The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 080 Lori Schiff: The Alexander Technique - At Home with Yourself

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast, episode number 80. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice and building a purposeful career. And now your host, violinist, teacher and high performance coach, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope this episode finds you thriving. I have a powerful conversation for you today. I'm so excited to bring you world-renowned Alexander Technique teacher Lori Schiff. Lori is a full-time professor of the Alexander Technique at the Juilliard School, where she's been on faculty since 1991, and she was in residence at the Aspen Music Festival from

Starting point is 00:00:53 1993 to 2015. She's presented master classes and has been a guest teaching artist for various schools and organizations nationally and internationally, including the New World Symphony, the San Diego Symphony, the National Youth Orchestra of China, the International Meistersinger Academy in Newmark, Germany, the Metropolitan Opera, and the West Point Military Academy. In addition to all of this, Lori has served on several boards of directions, including those of the Aspen Music Festival and the American Center in American Society for the Alexander Technique. She's the founding director of Flight Feather Productions, an organization for creating

Starting point is 00:01:33 uplifting educational experiences for corporate and artistic communities, and is co-director of Creativity Lab, a program for inspiring community and collaboration through collective creativity. It was such a pleasure for me to have this chance to sit down with Lori to discuss the Alexander Technique and how it can help us in all aspects of our lives. The Alexander Technique can help you gain confidence and reduce pain, tension, and fatigue, but it's much more than that. As Lori shares on her website, the Alexander Technique is a method for living better through your own mindfulness in action. It allows you to connect with yourself to nourish presence and mobility,

Starting point is 00:02:17 and from there, it leads to performing better in all areas. In our discussion, Lori expands on how the Alexander Technique affected her life and her journey, what it is and who it's for, how it's a means to more freedom for the whole person and their whole life, how it can help in classes, lessons, the practice room, and on stage, and much more. This is an information and inspiration-packed episode, and I know you will appreciate Lori's knowledge and wisdom and love her energy as much as I did. Let's go to the show. Lori Schiff, it's such a huge honor to have you on the show.

Starting point is 00:03:11 Well, thanks for inviting me. I'm thrilled to be here, wherever here is. Lori, I'm very excited to have this chance to speak with you today because I am not someone who took private Alexander Technique lessons, but I'm someone who's always wanted to and someone who I promise you will one day dedicate time to take some Alexander Technique lessons. So I'm really happy on a kind of a selfish level here. I get to pick your brains on all of these topics. But before we jump on questions, I would love to hear about your journey, how your path unfolded and how you got to where you are today.

Starting point is 00:03:53 Yeah, so, you know, it's a story of a lot of a lot of artists and musicians. I was driven by passion as a little kid, not quite knowing it, but I grew up in the early 60s listening to Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass, of all things. and the sounds just caught my ear particularly those all that bright trumpet sound and so as a little kid I wanted to play trumpet eventually I was able to take lessons in the public schools in Connecticut and I just that's all I wanted to do for years and years and eventually made my way into music school at Northwestern and while I was there like many musicians practicing away I hit a plateau. I had at least the man I thought was the best trumpet teacher at the time, Vince Chigowitz,

Starting point is 00:04:43 and he was incredibly patient and a great teacher, but I still was at this plateau and practicing and maybe of only modest talent. And then this guy, John Hennis from Northwestern, gave a demonstration of the Alexander Technique with some of our music students. And I sat in the audience and watched as John worked with a violinist, a drummer who played snare drum, and a trumpet player. I had no idea what he was doing. I was just watching, and he had each of them play a little bit. It looked like he helped them stand or hold their violin or something. And then each one played significantly better, noticeably, audibly better than the first time they played. And it It was much more than that phenomenon of, oh, yeah, when they're nervous the second time they play.

Starting point is 00:05:33 It was much more than that. So I just thought, wow, that was pretty cool. They got better in about 10 minutes, and I've been practicing four hours a day, so I'm going to try that. I confirmed with my trumpet teacher that it was okay, and I started taking private lessons. I brought my trumpet along all the time, but a lot of times it was without. And right from the first lesson, when John worked with me, I felt too different. I could, all I could tell you is I felt somehow at home in myself in a way I never had. And at age 20, I really didn't know what the heck all that meant, except that I was playing better.

