, but I’m an introvert and I would get overstimulated in group situations and not know how to get a word in.
I realized that I had a lot of physical habits that were affecting my posture, voice, breathing, and body language that were getting in the way of my communicating effectively. One was my reaction to group situations and the other related to poor breathing and postural habits that I’d had as a teenager wearing a back brace for scoliosis.
I'd tried exercises, yoga, and warm-ups for my posture and voice. I even got a degree in acting! Nonetheless, I couldn't catch my breath and my shoulders would hike up to my ears when I felt on the spot... until I learned a totally different approach.
To my surprise, what finally led to a breakthrough, transformational change out of these physical habits that weren’t serving me — actually had more to do with engaging my mind and my ability to reason. It wasn’t some kind of correction I had to do directly with my body.
I’ll teach you a step-by-step process to gain mastery over your posture, presence, and voice that I've been using and teaching others for 17 years. It’s practical and logical and you can apply it any time anywhere.
When it counts most — meeting new people, giving a talk, or in meetings or interviews — you’ll learn to be more calm, effective, and assertive without feeling fake, pushy, or like you have to lower your voice.
You may also find, as I have, that this process of self-discovery is unexpectedly fun, low-pressure, and perfectly suited for women who are all in their heads.
Body language makes up the bulk of what we convey when we speak. Many women discover that their non-verbal cues (i.e. posture, movements, and voice) are getting in the way of how they'd like to come across.
If you've been told for years to "stand up straight” and "project your voice" and you can't do these things reliably, that's totally normal because you can't "just" (snap of the fingers) "stand up straight". These non-verbal cues can feel impossible to improve if you don't have a reliable strategy, but if you do, it's a total game changer.
And the point of this kind of change is not to imply that somehow you’re not enough and that you have to pretend to be someone else. It’s just the opposite. The strategies you’ll learn will help you feel more genuinely yourself and more comfortable communicating in an authentic way.
Lindsay’s coaching — based on the proven principles of the Alexander Technique, her expertise in functional anatomy, and her background in stage performance — offers a process that gets to the heart of the matter and gives you tools so that you can begin to implement real change and gain the skills to continue to improve on your own.
You don't need to have good body awareness or performance experience to start. This process TEACHES you how to have the awareness you need without self-consciousness.
To get started, you only need to be willing to engage your thinking and creativity… using your secret weapon — your brain!
Lindsay Newitter is an Alexander Technique teacher who has been featured as a posture expert in The New York Times, Vogue, Allure, CNN Health, and on ABC News Good Morning America. She has been teaching classes to individuals and groups, to companies, and organizations for the past 15 years in New York City and across the US as well as in Europe, Asia, South America, and online.
Using her skills as a posture and movement specialist, public speaker, and performer, Lindsay helps people avoid strain and pain and show up as their best selves at work and in life in general. She offers clients solutions tailored to their needs and teaches that good posture is a state of being rather than a rigid way of standing up straight.
Lindsay grew up in the US and ran her practice in New York City for 15 years. She now lives in Montréal with her husband and two teenage daughters. In her free time, she enjoys running and doing black-and-white photography (the old-school kind with real film and a dark room).
Credentials
Lindsay is an AmSAT-Certified Alexander Technique teacher, having completed a 3-year, 1,600-hour Alexander Technique teacher certification course in 2007. She earned her BFA in Drama from New York University in 2001. Lindsay is also an expert in functional anatomy, having trained in Anatomy In Motion and The Art of Running, and is skilled at analyzing movement and gait.
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AmSAT (The American Society for the Alexander Technique) is the largest professional organization of teachers of the Alexander Technique in the United States that exercises a rigorous credentialing process requiring a minimum of 1,600 hours of training over three years in an Alexander Technique teacher training course approved by the organization. AmSAT members must also comply with regular continuing education requirements.
Visit amsatonline.org for more information on certification.
View the latest research on the benefits of The Alexander Technique here.
About The Alexander Technique
Poor posture is often the root cause of pain, strain, breathing issues, and even social discomfort… but when people try to actively fix their posture (by pulling their shoulders back, for example), they make matters worse by over-correcting and not addressing the source of the problem.
The Alexander Technique will give you an experience of how good posture should feel. With practice, you'll learn that you don't need to rigidly hold yourself up and that it will happen naturally if you change the habits that get in the way. You’ll also learn how to change your posture during the actual activities that trigger poor posture.
You’ll learn through a combination of hands-on and verbal guidance (verbal during online coaching), how to have better body awareness and how to make subtle and effective changes that have a big impact on your posture.
Alexander Technique teachers are highly-trained practitioners, having completed a rigorous full-time 1,600-hour training program. The profession upholds high standards of training and continuing education to obtain and maintain certification.
Benefits Of Improving Your Posture With The Alexander Technique
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Reducing/Eliminating Chronic PAIN & STRAIN
A large-scale randomized, controlled study published in the British Medical Journal demonstrated that back-pain sufferers who took a series of Alexander Technique lessons reduced back pain by 85%.
