In a recent video session with a colleague, we debriefed a series of three lessons she taught to a new student. It was hard to tell whether she was pleased overall, or disappointed. The student has a pain condition, and reported different degrees of change, relief and comfort at all three lessons.
So I started asking her questions. Lots of questions. And since we were separated by distance, I had to rely more on dialogue than I might if we were together and I could see more details about her expressions and my hands could supplement that information with what I could feel.
That awareness - that I had to investigate in a specific way working over video - was a jumping off point for the rest of our session, and together we arrived at a number of realizations.
The teacher doesn’t have to have all the answers. We don’t have to completely solve our students’ problems in one, two, ten lessons, or at all. That isn’t our main job. Our job is to teach our students how to use Alexander’s methodology to improve their situation.
Words matter, so defining terms is key. We use a lot of verbs and adjectives in our work, but they can mean different things to different people, or more than one thing. Sometimes we use words to describe a concept, and sometimes we use them to guide an action. Some verbs we may use: direct, lengthen, release, ease, stretch, move up. Some adjectives we may use: dynamic, light, heavy, grounded, springy, braced, gripped, tightened, tensed. Some nouns/concepts we may use: direction, space, opposition, tone, tension.
It’s OK to try something and find out it doesn’t work, and then try something else. I was working with a student who had developed tenderness around his collarbone and underarm. He was laying on the floor and I asked him to raise his arm up towards the ceiling and then what towards the wall where his head was pointing. He said it hurt. So I had him start with the arm that wasn’t sore, and that range of motion was easy. After moving the easy side, I had him go back to the sore side and only move it as far as he could before it hurt so he knew where the discomfort was. Since he’d moved the ease side, the sore side had already improved. I then asked him to bring his knee to his chest on the same side of his body, and then he could move his arm in an even fuller range of motion, without it hurting.
Check in with your student to see what they already know about their condition, what has helped and what hasn’t. That will save the teacher time by continuing with what helped; and either avoiding what hasn’t; exploring what hasn’t worked to get a baseline and track progress; to find out how the student can modify what didn’t work; and to know what to try next.
If you have an intuitive hunch about something, take time to check it out. Unpack why that idea is coming to you. It could be based on past experience you have, it could be something your student said or did, in the past or at the present lesson, that you don’t necessarily realize you heard, but that gives you clues. I tend to share my thinking with my student when I ask them to try something, either before or after. Whether or not it is helpful and succeeds, or it fails, I share my reasoning process with my students. It helps them learn to think like I do, and also to gain insight into their own style of detective work.
No matter how much experience one has as a teacher of the Alexander Technique, there’s always to possibility you will encounter something you’ve never experienced before. Then again, experience is valuable and we don’t always have to re-invent the wheel, sometimes we can just customize it for the individual we are working with.