Starting point is 00:06:08 And that's all I cared about. So I kept going and I didn't tell anyone, not even the brass quintet friends I was playing with all the time. And my friends started to say, you know, I don't know what you're doing, but you're sounding better. Meanwhile, I was sleeping better. I was calmer. I didn't know I had trouble sleeping I didn't know I wasn't calm I just was feeling so much better so from that point I was hooked and I knew that it helped me so much that whatever it was that was happening there I wanted to do I wanted to teach this work and help other people in the way that it helped me because I just it just helped so much now to sort of fast forward the whole thing I continued with with trumpet I did finish at Northwestern and I stayed out in Chicago for a

Starting point is 00:06:53 year i kept studying with john and i took lessons with a guy called arnold jacobs for a long time and then i moved to new york for grad school i'm generally from the east so i was coming back to where i'm from and being in new york city was kind of stressful so i very quickly found an alexander teacher nearby and by chance this was somebody who ran a training course for teachers and i didn't even know that for months on end until one day it just sort of came up and i said oh I'd love to learn how to teach what do you do and she explained the process I eventually went into the training course it's a three-year program 1600 hours of training you go every day kind of like school for four it is a school four or five days a week and meanwhile I was still

Starting point is 00:07:40 playing still practicing and trying to perform I was still freelancing with the intention to play and teach alexander the way john did and um very gradually i again fast forwarding it i had some nice trumpet gigs along the way but i i just was leaning more into the alexander world i knew if i stayed in music i would be meeting people who would be able to recommend me for teaching for alexander and that did happen so some of my close musician friends became people that helped me start my alexander career and then further down the line i ended up um again fast forwarding here with an opportunity to teach a little bit at the juilliard school as an alexander teacher there was leaving town and i started doing that in the early 90s 30 years later i'm

Starting point is 00:08:35 have been full-time at the juilliard school since then largely working in the music world i've had the pleasure of working with thousands of literally thousands of musicians i'm really happy to still be in the music world except not playing i haven't played in years i let that go and um and i also do a lot of teaching outside of the music world so alexander is not just for musicians it's not just for performers it's for anyone who's interested in improving in themselves finding a more comfortable way of living so i have people who have back pain i have people who have neck problems maybe they had a car accident and there's just you know ramifications from that i've had people who are interested just in improving breathing people that are actors and

Starting point is 00:09:22 singers and um i have someone i've worked with for a long time who's a trial lawyer for example so it's people who are really looking to find ways to be more comfortable and more present in themselves and in many many cases they're getting they arrive because they've been in chronic pain and they're trying to get out of it whether that's repetitive stress from music issues or other issues so it's it's a really broad world to be teaching alexander but also my home base is in the performing arts and my real home is in the music world so So it's where I'm most, I don't know, I'm just most at home. It's most fun.

Starting point is 00:10:03 So that's a long, a long version. I love this journey. And also on a personal level, I love that my very brief and short Alexander Technique experience was also with John Hennis at Northwestern. He was a sure game changer for me. He and the work. And we remain friends and colleagues, by the way. He's wonderful. One thing I love you said is that it made you feel at home in yourself.

Starting point is 00:10:35 And that's often a misconception about the Alexander Technique for people who've never done it. They think it's all about, you know, learning about posture, but it's so much more than that. I'd love for you to tell us what Alexander Technique is. I do think after all these years involved in it, that's always the hardest question for me. what is it but you know it's really a method for living and you know bear in mind we call it today the alexander technique so a technique we all know from music it's a method it's not a series of exercises and postures it's a way of thinking and learning to behave so at this point where i am with it um it really is very much about being present and learning how we react to things and

Starting point is 00:11:25 what our reactions are so to put that a little bit more on the ground understandable you walk outside on a nice morning in illinois around this time of year and all of a sudden it has turned really cold and maybe you didn't expect that and so you walk outside and you're freezing and what do you do well your neck and shoulders tighten up just as you're doing now your shoulders lift and all that okay you're reacting to the circumstances around you the environment perfectly normal turns out if you lift your shoulders and hunch into yourself you don't necessarily get a lot warmer but if you recognize that that's what you're doing you realize yeah i'm really getting tight and let's say you've got to walk about 15 or 20 minutes say to a store to

Starting point is 00:12:13 the L or something. And so you, you, uh, you're walking out and you're really cold and hunched together. Well, you're going to be really pretty stiff for the next little while. And so what you have done is reacted. And through that reaction of tightening your neck and back, you, you've made yourself a bit stiff. You don't have to have that reaction. So with Alexandra, you start to learn to observe your reactions and make some choices based on parameters that say, you know, i'm really better off when i'm most open and at ease so i'll fast forward that to another type of reaction that people are living with now with um all the computer work so you have to meet with someone uh perhaps it's your teacher or something like that on on the computer on zoom where you're