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Lowering STRESS & boosting CONFIDENCE
Alexander Technique lessons help to integrate the mind and body, generating greater clarity of thinking and body awareness.
Upright posture helps you feel and convey confidence. You’ll feel more grounded and sure of yourself in everyday conversation and interactions or if you have to give a talk, or presentation, go for an interview, or feel comfortable in group interactions when everyone is talking at once.
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Improving a SKILL
Addressing habits of unnecessary tension and strain helps to improve the performance of actors, musicians, dancers, public speakers, and athletes.
You can also improve posture in day-to-day skills like walking, talking, running, lifting, and bending, reducing the potential for strain and injury and learning to enjoy the feeling of moving.
The Alexander Technique is a part of the standard education at the university level of Actors, Musicians, and Dancers, taught at Julliard, New York University, Yale School of Drama, McGill University, and The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, among many others.
The Alexander Technique has been studied by the likes of Oscar-winning actors, scientists, philosophers at the forefront of education, acclaimed writers and musicians, and British royalty.
How it works
When studying the Alexander Technique, students learn to identify and release excess muscle tension and also learn how to avoid slouching or over-correcting and trying to pull up. Excess tension in some areas and slouching down in others are often the source of pain, fatigue, breathing and vocal problems and other difficulties. Reducing or eliminating these harmful patterns will allow the postural muscles (core muscles) to function more efficiently, improving the quality of movement, posture, and breathing in all activities. The resulting condition is neither overly tense nor excessively relaxed. It is instead balanced, comfortable, energized, and free of strain.
Through this process of holistic physical change, people often uncover limiting beliefs and mindsets that are contributing to their physical patterns or physical patterns that are negatively affecting their mental outlook and self-esteem. In sessions, postural, movement, breathing, and thought patterns are looked at together as one big pattern that when addressed in an integrated way can lead to a profound sense of wholeness, wellbeing, and confidence.
Sessions are non-strenuous and involve learning how to stand, sit, move, breathe, and speak in a more efficient, natural way to avoid strain, fatigue, and ineffective body language.
During most sessions, there are about 15 minutes of relaxing table work to help relieve chronic tension. (In online session, you’ll receive verbal guidance while lying on the floor.) This work will help you to practice a simple floor exercise at home that quickly helps you to reset your body when you feel tense or tired.
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What sets it apart from Yoga, Pilates, Feldenkrais? How is it different from Physical Therapy and other therapeutic methods?
The Alexander Technique is an educational method with therapeutic benefits. It’s relaxing and makes you feel good, but it’s also provides a skill that you take with you — and it’s not yet another bunch of exercises that you have to make time for.
The main point is to learn how to apply what you learn directly to your daily activities. You may have some simple movements to practice to reinforce what you’re learning, but they will always be directly related to relearning how to do the things you do on a day-to-day basis better. The technique is very practical and applicable.
The technique helps you to get away from the mentality of “do do do” and the result is that you can actually do more with more energy and ease and less tension and stress.
People who tend to slouch will learn stand taller by releasing tension, not by stiffening or holding themselves in a rigid position.
People who get get tight and out of breath when they speak, will learn to speak with ease.
The Alexander Technique will provide you with the mindful awareness to gain more benefit from exercise and to maintain the effects of therapeutic practices that you also may seek out.
All-in-all, it will make you more coachable. You’ll be able to better apply and benefit from what you learn in any context. That means if you take a Pilates or Yoga class, you’ll have the mindful awareness from your Alexander Technique lessons to do the movements correctly.
If you take up ballroom dancing, singing, knitting, learn a musical instrument or you decide to work with a personal trainer, you’ll be better equipped with the body awareness to learn new skills better and faster.
You’ll learn to coordinate your body in an efficient, holistic, and mindful manner with a clear sense of how you’re moving and holding your body. It’s truly a skill for life and the most useful, practical skill I’ve ever learned.
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Most small children use their bodies in a way that is strain-free and balanced. As adults, we don't lose our good posture, we just interfere with it. It will be there to support us if we learn to let go of our interferences and get out of our own way.
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F.M. Alexander was born in 1869 in Tasmania. As a young man performing as a Shakespearean orator in Melbourne, Australia in the late 1890s, he developed chronic laryngitis. He was prescribed periods of vocal rest during which he would recover, only to lose his voice again when returning to orating. He initiated an intense course of self-study aimed at learning what he was doing to cause his hoarseness. Using mirrors, he discovered a discrepancy between the physical actions that he visually observed himself doing and those that he kinaesthetically perceived himself doing when preparing to speak. Over time, he identified and eliminated habitual patterns of tension and discovered a more efficient and balanced way to speak, move, and go about his all of his activities. As a result of addressing the way in which he had been using himself overall, he no longer suffered from vocal trouble. Subsequently, he developed a subtle and powerful hands-on technique that helps people to stop interfering with their natural good posture and coordination. He settled in London and taught and refined his technique in both the UK and the US until his death in 1955. Alexander’s supporters included John Dewey, Aldous Huxley, George Bernard Shaw, Raymond Dart, and Nobel Prize winners Charles Sherrington, and Nicholas Tinbergen.