The Alexander Technique of Syracuse

Kathryn Miranda

Certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique

Michael Gelb has a successful career as an author, professional speaker and business

consultant.  Since 1978, Michael has provided an international corporate clientele with

motivational keynote addresses, custom workshops and seminars, organizational

development and team-building projects.   Michael received his Alexander Technique

teacher training from Paul Collins and Betty Rajna.  He has an encompassing and creative

view of the Alexander Technique.  He’s studied with Walter Carrington, Patrick Macdonald,

Peggy Williams, Peter Scott, John Skinner, Marjory Barlow, Dr. Wilfred Barlow, Margaret

Goldie and Marjory Barstow.  “Some are strong on inhibition; some are strong on direction.  

I didn’t agree with everything they said but none of them said or did anything that wasn’t

some aspect of the Alexander Technique.”

KM:  Michael, you reach such a wide audience with your books, your presentations and

your workshops.  You teach people to think out of the box and to get out of habitual modes

of thinking.  Could what you do for corporate executives help us learn how to present the

Alexander Technique to a wider audience?

MG:  I’ll tell you a story.  I do consulting for DuPont, working with their senior scientists.

They had the task of taking their breakthroughs, inventions and new discoveries and

sharing them with the marketing team.  So they would get together, put on a presentation

and the marketing team couldn’t understand it.  The scientists would say well we created

this molecular structure and it surprised us because the molecule didn’t behave like we expected and blah, blah, blah.  Well, what were the marketers thinking?  They’re thinking who cares, what does it do, what are we going to call it, how much of it can we sell and when will it be ready.  So I had the scientists act as marketers, presenting their ideas on video and then watch the video and critique themselves.  One of the scientist stood up and said, “I see what we’re doing wrong, we’re guilty of molecule fondling.”

What dawned on me when I trained as a teacher and then went out into the world to attempt to talk about the Alexander Technique was that many of my colleagues were doing the equivalent of molecule fondling.  That is using their own lingo and jargon in a way that had nothing to do necessarily with anything that anybody cares about.

You can get together with other Alexander people and knock yourself out with the cool terminology we’ve developed and with this extraordinary, profound, nuanced, subtle understanding.  However, most people don’t have a clue when you say inhibition, direction, end-gaining, means whereby, use of the self, neck be free, head forward and up.   All of those are meaningless terms to most of the people we’re trying to reach.  Now we’d like to get them to the point where they are on the inside and they’re using those terms and understand them.  They’re actually wonderful terms.   I’m not saying to give them up or to give up what’s unique and wonderful and nuanced about what we do.

We have to find ways to inspire people, to reach them where they are, to appeal to the way they look at things and then use that as a bridge to this much more sophisticated understanding.  Some things require a much more sophisticated understanding; they are subtle and nuanced.  The use of the self happens to be one of those things.  It’s not a simple matter of stand up straight, walk this way or move this way.  You can’t learn it in a weekend seminar or ten easy lessons.  It’s a never-ending process of learning and exploration and discovery and surprise and becoming a beginner again and again.  We’ve all seen it when a student begins to understand.  They all say the same thing.  Oh, this is a lifetime sentence, isn’t it?  They all say that, but to get people to that point, you have to appeal to them through the benefits.  Benefits are what people buy.  They don’t buy processes. They buy benefits, so you have to make the case that you offer those benefits.

A lot of Alexander people are shy about doing that because they think it’s end-gaining.  You can’t sell people by saying, “Well it’s this never-ending process of finding out more bad stuff about your self.”  Nobody’s going to pay you for that. Even though that is what it is! Sssh, that’ll be our secret.  Don’t tell them ‘til it’s too late.

KM:  Your first book, Body Learning, is still in print and is a favorite introductory book that many teachers recommend, myself included.  In it, you describe the three basic reasons people study the Alexander Technique: pain, performance improvement or an interest in self-awareness and self-growth.  Could you talk about those categories and expand on them with what you see today?

