Jeannette Payne has been teaching both the Alexander Technique and yoga in Charlottesville for the past six years. Certified through the Alexander Technique Training Center in Charlottesville, she’s a practicing member of AmSat.
Though Kripalu Yoga certified, her yoga teaching draws from a variety of diverse influences: Yin and Taoism, Ashtanga, Anusara, and Buddhism. Her teaching, like her practice, is curious, permissive, fluid and evolving.
What is Alexander Technique?
The Alexander Technique is the study of embodied awareness. Becoming aware of our body and breath in stillness and motion deepens our contact with the present moment. Learning how to move so that our bodies are dynamically aligned, allows us to sit, stand, and walk with a minimum of physical effort. We’re able to relax into the grace of our structure, more easily paying attention to sensation as it arises, to breath, and to thought.
A typical Alexander Technique lesson
In each hour long lesson, students will work both
passively on the table, and more actively, in everyday
activities such as sitting, standing, and walking.
The table work, called constructive rest, guides students
through light hands on touch in relaxation techniques.
Students learn how to identify muscular tension, and
how to release it.
In the more active part of the lesson students bring
their unconscious habits into consciousness, in order
to release them. As an example, some of us tighten our
neck every time we go to answer the phone. The simple
awareness that we tense our neck when answering the
phone, allows us the freedom to choose to answer the phone without strain. Students are led through the
gentle hands of a teacher how to move with the greatest
amount of ease and grace throughout their day, noticing
when old habits creep up, and choosing to move more
freely.
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