About Alexander Technique in My Yoga Teaching

Alexander Technique involves a quality of active awareness and conscious direction

which we can bring to the activities of our lives so as to be more in harmony with our nature as human beings and more intentional in our movement.  Rather than having practices, as yoga does, Alexander Technique is something to bring into whatever we do.  So, I use it in the way I walk, sit, play the cello and also in my practice of yoga.

In my Yoga classes, the focus of my teaching is Yoga

To learn Alexander Technique as such you would go to separate lessons. I do intend, though, that you will be learning how to do the sometimes complex and certainly non everyday practices of yoga in a way that is consistent with Alexander Technique; with, to use the phrase often used in an Alexander context, good use of yourself.  And whilst you are not learning Alexander Technique directly, you may find that our ways of moving in the yoga classes carry over into the movements of daily life.  I certainly encourage students to experiment with the new learning in the yoga classes and bring it into other aspects of their lives.

I bring my experience in Alexander Technique into my yoga teaching in various ways

First, I am looking to help students move and breathe in the most healthful ways, given our structure and functioning as human beings, to get the most benefit from the yoga.  Other yoga teachers with different backgrounds also pay a good deal of attention to our anatomy and physiology: for me, this and more has come from my Alexander Technique teacher training and experience.

When we do the unusual movements of yoga, we generally unwittingly bring in our well worn grooves, tendencies and general habits of moving, along with imbalances that may have developed along our way through life sometimes due to accidents, illness or simply our response to living generally, that may have come about because it was what seemed open to us at the time but which may not now serve us as ongoing ways of moving and being.   As an Alexander teacher, I am aware of this and can often see nuances in individuals’ ways of moving, spotting when these are getting in the way of their yoga – even when over Zoom! – and can make suggestions, ways of thinking or directing the movement, that can help bring better learning, balance and harmony.

I am aware of subtle individual differences in people, as well as individual learning pathways

It suits my teaching style to work with very small groups or in 1:1 situations so that my yoga students benefit most from my Alexander Technique experience. That said, I cover larger classes from time to time and enjoy finding ways of making my teaching accessible to those working with me for the first time, even with the individual attention spread across more students.

I am also open to giving one-off individual yoga lessons to those who generally attend larger group classes and would like some input focused on issues or areas of interest coming up in their ongoing yoga classes. See below for directions to my One to One classes information page.

Find out more about learning the Alexander Technique with me

by visiting our Alexander Technique website here.

For more details of my yoga classes

Go to Weekly Classes or One to One Classes

Or contact me by email or phone 0131 229 9035 or 07821 116 775