MG:  Sure.  Pain will always generate curiosity about Alexander’s work because it is very effective with anything that’s caused by functional problems.  It even helps with problems whose cause is not primarily functional but comes from the compensatory maladjustments that go with the pathology.

Performers, dancers, actors and musicians are another market that isn’t going to go away.  I’ve focused on a specialized subset of that market.  It’s still theatre but it’s a more highly paid branch of theatre, business and professional presentation.  Alexander Technique has been part of my presentation skills seminar for 25 years.  I bring in Alexander teachers from all over the world and we work with people in front of a video and they do their thing.  We give them an Alexander lesson in front of the whole class and they do their presentation again.  They’re incomparably better. They see it, everybody else sees it, and it’s on the video.

In the body/mind, personal growth category, it’s amazed me that we haven’t been more prominent.  It’s so much more accessible than yoga or Pilates, which I love and I practice.  But, my Alexander work makes my yoga incomparably more useful and it makes my Pilates incomparably much safer.  It makes me that much better at Aikido.  So somehow we’re not as prominent as we ought to be in that body/mind, personal development world.

An Alexander teacher basically has a choice to be a generalist who provides Alexander Technique skills for all markets or a specialist who focuses on one area, like helping people deal with pain, working with performers or with personal growth.   I think a great specialization would be to provide the missing link for yoga, Pilates or martial arts people who are not quite getting the benefits out of their practice.  What’s missing between your mind and body that you keep coming up against in yoga when you’re not quite easing into the asana?  Do you feel like you’ve been doing Pilates for a while and you’ve reached a plateau and you’re not making any progress?   You’re going for your black belt in Aikido but you’re falling backwards when the third attacker comes at you, what’s going on?  It would be an interesting niche to provide that missing link.

Another marketplace that needs to be more developed is the equestrian.   We have something so special to offer and most people who can afford to ride horses can pay to have Alexander lessons too.  Of course the Alexander Technique teacher would have more credibility if they were equestrians.   It’s the same for golfers.  I have a story in More Balls Than Hands about helping a golfer dramatically even though I don’t know how to play.  But if you’re going to make it your niche, you ought to actually know something about golf or dressage.  It would add that little extra credibility factor.

Focusing on presentation skills is great because that’s a way to make money, the old Willy Sutton principle.  Find a base of people who are interested in the work and can afford to pay you; it’s just that simple.  Then you can give away lessons to poor people, like impoverished artists who can’t afford your fees.  Only rich people can afford to pay a decent amount of money to have regular Alexander lessons.  You want them to take 2-3 lessons a week and at least have 30 lessons and if you’re honest about it, you actually want them to keep coming for years and years and to pay you at least $75 - $100 an hour so you can make a decent living.

Teachers should be charging $75 to $100 a lesson.  Compared to massage or private Pilates, it’s a bargain.  And we have three years of training.  You have to find rich people, otherwise you’re going to starve as an Alexander teacher or you’re going to have to do something else.

KM:  So you find your niche or you find your market, then what?

MG: Then write a book about your approach.  Write a book about what you’ve learned.  It’s a way to get people to pay for your brochure!  You get respect and get taken seriously.  It’s better than a PhD, better than a video or CD.  Someone else will print it up, they’ll distribute it around and you’ll get money from people finding out about what you do.  Publish it yourself, if necessary.

KM:  Tell me about getting Body Learning published.

MG:  It was originally my master’s thesis.  I sent it out to a couple of friends who really liked it and said it was the clearest explanation of the Alexander Technique.  It was exactly what they needed to know.  They sent it out to their friends who were publishers and both publishers accepted it.  So then I had to work at changing it from the academic language of a thesis into a book.  It took tremendous passion, dedication and devotion to get every word right with a sense of humility and almost awe about the Technique, and I was this whippersnapper with the opportunity to write about it.  The process was humbling but not so much so that it paralyzed me.

KM:  It’s really such a fine book for beginners.  It’s on the reading list for my Mannes classes.  All the feedback I get is very positive.

MG:  I’m beginning to feel like a grandfather.  Not only are people saying they read it, fell in love with the Technique and became a teacher, but now, they’re saying my Alexander Technique teacher read your book and became certified and then I read your book and fell in love and went into training.

