Character transformation through ease.

'All true artists bear within themselves a deeply rooted and often unconscious desire for transformation.’ Michael Chekhov

Shortly after leaving drama school, I worked with an actor called Andy Powrie. Like me, he was a jobbing actor, but the difference was that he had already been in the business for some years. He brought a down-to-earth quality to his work and to rehearsals, and showed us younger actors how to accomplish some of the basic tasks of acting. The production was A Man for All Seasons, and we toured throughout the UK and abroad.

There was a wonderful moment that only theatre can deliver. Andy was playing the Common Man, a sort of narrator figure, as well as Cardinal Wolsey, a sinister Machiavellian at the end of his days. The lighting changed to a darker state and, before the audience's eyes, Andy transformed into the older man. His head seemed to disappear into his torso, his face acquired a fixed expression of contempt, and his movements became slow and deliberate.

I have forgotten so much about this production, but this moment sticks in my mind. The ease with which Andy accomplished this was obvious, but so was the lack of pretence that he was inhabiting the character. He was at play, and this is what the audience enjoyed.

We actors must remember that we are not trying to convince an audience that we ARE a character. Rather, we are all – actors and audience alike – engaged in a game of make-believe. In the tired old phrase, we are suspending disbelief for an agreed period of time.

What is required for an audience to agree to leave the real world temporarily outside the auditorium and enter an imaginary one? Several elements are involved.

It begins with the actors, of course. The space they wish to inhabit goes far beyond the physical space of the stage. It exists in the minds and hearts of the audience. That entering this space requires a degree of ease should be obvious to us actors – and yet I think screen acting has confused us here. Or perhaps certain interpretations of screen acting.

Michael Chekhov argued that the actor's work should be characterised by four essential qualities: ease, form, beauty and entirety.These are the artistic requirements, because acting is an art. And when we talk of truth, we are not saying that performances should merely be true to life, or just like it. We are talking about a distillation, using those elements of ease, form, beauty and entirety. The performance should breathe with an inner life that is recognisable and truthful.

Whether you agree with Chekhov or not, if you see any great theatrical performance, there is always ease. You don't see a great actor exhausting themselves 'acting'. There is form – precision in the physical shape of a performance, even if there is an improvisational quality to it. Beauty – a sense that even in the roughest, ugliest moment, there is an element of grace. And entirety – a coherence to the whole part. Even if there are contradictory elements in the playing, the parts add up to a credible whole.

When great actors transform, their starting point is ease. It has to be this way. How could anyone playing Hamlet actually go through the experiences the character has as if they were happening to them? How could they do this within the stylised structure of the verse form? Wouldn’t they simply be overwhelmed? Daniel Day-Lewis has spoken about the considerable psychological and physical demands of his immersive approach to acting, as well as playing Hamlet in particular. His approach takes 'living in the character's shoes' to extreme levels. This may work beautifully for screen, but at what cost? And does it work for the stage?

Ease goes beyond the absence of unnecessary muscular tension. It is the removal of all psycho- physical interference so that the actor can attend, imagine, act and respond freely.

Every actor needs a way to acquire this skill – or to de-acquire everything that might stand in the way.

An actor can begin to discover this through years of experience, often learning the hard way, and constantly coming up against inner hurdles. The Alexander Technique offers another route. 

Alan Rickman put it beautifully: 

"With the best intentions, the job of acting can become a display of accumulated bad habits, trapped instincts and blocked energies. Working with the Alexander Technique to untangle the wires has given me sightings of another way. Mind and body, work and life together. Real imaginative freedom.

SELFTAPES: How to Play When We Have to Deliver

“We must overcome the notion that we must be regular... it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.” — Uta Hagen

As the deadline for a self-tape draws nearer, the pressure to get the result we want grows. Perhaps we've only learnt the lines the day before. We can't quite figure out what the casting director is looking for. We have our sides but scant information about the plot, so we've invented a backstory, but we don't know if it's accurate. Or perhaps it's a small functional part, with so few lines that we struggle to get our teeth into it.

These problems are real. They make it harder to act with creativity, playfulness and boldness. We become preoccupied with getting it right and end up feeling more like a delivery system than an actor.

I believe we need to separate the process from the delivery.

F. M. Alexander's concept of end-gaining is helpful here. He observed how easily we become fixated on achieving a desired result, at the expense of employing the best means to achieve it. We rush, force things and try to make something happen. As actors, we can do exactly the same. We concentrate so hard on producing a good performance that we undermine the very conditions that might allow one to emerge.

