__WORKING WITH CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS

Life can make a surprising number of demands on children and teenagers.  Some manage to meet these demands with a minimum of excess tension, but many, however accomplished, struggle with unhelpful patterns of tension and strain.  At a time when bodies are growing, developing and changing so rapidly, it can be helpful to be exposed to ways of relating to our physicality and to the stresses of life with a minimum of extraneous effort. Learning to be aware of and transform excess tension as it arises can be of extraordinary value as a preventive tool, as well as a means of addressing emerging or existing difficulties.

Here's what some of the young people Tanya has worked with have to say about their experience of the Alexander Technique:

“I realized that there's more space inside me than I thought. But… my habit is strong!"
         Ivan, 9 years old

“Wow - when I try to force my body to do things, it really doesn't work at all!"
         Rosie, 9 years old

“See, I’m not so scrunched up today!!"
         Maggie, 4 years old, upon arriving at her fourth lesson

 “Don’t correct the habit.  Make a new habit."
         Samuel, 9 years old, on what he learned from his first lesson

“My friend asked me what the Alexander Technique was, so I asked him to stand up straight, and then had him look in a mirror. 'See anything funny?' I asked. He agreed that yes, he looked kind of stiff, that his shoulders were pulled back, etc. 'I thought that was what I was supposed to do to have good posture,' he said, 'but now that you mention it, it does look kind of funny.'

I told him that the Alexander Technique helps me to see all that extra stuff that I'm doing - things that don't really help - and it helps me to stop.”
         Blake, 13 years old

“The Alexander Technique really works.”

-Roald Dahl, author