Starting point is 00:12:57 watching or listening to something so you lean into the computer a little bit maybe to see it better kind of like when you're sight reading and you lean into the music stand and as you do that it's just a reaction to wanting to understand better what's happening in front of your eyes in your ears and in that action there's a series of reactions you lean in you tighten your shoulders your neck hunches down and in those reactions you've created some discomforts that you may not even be aware of in the moment but maybe 10 minutes maybe 40 minutes later you're definitely aware and you've gotten a little stiff and you want to stretch and you feel like you want to move so what's happened is you've reacted to something the reactions are always physical we can't not

Starting point is 00:13:41 have that and then you find out you can change those and so through that through alexander you're getting aware of yourself you're choosing to be conscious about yourself and what you do and then you find out the really cool thing is you can change those reactions and it's It's on the simplest level, it's making a decision. I choose to let go of the tension in my neck and shoulders. I choose to let go of the tension in my back. I can lengthen up and I can be more open without being in fixed postures. The journey with Alexander, when you have the chance to have actual private lessons, they're hands on and the teacher's hands are trained.

Starting point is 00:14:24 remember I said I went to school for three years and then I did a whole lot of postgraduate work that school training is largely about how we work within ourselves to create really open easy hands so we listen to people through our hands much the way you do with your ears and in listening you start to realize ah so so and so my student here is reacting with this kind of tension in their neck and shoulders we can quiet that tension and guide through very gentle touch what's happening for the student just in regular old street clothes there's nothing fancy about it at all it's it's the most basic thing ever really and through a little bit of gentle guidance you connect the person's thinking and their awareness with their ability to choose to stop tensions and as it goes

Starting point is 00:15:13 on you interfering less and less with a very natural coordination in yourself Hmm. Hmm. I'm loving everything that you're saying. As I hear you using these words, choice and awareness. And for me, it's also very personal and very meaningful because in all of my work with my clients, my students, and the deep practice model, which is what I talk a lot in my coachings. coachings. It's all based on this one quote from Viktor Frankl that I've said so many times now, I hope I can say it without butchering it, but between stimulus and response, there's a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. And this is what I talk about, what I call with my clients and students, that space of maximal response. So everything you're saying right now resonates so much with me because everything about the deep practice model and all of the practicing methods that I talk about is how do

Starting point is 00:16:22 we operate in that space of maximal response? So I want to hear more. Tell me more. So your Viktor Frankl quote is perfect. And I've used it in Alexander classes as coming from, you know other other realms because it exists and it's it explains quite a lot about the work and so what frankl is talks about that space in between that's you can actually create that space by through what alexander calls inhibiting so it's not it's not shyness and being inhibited and kind of within yourself it's a refers to the terminology from the nervous system so in the nervous system you have excitation and inhibition so excitation to me is a green light you know oh green light go you put your foot on the gas and you go inhibition is a red light you

Starting point is 00:17:15 simply stop so that in the case of traffic you can be safe but so that you have room to consider what you're doing what you want make those choices and you need that little space you need to stop so that let's say on the playing a string instrument let's say there's some um technical thing you've been doing you're not satisfied with it you're trying to make a change we have to stop doing the wrong thing in order to have some space figure it out and choose another path rather than simply well i've got a habit of holding the violin in a certain way i'm going to keep doing that and change something else you might want to consider the whole picture and you might want to learn you actually it's a mental decision i can stop um one of the things that

Starting point is 00:18:08 fits in i think with your quote and your way of teaching and discussing i think um reminds me very much of something that happened to me and i see happen with so many of my alexander students at at Juilliard we have these great teachers of students and we're in a lesson we're so excited and we're really we've been working hard we want to play well we want to play well for our teacher and they they you know they're great so we play something happens it's you know a little less than perfect stop and the teacher starts saying try la la la la la whatever it is meanwhile the student the student's head is going yeah i know i missed the f sharp and i and i know what i did you know the student has actually not really hearing what the teacher was saying because

Starting point is 00:18:56 they're so busy already going yeah i know and you almost start playing again before the teacher finishes saying what they say and if they're giving you some some really good information about something technical or some process oriented thing you've missed it and i discovered this in my lessons as a trumpet player my learning got so much better when i started taking alexander lessons not only my learning in trumpet but a lot of things because i would sit quietly and calmly and listen it's odd you know i actually was listening to what the teacher was saying and i gave myself a minute or two or less to process that and lo and behold it really worked i had a great teacher and i i think a lot of times that's we're so keen about