A self-tape requires technical competence, but, like any endeavour as an actor, it deserves a decent creative process. If we don't want to churn out a rehashed version of previous performances, we need to give ourselves the opportunity to discover choices we couldn't have anticipated. And that requires play.

The key is to give ourselves an exploratory process before the session in which we deliver the goods.

When recording, we're under pressure. We may have a friend helping us, a limited window in which to film, and a host of things to get right: the lines, the circumstances, the framing, the eyeline. Yet the performance must still feel fresh and alive.

The solution is to do some exploratory work before we start recording, even if we only have a little time.

There are a number of techniques an actor can use to explore a scene, from simply clearing themselves using Alexander's procedures to applying Laban efforts to text and body, improvising prior scenes, connecting to sense memory or using Chekhov gestures. Any experienced actor has a toolkit of techniques. The time to use these is prior to shooting. Even an hour of creative play is going to have an impact on your work.

Think of these sessions as making big, blotchy, rubbish sketches. We're not trying to create a finished painting; we're filling our sketchbook. Some ideas will be useless. Others will surprise us. Some may lead us somewhere we would never have gone if we'd started by trying to get it right.

We need to enjoy this process, whatever the size or importance of the role. Play isn't a reward we give ourselves when we have enough time. It's a way of working that can be particularly valuable when time is short.

Nor does this mean abandoning the objective of making a good tape. We still need to learn the lines, understand the circumstances and deliver something that works. But the exploratory work gives us a richer range of possibilities from which to make our choices. We can then take those discoveries into the recording, rather than trying to manufacture a performance under the pressure of the camera.

We cannot think our way into every discovery. If we rely entirely on conscious decisions, we risk reproducing what we've done before: another competent but predictable version of ourselves.

Instead, we can respect the process and quite possibly deliver something extraordinary.

I believe the key to this is play.

Body, Breath and Presence: How Using Alexander Can Turbocharge Your Scene Work

As an actor works on a scene, there are three main areas that can be enlivened by applying the Alexander Technique.

BODY

Actors are physical creatures. Many actors I know place a lot of emphasis on fitness, stretching and strength work. This is good. An actor is an athlete — the demands of the profession can be considerable. Whether it's a long run of performances in the theatre or an intense period of screen work, enormous physical resilience is often needed.

However, I've noticed that actors can often work with a high level of tension, and this can limit their freedom and choice. I know several actors who bring the same energy and rhythm to much of their work. This can be reinforced by the way they're cast — consistently in similar roles. They develop a physicality that's ready for certain roles, at certain tension levels, with similar physical rhythms.

Casting directors often say they want you to be ‘yourself’. But what exactly is ‘yourself’? Surely it's only one version of yourself that they're asking for. We're very different with different people and in different situations. Our energy, rhythm and even physical shape can change dramatically according to the ‘life role’ we're playing. This pliability is something we need to access as actors.

Alexander work can help us recognise and release habitual patterns of tension, allowing us to discover greater ease, balance and freedom of response. We might think of this as developing what we call a ‘balanced resting state’.

The idea is that by stepping out of our habits — including our ‘acting’ habits — we reach a place of greater choice and possibility. This is a state in which we can be more available and allow impulses to pass through us more freely. From here, we can begin to transform ourselves physically and imaginatively. Surely this is what we crave as performing artists: the freedom to become something other than our habitual selves.

BREATH

I find that breathing is an aspect of acting that can sometimes be neglected in scene work. While voice training often gives it considerable attention, this tends to focus on areas such as breath support, vocal power and the role of the abdominal muscles. This is important work that can develop vocal strength and freedom. However, like any technique taught in isolation, it can all too easily become compartmentalised.

Through Alexander work, we can become more aware of what happens to our breathing when we concentrate, try too hard or throw tension at a scene. We may hold our breath or interfere with its natural movement without even realising it.

The aim is to start with a free instrument — a body that isn't unnecessarily held or controlled — and, from this freedom, discover the ‘breathing costume’ of the character. The character may have a particular rhythm, quality or pattern of breathing. Rather than imposing this from the outset, we can allow it to emerge from an exploration of the character's circumstances, and then develop it consciously as part of our choices.

In this way, breath becomes another means of transforming ourselves physically and discovering the life of the character.

