If We Can't Touch,
How Can We Teach?
The catastrophic events of 2020 have made it obvious, in this day and age, how vulnerable any business is if its income is solely dependent upon person to person contact.
For Alexander teachers, the lockdowns & social distancing have also underscored a much older issue: The Alexander Technique, when compared to modalities like yoga, meditation & mindfulness, is virtually unknown to the public at large.
The economic consequences of the pandemic have made clear how important it is that we truly secure our livelihood and finally resolve the visibility issues that have limited the influence of Alexander's teaching for so long. In my view, to do so...
WE'RE REALLY GONNA HAVE TO START THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX!
So...Consider this:
What if you had a few new tools that would make it
possible to reach and teach a lot more students
that live just about anywhere in the world
without your ever having to leave home?
And...
What if those same tools also improved your Use
and enabled you to flatten the learning curve
for both you & your students while opening
up exciting new marketing possibilities?
Finally...
What if these changes enhanced your teaching so
much that it served to deepen your personal practice,
help a lot more students plus build interest
in the Alexander Technique worldwide?
Now, That Would be Something
Worth Learning…Wouldn’t it?
Introducing...
The First Comprehensive A.T. Training System Dedicated to the
Teaching & Marketing of the Alexander Technique Online...
We Need To Be
Teaching More People!
Primal Alexander
PrimalAlexander™ (P.A.) is a step-by-step A.T. teaching system informed by Alexander’s ‘Evolution of a Technique’, the work of Dr. Frank Pierce Jones and Marjorie Barstow & my more than 3500 hours of research into online teaching & training.
It’s a comprehensive, hands-free, distance teaching method that’s already proving to be of tremendous benefit to a growing community of Alexander teachers hailing from a wide variety of training backgrounds.
Primal Alexander-Level One is my 12 week entry level training for Alexander teachers serious about learning an authentic, non-compromising, comprehensive way to teach the Alexander Technique, online or in person, without any hands-on.
It’s part of my post-graduate training program for Alexander teachers looking to reach, teach and keep more new students using the internet both as a teaching and marketing medium.
This course will erase any doubts you may have about the effectiveness of online teaching because you will be able to see for yourself the effect it has upon you and your students.
Primal Alexander-Level One will build your confidence in the power of online teaching and will provide you with the skills & strategies needed to teach powerful Alexander lessons without having to use your hands.
In this introductory course you will learn…
- How to facilitate a new student’s head neck reflex without hands-on
- How to accurately observe the quality of someone’s Use on a screen
- Movement activities that will improve a student’s use between classes
- A blueprint for a 45 minute private online lesson
- How to use your voice to induce ease in a student
- How to teach groups online
- How to begin marketing yourself as an online A.T. Teacher
How does it work?
Primal Alexander™ uses a step by step approach to teaching The Alexander Technique that focuses on teaching students how to experiment effectively with their thinking and their movement.
By applying a unique kind of Directing alongside a graduated series of self-study “études”, Primal Alexander™ provides students and teachers with a straightforward, easy to follow blueprint for improvement and empowerment.
P.A. is a self-healing process that uses Inhibition & self-observation to create a gap between the stimulus to act and our response.
In that gap, timely constructive thinking allows our native movement intelligence to preempt our habitual way of moving while it reinforces the neural pathways that lead to better Use at that moment and in the future.
Three of the assets within Primal Alexander™ that any Alexander teacher can immediately incorporate into their teaching and self-care are this Level One course. They are:
- An awareness process called 3EasyQuestions™,
- A collection of home-study activities called TheÉtudes™ &
- A mind frame called ThePrimaryConcern™
3EasyQuestions™
3EasyQuestions™ is my approach to teaching constructive conscious control. It’s based on the simple discovery that when a person directs their attention to places of relative ease in their body, the head/neck reflex is facilitated.
Here’s how it works:
When exploring the possibility of easier movement, after inhibiting, in the gap between stimulus and response, instead of traditional orders or directing, you quickly assess these three things about yourself in sequence:
- Where you’re currently noticing places of relative ease,
- What effect noticing that ease is having on your general Use
- How that effect is changing as you begin to engage in your activity.
This gentle, but focused curiosity about the ease you’re currently experiencing shifts your attention in a way that circumvents your usual habit patterns.
It facilitates the Primary Control which reorganizes your movement on the fly, allowing you to perform the activity with increased ease.
As a form of Constructive Thinking, 3EasyQuestions™ allows the actual direction to come from the natural adaptive response of your nervous system.
You make a conscious choice to direct your attention to ease and then stand back and notice what happens. This prevents you from imposing a habitual feeling-based concept of forward, up, head, neck or body upon the process.
3EasyQuestions™ is a new take on constructive conscious control that is so easy to implement it can be taught to a brand new student in a first lesson.
In the hands of a teacher, it also becomes a potent self-healing tool that reveals and erodes deep habitual patterns that tend to be imperceptible & therefore impenetrable.
TheEtudes™
TheÉtudes™ are the “lightweight” home study activities that students do for a few minutes every day. They form the practice material they use to actualize what they are learning in the group class.
Like the Études in classical music pedagogy, these are studies; opportunities for students to learn specific skills in a simplified, focused setting. When done regularly the Études…
- Give students a simple & revealing way to practice directing.
- Keep them engaged with their studies between lessons.
- Empower them in their own learning.
- Provide a way of facilitating the Primary Control on their own.
- Give them a way to improve their Use whenever they want.
- Teach Inhibition, Non-doing and Directing quickly.
- Improve their sensory appreciation.
- Develop the awareness they’ll need to apply the Technique in any activity.
ThePrimaryConcern™
The Primary Concern is the foundational concept that underlies all of PrimalAlexander. It is the root formulation of the self-experimental process that Alexander pioneered. The Primary Concern takes the form of the question:
What’s happening to my Use as I _____?
(with any activity occupying the blank)
When you can ask and answer that question a few times during an activity, you’ve begun to “think in activity” and it’s the key to understanding how the “end” you’re trying to gain is affecting the “means whereby” you’re using yourself. Namely, how the manner in which you are doing things NOW is affecting your present and future ability to function efficiently.
Asking that question brings the “end” and the “means whereby” into the same frame so that you’re able view the changes in each simultaneously.
That way, when the way you’re doing something begins to interfere with your coordination, you become aware of it and have a chance to make a change.
That’s the bigger picture of how the Études function in Primal Alexander. Through consistent daily practice, they quickly teach a student the value of “thinking in activity” and a simple way to do it.
Here's what we'll be covering:
- TheTeachers12™(The 12 Etudes teachers do daily)
- 10 Week Game Plan For Teaching TheStudentEtudes™
- Blueprint for a 45 minute, one on one first lesson
- SubtleMovementEmpathy™ (Observation)
- VoiceTouch™ (Using your voice to induce improvement)
- HiveMindfulness™(Teaching groups online)
- ConstructiveConversing™(Verbal teaching strategies)
- MeansWherebyMarketing™ (Building a following online)
In this course you will learn how to become aware of and then subsequently untie the psycho-physical knots that limit your effectiveness as practitioner and teacher of the Alexander Technique.
With an assortment of new tools and objective feedback from me and the other members of this course you’ll be able to enhance and refine your teaching much more quickly, assuredly and easily than you can on your own.
THE KEY THING YOU’LL GET FROM…
Primal AT will take what you know about teaching hands on and help you to translate those skills into the online medium.
WHAT BIEING ABLE
We’ll touch upon some of the essentials of online marketing and show how you can leverage…
Describe the transformation