Alexander Techniques & Body Mapping
Awareness, a Well of Potential
(AT) is a scientific, educational method that uses a series of principles that, when embodied, allows one to have a full kinesthetic experience and a more meaningful relationship with one’s artistry. AT is powerful because it is a method of “thinking” in activity that cultivates greater ease and efficiency in movement.
In a group setting, we shall explore some of F.M. Alexander’s Discoveries:
- How our physical use affects function.
- How unhelpful habits impede our awareness, movement, and thinking.
- How to “pause” in our daily and artistic lives to return to our kinesthetic self.
- How our reactions to daily stimulus can dull our sense of awareness and proprioception.
- Faulty sensory apperception—how we use ourselves in any activity can be highly unreliable. Our habits can be so strong that our current way of beings feels “right” to you. We shall go from the “known” to the “unknown.”
- Strategies for thinking—giving ourselves directions.
- Lessing our preoccupation with “the goal,”—only focusing on the end-product and not the process.
- Whole Body/Whole Being. Doing the best for ourselves to practice our Awareness.
Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think we are.
--Henri-Frédéric, French Philosopher
- Explore our relationship with “time.”
- Time is a stimulus that affects our behavior in in highly personal ways. Yet, what is time? We struggle to explain it, yet time is omnipresent in our daily lives. Does time affect us differently in divergent situations?
- Do we experience time differently when performing, or practicing, or cooking, or walking?
“He was always in a hurry to get where he was not.”
--Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Class Structure
- Group activities /games to explore our awareness with different types of stimuli.
- Participation by performances and observations.
- Practice daily activities such as walking, getting in and out of a chair, or picking something up from the floor.
- Utilizing our newly acquired AT Awareness skills to do something we’ve never done, i.e., reaction to new stimulus. (It could be origami, juggling, learning a new dance step/move, etc...)
- Individual or small group lessons will also be available.
Body Mapping and Structures and Movement of Breathing
Primary Movement
- The relationship of our head, spine, and back and neck muscles and how these significantly influence our whole-body coordination and movement.
Body Mapping
- A Body Map is your self-representation in your brain of how you think you are constructed. Research now shows that your brain is teeming with maps—maps of your body’s surface, its musculature is intentions, its potential for action, even a map that automatically tracks and emulates the actions and intentions of other people around you.
- Body mapping provides us another powerful tool to further develop awareness of ease and efficiently in movement. It is imperative that you have an accurate Body Map. Your Body Map must be correct, otherwise you will try to move in a way that is counter to your structure, unwittingly introducing a great deal of tension.
- We will incorporate the use of a full-size skeleton that can be disarticulated, and the most current application of The Anatomy Platform. Class will consist of interactive lectures and experiential learning. Students will perform in class, incorporating their newfound knowledge of Body Mapping.
The Structures and Movement of Breathing
- This course is also important for conductors, composers, pianists, string players and percussionists, not just singers, brass, or wind players. It’s applicable to all of us.
- Despite our ever-evolving scientific discoveries of the breathing apparatus, there are still misconceptions about how “it” works.
- Data from activities like deep breathing and rapid maneuvers show that abdominal and rib cage muscles work together with the diaphragm to make breathing more efficient.
- Through Body Mapping we shall clarify how the body moves in inhalation and exhalation and learn to use accurate language. There should be no mystery around the structures and movements of breathing.
- We will discuss how to use more accurate language in our own understanding of breath, and also in the pedagogical arena.
- Experience Learning will incorporate performances in class. We shall engage in detailed discussions about the various strategies that different musical artists employ. Are any of these strategies in conflict with the scientific truth of breathing? How do you explain your own breathing strategies in your music making? How do you teach breathing for musicians?
- Experience Learning will include so-called “breathing exercises. (As an Alexander Technique Teacher, I’m not fond of the word, “exercise. I’d rather we learn awareness through any focused repetitious movement.)
- Short videos will also be interlaced throughout class time.
Meet the Faculty
Dr. Larry Lee Hansel
Certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique
Alexander Contemporary School, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Certified Teacher Member
Alexander Technique International (2007 to current date)
Co-Author, Caring for the Whole Musician, Routledge Press, 2022
On Alexander Technique
Doctor of Musical Arts
Vocal Performance, Eastman School of Music, Rochester, New York
Biography
As an educator, Hensel draws upon his Eastman pedigree (D.M.A. and M.M. in Vocal Performance and Literature), twenty-five years of teaching experience and his skills as a Certified Teacher of the Alexander Technique to equip developing singers, actors, dancers, and puppeteers to thrive in the complex arts of singing, acting and movement, and the imaginative world of storytelling.
His burgeoning passion for puppet construction and performance led to his acceptance for three consecutive summers at the esteemed Eugene O’Neill Puppetry Conference." Hensel is currently constructing puppets for his company, “Opera in a Gym,”—a touring operatic outreach ensemble for young audiences.
As a Director, his pedagogical fervor for training young artists in collaborative decision-making and strategies for a heightened sense of physical and mental awareness has led to mainstage operatic productions that span the history of the genre and have been met with critical acclaim. Hensel shares his enthusiasm and expertise for Alexander Technique in workshops and clinics throughout the US.
Reviews
. . . “In the master class, Larry spent time going through the structures and movement of breathing, in a way that was easily understandable and engaging. When Dr. Hensel began to put educated “Alexander Hands” on the pianists and the singers (especially dealing with the ribs) – their performance took on another quality that was easy, natural, and distinctive. Once certain patterns of tension were identified, Larry helped the student with awareness strategies that would help them perform with ease and efficiency.”
-- Dr. Grant Wenaus, Artistic Collaborator, Principal Coach and Assistant Conductor, Glimmerglass Opera Festival, Assistant Conductor and Pianist, Sarasota Opera
“I am happy to add my endorsement Dr. Larry Hensel’s Alexander Technique classes and instruction. I have studied Alexander at various times during my career with a number of instructors, and I enthusiastically rank Dr. Hensel among the best. I have taken his course at the University of Wyoming and had numerous individual sessions with him. Both were of the greatest benefit for me. As a fellow musician, he completely ‘gets’ what it is we do and what we need!”
-- James Przygocki, Professor of Viola; Director, UW String Project, University of Wyoming