PRESENCE

Paying close attention to your body — its sensations, how you relate to the ground, and how you organise yourself through the musculoskeletal system — has a wonderful side benefit: it can help you become more present.

When we pay attention in the right way, we become more available to the present moment. It sounds simple, but it takes practice. We're often told to listen to the other actor. This is extremely important, and a skill that needs a lifetime of development. But we must listen to ourselves, too.

This isn't self-consciousness — the kind of self-monitoring that techniques such as Meisner aim to move us away from. It's what renowned Alexander teacher Penny O’Connor called ‘the unified field of attention’. Acting is a task of listening: to our own bodies, to our impulses, to the other actors and to the space around us.

This moment-by-moment, inclusive attention can generate a powerful sense of presence. And presence is part of what makes an actor magnetic.

When we become more present as actors, we can also begin to accept what we are. Instead of fighting to become ‘the character’, we discover that simply being with ourselves and our partners can be powerful and exciting. Within an imaginary situation, this can generate much of what we need as actors.

We discover that we don't have to do so much, after all. Take a moment right now and ask yourself: what do I really have to do to be a human being? Nothing! In its essence, acting surely has something of the same quality.

We can experience acting as inhabiting another person's body — their rhythm, their feelings and their thoughts. Of course, we must go into action. We have objectives to pursue, obstacles to overcome and things to do to the other person. But when we act from a place of greater freedom and availability, we can allow those actions to arise from within the circumstances, rather than layering them on from the outside. We begin to live in the skin of the character.

THE ACTOR'S VOICE OR THE HUMAN VOICE. WHICH DO YOU PREFER?

At drama school I was trained by Stuart Pearce, a very dapper looking voice teacher who went on to attain the rather grand title of Master of Voice at Mark Rylance's Globe. His classes involved a lot of lying down and breathing in and out on counts. Then he would walk around each student as we practised different vowels and crouch down to declare us 'rooted' or 'not rooted' in a rich, silky baritone. We worked a lot with exercises from Cicely Berry's book Voice and the Actor. On leaving, I felt I could produce an open-throated, pleasant-sounding voice with volume when required, and I felt that even if my acting technique failed, I could rely on producing a good sound.

Outside the womb-like embrace of drama school, however, and in difficult environments – school halls, markets, the street, inside a life-size inflatable whale, and large, unforgiving theatres like the Lyttleton at the National – I was much less confident. I would frequently get hoarse. I didn't know why. I assumed it was simply the force of all the air going through my larynx.

Then I saw an unforgettable production of Volpone at the National Theatre. It was memorable to me not for its brilliance but for hearing the silky voice of an older actor, Ian Richardson, in his last stage performance. It sounded so natural and unforced. Other renowned younger actors seemed to be working so much harder to reach the audience. What I noticed was how much they attacked the consonants in that tense way that theatre actors often do. How was it that Ian Richardson could land every word with such ease, beauty, and perfect audibility.?

I have seen this ease in surprisingly few theatre actors. Mark Rylance is one. You feel that his presence extends effortlessly out into the space, whereas others around him are straining to project their energy outwards.

Since Mark Rylance holds my old voice teacher in very high regard, was it that I hadn't quite understood what he was teaching? Was it that I simply didn't have the experience? Or was there something missing in my training that some actors acquire through experience?

It is probably a combination of all three.

Of course, any audience would always rather hear a human voice than an 'actor's voice', right? Perhaps not. I doubt people raved about Olivier's Richard III for its natural human relatability. They were going for the 'great acting’. What Kenneth Tynan called ‘high-definition ‘acting. There was something thrilling and electric which, when filmed and now faded into past trends, seems untruthful and extremely ‘actorly’, at least to me. 

So I accept that this must be a question of taste. There is a place for many styles of performance, and therefore voice, but not one in which the actor is simply unequal to the technical task of reaching an audience without piling on the tension.

What is striking is that many of the qualities that produce this kind of apparently effortless voice aren't really vocal qualities at all. They are qualities of the actor’s entire approach. Mark Rylance’s very ‘human’ acting seems to have the following qualities.

Immediacy:
The 'different every night' principle. He treats a performance like a game in which you don't know the outcome and therefore need to play your best 'shots' moment by moment.

Improvisation:
Leading on from this, allowing yourself to make different choices according to what happens in the moment.

Presence:
As in sport, each shot needs to have all your attention and focus. Peter Brook’s term for this is ‘re-presentation’: making the work present each time you do it.

