Alexander Technique and Happy Christmas!
My grateful thanks to all of you who have given me such lovely feedback, testimonials and input to help create this new site. It has been a real pleasure to develop it with you.
It is such a privilege to work with my clients and to help you on your voice journeys. Sometimes you’ve needed help with slowing down your speech, articulation strengthening or with making your voice more interesting.
The challenge with every new activity we do as humans, is to break the old patterns of behaviour. Everything we do is governed by habit, often we notice this at Christmas time, where we cook certain seasonal food, lay the festive table and decorate our homes in a certain way. So many things are actioned almost automatically. Whenever we fill a kettle and put it on to boil to make a cup of tea, get into a car and start driving, or fulfil the night-time ritual of teeth cleaning, all these things are done on auto-pilot.
It’s the same when we speak, the habits we have acquired over the years that we use to speak are very deeply ingrained. The same muscles are used over and over again, in an auto-repeat pattern.
An outstanding actor of the late nineteenth century, noticed how his posture habits badly affected how his voice performed. His voice was unable to be heard after performing just one Act of a Shakespeare play. His doctor prescribed rest, but this only helped restore his voice for ordinary conversation. When he took to the stage again, his voice again failed. The doctor could offer no more help. Possessing a powerful drive to continue his acting career, this man refused to accept that his voice wasn’t up to the task of performance. He deduced that he was doing something additional when he was performing, not just speaking, that severely affected his voice. After months of research, notetaking and self-observation, he concluded that his posture changed. He noticed that when he began acting, his back arched, his toes curled and his chin raised as he began his ‘performance voice’. He amended his posture, slowly but surely. And slowly but surely, the strength and ability of his voice developed to enable him to sustain his performances as a Shakespearian actor.
This man was called Frederick Alexander and he went on to become the founder of training thousands of others in the ‘Alexander Technique’ which is still taught today in drama schools across the world.
The Alexander Technique is embedded in all the work I do to help my clients with their voice. Using the Alexander Technique helps me to identify
- what my clients are currently doing (behaviour) that is detracting from ‘good’ speech,
- inhibit this and then
- use the new behaviour.
This can be simplified as three steps:
- Noticing what you’re doing that you don’t want to do
- Stop it
- New behaviour.
It seems easy when it’s written down, but changing habits takes a lot of focus and determination. The way we speak is not just about the result of good posture, it’s about how we use our articulators, including the tongue, the lips and the soft palate. It’s about how these muscles move in conjunction with each other and at the same time, maintaining breath support to power the voice.
Many of you have successfully embarked on your own voice journey this year and it’s been great to travel with you along the way and share the pleasure in finding clarity, confidence and impact in your voice!
I hope you enjoy looking through my new website and please get in touch if you have any feedback! It will be lovely to hear from you.
In the meantime, I wish you a joyous, happy and healthy Christmas and New Year with your old habits and your new ones!