The Secret that ACTORS Know, but that EVERYONE Needs

Want better posture and to feel more confident? Discover an important life tool that ACTORS know about, but that EVERYONE can benefit from without learning anything about acting?

The skills I teach women are based onThe Alexander Technique — and people often ask me what the Alexander Technique IS, if they’ve never heard of it.

Is it like Yoga or Pilates?

It’s about connecting your mind and body, so in that way yes. It helps you develop core strength and feel more relaxed and calm. What’s different is that it’s about how you do the stuff you do all day - whether that’s speaking, sitting at your desk, or washing your dishes - or all of the above.

What a lot of women tell me is that they exercise or that they have a mindfulness practice, but that practice is kind of in it’s own box. It happens at a specific time. It might have a positive impact on their day and their life in general, but it doesn’t stop them from slouching at the computer and when presented with stressful situations or having to think on their feet, they kind of go on autopilot and the mindfulness or the better posture kind of go out the window.

Is it like meditation?

Yes, it’s kind of like learning how to have a meditative awareness that stays with you in the background all day and guides you through whatever you're doing so that you can stay calm and centered and not just go on autopilot into old habits.

And finally, when someone has heard of the Alexander Technique, they often know someone in the performing arts who has studied it — an actor, a musician, or a dancer. It’s taught in many universities and in most of the top-level acting programs, for example. At Juilliard in New York City, Alexander Technique is taught in depth in the acting, music, and dance departments.

So, I’m often asked, “Is it an acting technique?”

It’s not an acting technique, but it’s very useful for actors. It’s not a music technique either, but it’s very useful for musicians — and it can be very useful to you for the same reasons without you having to have any interest at all in the performing arts.

Why?

I’ll tell you a bit about why actors study it - particularly because I first studied the Alexander Technique when I was getting a degree in acting from New York University.

An actor’s job is to literally “become” someone else, so the way they use their bodies (their posture and how they move), their breathing, their voices) is very important.

First they need to be aware of what their own habits are, otherwise the character they are playing will just take on the actor’s unconscious habits and they won’t be able to make the choices they want to make to become that character and create different habits for the person they are playing.

The Alexander Technique helps you to identify and change your unconscious physical habits.

It’s an actors job to be able to be in command of their body and to make conscious choices to make subtle adjustments. The Alexander Technique doesn’t teach them to do this directly, but it helps them to have accurate body awareness so that they can make these choices.

Similarly musicians need that accurate body awareness so that they can play their instrument without injury. A lot of musicians actually get hurt while playing and then they can’t work!

How they use their body when they play also affects the quality of performance for both actors and musicians.

What a lot of non-performers do is kind of muscle through their day, spending hours hunched over the computer, stressed in meetings, unconscious of how much strain they are putting on their bodies until something starts to bother them and then they look for a cure for the problem - the right exercise or the right treatment — or they just keep trying to quickly fix their posture and fail to because they never really learned how.

For someone who works in an office, their “body” might not seem like it’s as important to their work as to an actor, musician, or dancer — but it is.

A lot of women tell me that they get nervous in meetings when they have to think on their feet or speak up — or even if they don’t get nervous, they get stressed and exhausted. They might be in pain. They’re using way to much energy putting their focus on tasks, deadlines, and what other people think then noticing their bodies.

Some women tell me that they feel slumped and small, that they have trouble being heard, and sometimes get hoarse when they try to project their voices. How they use their bodies affects how they feel around other people and how they come across.

The thing is that we are all performers in our own lives. I DON’T mean that we’re pretending. We’re performing…we’re doing. We’re fulfilling actions, a form of “acting”, just it’s our own story and we’re not on a stage.

And a really important thing that many people don’t realize is that they are the vehicle, instrument, whatever you want to call it that takes them through all of their actions. It is them - their mind and their body - that delivers the message.

It’s YOU that lives out your day and conveys YOUR message.

And your unconscious physical habits become the way you do those things - like an actor who plays every character with her unconscious habits becoming the characters habits.

You are your own character in every situation and it is possible to learn how to become conscious of how you use your body, just like how actors learn this.

To have choice so that you can be and act differently and —

• feel more calm and composed

• feel and project confidence at will, breathe with ease, and project your voice without getting tense or hoarse.

Everyone has the capacity to improve their body awareness and make choices about their habits — and that’s what the Alexander Technique helps with.

• It gives you the tools to sense your body, to sense yourself correctly so that you can choose your habits and not have them choose you.

• It makes you more resilient and better able to think on your feet and deal with whatever comes your way.

If you’d like to learn how to apply these skills to your life, consider joining my 8-week online course for women,

Interact with Impact: Take Up Your Space and Project Your Voice.

Registration closes on January 20.

Learn more about the course here and check out my FREE TRAINING here.