Intimacy:
Not performing to an audience but rather opening up to listeners and seers. Being with an audience, not acting to it. Actors must be truly porous to reach this state, allowing the 'assistance' of the audience, in Brook's words.

Respecting the laws of sound:
Sound reverberates. It can't be pushed or hurried. It has its own laws. Understanding this frees the actor from the pointless act of pushing.

Attention:
The unified field of attention. Penny O'Connor the Alexander teacher, describes this as the ability to simultaneously attend to your inner thoughts and impulses, your own body, and the space all around you, including the actors and the audience.

Freedom: An actor able to call upon all their resources without blocking any of them: mental, physical, imaginative, emotional, even spiritual. This is where training and experience are vital.

Perhaps actor-trainers could approach the whole process in a more way integrated way, so that actors don’t think of voice as a separate discipline. Each skill may then be developed in a more indirect way. As Polonius in Hamlet says:

‘Let us by indirections find directions out’

THE CHARACTER PLAYS YOU

‘When we begin to catch the vibratory qualities...the song begins to sing us...’ Jerzy Grotowski

When I work with young actors, I notice is that despite their obvious talent, they often get in their own way. I see my role as an Alexander Technique teacher as helping remove whatever is preventing that talent from expressing itself, so the craft they are learning can work more effectively.

I have a student from Romania. For the purposes of this piece I will call her Lara. She is diligent and hardworking. She accepts direction, asks a great deal of herself, practises and researches outside the rehearsal room, and is fully engaged in rehearsals. Yet her work is constrained by unconscious habits. More accurately, those habits arise from an unconscious idea of what acting requires. It is as though her brain goes to the file marked ‘acting mode’ and activates it. She repeats the same gestures, beats out her words physically as though following a score, and continually pulls herself down. She leans forwards to push her points. At the heart of it all is an inability simply to leave herself alone.

I would like her to experience herself as an open channel for impulse and intuition. I would like the character to play her rather than the other way round. I would like to hear her breathing naturally. Most of all I would like her not to have any ‘idea’ either of acting or her character.

I don't believe her problem is a lack of physical training. She already does movement, yoga and Pilates classes. The problem is her understanding of what acting requires.

I use this exercise ( passed on to me from Penny O’Connor) to address this with actors:

Actors in the group begin by adopting the physical characteristics of someone they know well. This is easier than working with a fictional character because the person already exists; there is nothing to invent. Immediately, their movement contains not just physical qualities but personality as well. Yet there is usually still an element of exaggeration.

I ask the group to look at one student, in this case Lara. The group must guess facts about her - age gender, job personality etc. She then has some Alexander work—a 'turn', as we call our hands-on work. This allows her to experience herself outside her usual habits: freer, less cramped, less effortful. She is invited to let go of Lara's personality and, for a few moments, become free of her usual attitudes, habits and opinions.

In this more open state she enters the space as ‘not Lara ‘and begins interacting with the group.

She suddenly becomes playful. Uninhibited. Even anarchic. She challenges her fellow actors with her eyes and presence, following strong impulses wherever they lead. She is mesmerising. Gone are all her familiar acting habits. Instead we see a vibrant human being coming to life.

I invite her back for a little more Alexander work. Now she is asked to take on the characteristics of her chosen person.

The transformation is easy and immediate. Her whole physicality changes without any forcing. She moves differently through the space. Her character is arrogant, slightly vicious and extremely funny. She commits completely, as children do when they play. Words flow naturally. She notices everything happening around her and responds effortlessly. The generic gestures and effort have completely disappeared.

Afterwards Lara looks slightly shell-shocked, as do the rest of the class.

The person she had imagined had somehow taken her over, yet she never lost control.

When I ask what it felt like, she says it was like being "a painter who suddenly discovers she has a huge palette of colours she never knew she had."

Without this experience she might have continued fighting herself. There would still be struggles ahead, of course, but now she knew another way was possible. She had discovered that becoming someone else is much easier if you first let go of your habitual self.

The next time you approach a character, begin by noticing your own habits. Then consciously give yourself permission to let go of your own personality for the duration of the session.

What Is the Alexander Technique – and Why Is It So Important for Actors and Anyone Performing Under Pressure?

Whether you're stepping onto a stage, walking into an audition, speaking in a meeting, or presenting to a room full of people, performance places demands on both body and mind.