KM:  Is there any other marketing advice you have for Alexander teachers?

MG:  Even before Body Learning was published, I had a full and busy practice as a new teacher.  I think that’s because I was able to speak in down to earth terms. I had colleagues that were not so articulate.  They would use jargon and molecule fondling or spoke about the mystery of it.   “It’s beyond words and one cannot really express it.  It’s so ineffable.”

You must know who your listener is. You are only able to measure the effectiveness of your communication with your audience, whomever it is, a business client, your beloved or a friend.  You may have worked out everything you want to say.  You may think you’re very articulate, but the meaning of your communication, as the NLP people say, is the response that it elicits.  What happens as a result of that communication?  Don’t just pay attention to what you said and did you say it the way you thought you should.  Notice how has the other person interpreted what you’ve said. What did they understand by it and what are they doing as a result of it?

Another reason I’ve been successful using Alexander in all the things that I do, is that I fell in love with the Technique and am passionate about it now.  When you really love something, people want to be around that passion.  If you say, well yes it’s lovely, blah, blah, blah, why should I pay you for it?  If you don’t love this, you should be doing something else.  The Alexander Technique still amazes me.  I do things I really love and people sense that and they pay attention.

KM:  OK, here you are, glowing with your passion about the Technique, you have their attention, now what?  What are your strategies for connecting to people in ways they can hear your message?

MG:  Reach them with information that is visual, auditory, kinesthetic and maybe even olfactory.  Look at the way you use your voice, the way you direct the student’s visual attention, the way you use images to associate with the kinesthetic experience. Everybody learns through all the senses. It’s a question of which mode is dominant.  A lot of Alexander teachers are kinesthetically dominant; we love to move and that makes sense.   We have to work on the visual and auditory component of our communication. What makes the best presenters in all disciplines is that they are communicating on all channels.  They create a vision; you like the sound of what you hear and you get a grasp on what they’re saying.  It’s part of good teaching.

Carrington said, “Any way in, is a way in.”  I love that because he’s saying be creative, figure out how to reach people, whether it’s putting them on a saddle, handing them some juggling balls, or getting in and out of a chair.  Maybe it’s retracing the steps of evolution with the Dart procedures.  Maybe it’s pulling out a skeleton and helping people understand something about anatomy.  It’s being open to a lot of strategies for getting through to people but the point is to get through to them.

You’ll know you got through because they’ll smile.  It’s easy to recognize.  The kinesthetic experience of lightness, as Frank Pierce Jones described the hallmark of the Alexander Technique, tends to correlate with people smiling.  You feel better, lighter and freer.  It’s a psychophysical state.  When you have inhibited all those habits that are associated with unnecessary muscular tension, it’s enlightenment.  And the thing about enlightenment is you have to get re-enlightened every moment.  There’s no guarantee.  One moment of enlightenment and then you lose it.

KM:  The applications approach to teaching can be very creative way to demonstrate the benefits of using the Alexander Technique.  Will you talk about that?

MG:  It was always part of my training with Paul Collins and Betty Rajna. We did games and activities from the first day of my training course.  People brought in their instrument and played.  People sang.  They acted out bits of Shakespeare. I taught everyone how to juggle.  We also got in and out of chairs and did whispered ahs.  We did a lot of stuff to link the Alexander Technique to improving whatever it is you do.  Notice how the sound of the violin changes when you stop narrowing your shoulder.  We used the activity as part of the feedback to look at the efficacy of the lesson.  It’s easy to link the Alexander principles to whatever it is you want to learn and notice how the Technique improves the quality.

You can engage people by showing how much value the Alexander Technique adds to other disciplines.  For example, show yoga without and with Alexander.  I do juggling without and with.  I do martial arts without and with.  If the conversation has been about politics, I might imitate Clinton and Reagan without and with.   Any topic can be a way to show before and after, with and without, crude or elegant as long as people are interested.  If people are not interested, if there’s no interest in excellence in human performance, if there’s no interest in artistic expression, then maybe you talk about back pain.  I do a demonstration of how you cause your own back pain.  Ask how much does your head weigh.  Well, 15 pounds.  OK, if it goes back and down like this what happens to the spine?  What does that do to you every single step you take?  That might be why your back hurts.  But I don’t know!  Then they’ll say tell me more.

