Date: Friday, January 10, 1:00 – 6:00 pm; Saturday, January 11, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Instructor: Nanette Walsh
RSVP: Registration is now closed

The Alexander Technique is a moment-to-moment practice of releasing unhelpful habits that interfere with our best intentions to care for ourselves, thereby affecting how we care for others. Simply and practically, the Technique helps us re-discover our innate efficiency and delight in the activities of daily living. At its core, it is a mind-body discovery process. Its practice cultivates a harmonious relationship between postural support, breathing and movement. In the workshop we will investigate habitual patterns of neuromuscular tension in the simple activities of sitting, standing, speaking and lying down. Once identified, fixed patterns of tension can be released and the conditions for new more coherent patterns can be developed. The Technique is primarily an educational process that has therapeutic benefits for such common afflictions as back and neck pain. Guided group experience and hands-on-guidance* will: identify habitually fixed and unhelpful neuromuscular responses to inner and outer stimuli; develop a more conscious and beneficial relationship to gravity; investigate how the relationship between postural support, breathing, and movement affects use of the voice/communication/vocal expression; acquire skills in the practice of inner stopping/attention and directing/intention; reduce stress and increase efficiency in sitting for long periods of time; provide a fundamental understanding of the simple physics of human structure for balance and upright poise. *Hands-on-guidance is an optional offering to participants for an optimal learning experience.

About the Instructor

Nanette Walsh is the founder and director the Riverside Initiative for the Alexander Technique (RIAT). She is the author of Unsmudged: An Encounter with Peggy Williams, A First Generation Teacher of the Alexander Technique; she has been published by numerous Alexander Technique Journals, as well as the Jungian Journal of Scholarly Studies. She earned her MFA in 1982, taught at the School of Visual Arts (SVA), and is currently a graduate student in systematic theology at Union Theological Seminary. She lives in New York City, where she also teaches private students, and runs RIAT’s Teacher Certification Program.