Many people respond to those demands in the same way. They tighten. The breath becomes restricted, the neck stiffens, the voice works harder than it needs to, and the mind begins trying to control every outcome. Even when these habits are subtle, they interfere with the free flow of thought, feeling and impulse that lies at the heart of effective performance.

As an acting tutor and Alexander Technique teacher in Barcelona, I see this every day.

An actor may have an excellent understanding of Stanislavski, Michael Chekhov, Uta Hagen or any other acting methodology, but if unnecessary tension is left unaddressed, it will almost always limit the quality of the performance.

Why Relaxation Isn't Enough

Directors often tell actors to "relax."

It's well intentioned—but not particularly useful.

Trying to relax is often just another form of trying. The issue isn't that performers have too much energy; it's that energy is being directed into unnecessary muscular effort instead of clear thinking, free breathing and truthful action.

The Alexander Technique offers a different approach.

The Alexander Approach

Rather than teaching you to do more, the Alexander Technique helps you stop doing what gets in your way.

You learn to recognise habits of unnecessary tension and, instead of reacting automatically, to pause and make a different choice.

Alexander called this process inhibition—the ability to interrupt an unhelpful habitual response before replacing it with a more efficient one.

As this awareness develops, your natural coordination begins to reassert itself.

In practical terms, this often means:

• allowing the neck to release rather than tighten

• letting the breath respond naturally instead of controlling it

• reducing unnecessary effort in movement and speech

• remaining available to thought, feeling and impulse rather than blocking them

These changes aren't imposed through exercises or willpower. They emerge through greater awareness and more skilful use of yourself.

Why It Matters for Actors

For actors, the effects are profound.

When unnecessary effort is reduced, you're no longer preoccupied with managing yourself. Instead, your attention becomes available for what really matters: your objective, your scene partner and the circumstances of the play.

Many actors discover:

• greater presence and spontaneity

• a stronger connection to objectives and actions

• increased emotional availability without forcing emotion

• a freer, more resonant voice

• greater ease under the pressure of rehearsal and performance

The Alexander Technique doesn't replace acting training. It allows your acting training to function more effectively.

Beyond Acting: Performing Under Pressure

Performance isn't confined to the theatre.

Musicians, singers and dancers all depend upon reliable coordination under demanding conditions. Teachers, lawyers, executives, presenters and healthcare professionals also perform every day whenever they communicate under pressure.

The same habits appear across all professions:

• holding the breath

• tightening the neck and shoulders

• overthinking

• vocal strain

• physical fatigue

• difficulty remaining calm under pressure

The Alexander Technique helps people develop greater poise, clarity and resilience by improving the way they use themselves rather than simply asking them to try harder.

A Different Kind of Training

Most professional training focuses on adding skills.

The Alexander Technique is different.

Its value lies in helping you remove what interferes with the skills you already possess.

When unnecessary tension is reduced, breathing, voice and movement begin to organise themselves more naturally and efficiently.

The result is not a new performance technique but greater freedom to express what is already there.

The Result

When unnecessary tension no longer dominates your performance:

• movement becomes lighter and more responsive

• breathing becomes easier

• the voice becomes freer and more expressive

• thinking becomes clearer

• communication becomes more direct

• performance becomes more truthful, spontaneous and compelling

Whether you're an actor, musician, presenter or professional working under pressure, the Alexander Technique offers practical tools for performing with greater ease, confidence and authenticity.

If you trained as an actor without studying the Alexander Technique, I offer tailor-made one-to-one lessons in Barcelona and Sitges to help fill that gap and integrate these principles into your existing practice.

Morgan Symes MSTAT
Alexander Technique Teacher
Barcelona & Sitges

Reframing Ageing: How the Alexander Technique Challenges the Narrative of Decline

As we age, it's widely accepted that certain physical functions inevitably decline. Balance becomes less reliable, joints stiffen, movement feels more effortful, posture deteriorates and our awareness of the body seems to diminish. Scientific research explains these changes through neural degeneration, muscle loss, reduced proprioception, hormonal changes and the gradual wear of cartilage and connective tissue. These biological processes are real and significant, yet they do not tell the whole story. If ageing alone determined how well we function, we would all decline at roughly the same rate. Instead, the variation between individuals is remarkable. Some people remain upright, mobile and physically confident well into their eighties or nineties, while others experience a much earlier loss of balance, coordination and independence. This suggests that alongside biology, another factor influences how we age: the way we use ourselves throughout our lives.