KM:  Any advice for the introverted Alexander Teacher who has a difficult time marketing or connecting to various audiences?

MG: Yes, use the Alexander Technique to identify your habits and inhibit those that get in the way of connecting with people on a more outgoing or creative level.

KM: How do you use the Alexander Technique in your work?

I use the Alexander Technique directly when I teach my presentation skills workshops.  For all the other stuff, I free my neck and I inhibit and direct when I’m consulting, giving presentations or running seminars.  Having good use has allowed me to be a world class, professional presenter for 26 years.  It’s allowed me to show up, be consistent and persevere.   I’ve been traveling worldwide almost non-stop, and I have never missed a day.

KM:  For many Alexander teachers, it’s difficult to ask for high fees.

MG:  The reason for that is, and here’s the challenge, it’s so ineffable!   Like Marge used say, it’s a little bit of nothing.  So how do you ask for a lot of money for a little bit of nothing?  But I’ll give you the answer.  OK, here’s my secret for asking for more and more money.  It’s not that what we do is so special and so great.  It’s that the other stuff that people are paying for is so mediocre.  The other stuff that’s out there can’t touch the Alexander Technique.

If we did a survey and took sessions with 10 highly paid New York therapists, who are charging $175 an hour, we’d find benefit from maybe 2 out of 10.  That leaves 8 of them we’re paying $175 an hour and they might even be doing us harm.  They may even create more neurosis, more anxiety, and more confusion.  Whereas, at least 8 out of 10 Alexander teachers will enhance the quality of a your life in one lesson and none of them will harm you, not even on bad day when their direction isn’t that good.  Even if the Alexander teacher just gives the client space to be, that’s a real benefit.  Even if the teacher is having a bad day, the teacher’s use and kinesthetic influence is going to give the student something positive.

New York therapists get $175 a session.  Alexander teachers get half of that.  What’s wrong with this picture?  We ought to be out there at the association meetings, lobbying the physicians, the physical therapists, the yoga people and the Pilates people to increase their awareness of the Alexander Technique and to increase referrals.

KM:  Anything else you’d like to talk about?

MG:  I think there’s another thing in being realistic with people.  Often there’s a gap between a student’s experience in the hands-on lesson and the student’s experience applying the Technique on their own.  People get discouraged because they can’t recreate the feeling they had with a teacher by lying down with their head on books or crawling or doing monkey position or whatever.  It’s important to clarify their expectations about this early on.  If they are judging their progress by comparing how they feel when they are working on their own to how they feel with you, they’ll feel they are never making progress.  If they understand the difference, then they’ll get surprised when they discover an exquisite sensation that they have through their own work.  That’s another level of integration.

That’s one way of thinking about the qualification to become a teacher.  That level of integration could be an indication of when someone is ready to teach.  When you can reliably get out of your own way, it makes sense that you can then teach other people how to do that.

As Michael said he is passionate about the Alexander Technique and wants to see teachers succeed at reaching more people.  Besides being motivating and funny, Michael is very supportive of the Alexander community. To contact Michael about speaking to your group on his ideas for making the Alexander Technique accessible and you a better presenter, I recommend you e-mail him at DaVincian@aol.com.  If a corporate client has paid his first class airfare to your area, then you’ll find his speaking rates much more reasonable!   Also, look for Michael’s new book, Da Vinci Decoded: Discovering the Spiritual Secrets of Leonardo’s Seven Principles.

©Kathryn Miranda 2004. All rights reserved.

Marketing Talk with Michael Gelb

Interview with Michael Gelb by Kathryn Miranda

June 1, 2004

Michael Gelb

Alexander Technique of Syracuse, Kathryn Miranda, Director.  kathy@alexandertechniquesyracuse.com  or 315-412-4829