This simple observation lies at the heart of the Alexander Technique. Developed by F. M. Alexander over a century ago, the Alexander Technique proposes that how we use ourselves directly affects how we function. It is not primarily a method of stretching, strengthening or correcting posture. Rather, it is a practical education in body awareness, movement, coordination and the reduction of unnecessary muscular tension. Instead of asking how we can force the body into better posture, the Alexander Technique asks a more fundamental question: what unnecessary habits are preventing us from moving with ease in the first place?

Over a lifetime we develop countless unconscious patterns of tension. We tighten the neck while concentrating, brace the shoulders under stress, hold the breath when speaking, compress the spine while sitting and interfere with the body's natural balance without ever intending to do so. These habits become so familiar that they no longer feel like habits at all. They simply become the way we believe we are. Yet repeated thousands of times each day over decades, these seemingly insignificant patterns may gradually contribute to stiffness, poor posture, reduced mobility, chronic neck pain, back pain and a loss of freedom in movement.

One of the most intriguing concepts in the Alexander Technique concerns proprioception—our sense of the body's position and movement in space. While ageing can certainly affect the nervous system, proprioception is also influenced by attention and experience. F. M. Alexander observed that many people develop what he called faulty sensory appreciation: a learned inability to perceive accurately what they are actually doing. Someone may believe they are standing upright while leaning backwards, or imagine they are relaxed while holding considerable muscular tension. In this view, some aspects of physical decline arise not only from changes within the body but from increasingly inaccurate self-perception.

Children provide an illuminating contrast. Before years of unconscious habits accumulate, they typically move with remarkable coordination, balance and economy. Their heads balance freely, breathing responds naturally and movement appears effortless rather than controlled. Of course, children also benefit from the biology of youth, but they have another advantage that adults often lose: they have not yet acquired decades of unnecessary muscular interference. The Alexander Technique does not promise to make adults move like children again, but it can help people rediscover aspects of the natural coordination that habitual tension has gradually obscured.

Modern medicine has transformed our understanding of healthy ageing and provides invaluable treatments for arthritis, osteoporosis, chronic pain, muscle loss and balance disorders. Yet medicine understandably concentrates on diagnosing and treating disease. The Alexander Technique offers a complementary perspective by asking a different question. Regardless of diagnosis, how is this individual using themselves while living with these conditions? Even when structural changes cannot be reversed, improving coordination, reducing unnecessary muscular effort and enhancing body awareness may significantly improve comfort, mobility and confidence. Many people who take Alexander Technique lessons report easier movement, improved posture, better balance, greater freedom of breathing and a noticeable reduction in pain—not because ageing has been reversed, but because they have stopped adding unnecessary tension to an already demanding situation.

This broader perspective is increasingly relevant as people look for holistic approaches to healthy ageing. The Alexander Technique is not an alternative to medicine, nor does it claim to regenerate cartilage or reverse degenerative disease. Its contribution lies elsewhere. It teaches people to recognise harmful habits, improve posture without rigidity, move with greater efficiency and develop a more accurate awareness of themselves in action. These are skills that can benefit anyone, whether they are recovering from injury, living with chronic pain, seeking better balance, or simply wanting to remain active and independent for longer.

As an Alexander Technique teacher in Barcelona, I have seen these changes repeatedly in people from many different backgrounds. Actors discover greater freedom of expression. Musicians perform with less strain. Professionals learn to manage stress more effectively. Older adults often rediscover confidence in movement they thought had been lost forever. While the reasons each person comes for lessons are different, the underlying principle is the same: when unnecessary tension is reduced, the body's remarkable capacity for coordination, adaptability and self-organisation begins to re-emerge.

Perhaps it is time to think differently about ageing. Certainly, biology places limits upon us, but those limits are only part of the story. How we move, how we respond to stress, how we breathe, how we stand, and how we organise ourselves from moment to moment all influence the quality of our lives. The Alexander Technique reminds us that while we cannot stop the passing of time, we can continue learning how to use ourselves more intelligently. In doing so, we may discover that growing older does not necessarily mean moving with less ease, less confidence or less vitality. Sometimes the most profound change is not adding something new, but letting go of what has been getting in the way all along.

Morgan Symes MSTAT
Alexander Technique Teacher
Performance Poise – Alexander Technique Lessons in Barcelona & Sitges