Starting point is 00:19:47 what we're doing and so excited and so wanting in fact also to please our teacher that we're actually not necessarily taking in all they have to offer by no one's fault it's reaction and when you learn to control your reactions to stimulus just a little the gains are huge Wow. Correct me if I'm wrong. Alexander technique encourages us to to pause and maybe ask ourselves questions. Correct. Absolutely. And, you know, questions. Out of curiosity. Not judgment, like, you know, not judgment, it's curiosity. What's happening? um and i was thinking about some of this this morning i was like you know something that's useful for people practicing in an instrument or an actor practicing a monologue you know you you stumble along the way and you need to fix whatever it is

Starting point is 00:20:51 get curious like wait i was fine till here and the music what happened and be still and think about it for a minute instead of jumping into trying to fix things be still and be with your whole self for a minute or two so the big the question yes you're right ask questions out of curiosity openness and try things experiment try but in terms of alexander technique we're just suggesting you're trying in the context of your whole self what happened When you're playing some, you're about to play some big cadenza and it's, you know, it's, it's a really fun one and a little tricky. What happened just before, as you know, that's coming up, maybe you shifted weight on your feet and slightly tightened your back muscles. Maybe you all of a sudden leaned back to get a certain sound, but in that leaning back, you've tightened into yourself.

Starting point is 00:21:52 What happened? Maybe you got a little too ready. If you were playing just fine before that, and then that happened, something happened. So it's a matter of, you know, get a little curious with a real open mind. I love that. I'm guessing there's also an element of learning about, since we're focusing on body awareness, Alexander Technique must also talk about the physiology of the body and how to use movement. That's probably the questions that everyone else is curious about, too.

Starting point is 00:22:26 I think you're on a good track. If I may jump ahead, it's like, well, wait, what is this Alexander technique? It comes back to that. And what does it look like? And what would happen different than just listening to all these words? Because you're right. It's the connection with our self, our physical self. So with Alexander, and he wrote really carefully about it,

Starting point is 00:22:50 um you can't divide mind and body and our language it's tricky because our language does that so he started talking about being psychophysical because he he couldn't figure out you know our english language how to say it all together so if you read his books you won't read about physiology but what we'll read is about the connection with the use of the self and he talks about how you use yourself. So for example, I'll talk about standings. I realize this is for people who play all sorts of instruments, but you know, cellists don't necessarily stand, but let's just say we do all stand in our life. So let's say you're standing and you just ask yourself, well, what am I doing here? You may begin to realize, are you locking your legs?

Starting point is 00:23:41 are you tensing in your legs if you're tensing in your legs which is a fairly common habit that's literal muscle tension tightens the legs tightens up into your whole back and often people who um have a real habit of bracing their legs in general through the day or perhaps practicing something like violin end up with lower back pain and they don't necessarily associate the low back pain with the legs or or the leg the condition of the legs while standing but if you tell yourself and you do have what alexander called conscious control over your whole physical system you can choose to release the tension in your legs as you release the tension in your legs you may notice that the sensation of your feet on the ground changes

Starting point is 00:24:27 and you feel more stable or some people might feel wobbly in their knees if they're really used to being braced. This happens quite a lot. Most of us shy away from doing things that make us feel different. And I'm not even going to say uncomfortable, but different. But in the condition of legs, if you release your legs and you feel a little wobbly and you stay with it, you will eventually get much more stable and less tense in your back, less tense in your legs. If you're less tense in your lower back you have a whole new world of being stable your whole balance changes so what alexander's work does is it helps us and it certainly helped me this way connect with our kinesthetic sense so the kinesthetic sense of the feeling sense if you're sitting here listening to

Starting point is 00:25:20 this and you happen to have tension in your neck or shoulders perfectly common situation that's your kinesthetic sense sending you an alert the discomfort so rather than putting it aside with alexander you start digging into it a little bit so ah oh that's what's happening i can release that and the hands-on work is super for this because the teacher can help you feel and sense those tensions quite a bit more accurately and they can help guide you into thinking more about your whole self as opposed to your wrist or your elbow if you're having issues in the forearms really common these days with not only instrumentalists but computers yes there's a local issue there with the forearms and yes there are a lot of things you can do to relieve that

Starting point is 00:26:13 but that's highly likely related to the condition of your whole self an alexander teacher works with the whole person all the time. If someone comes to me and says, look, I am having these issues with my wrists and my viola teacher told me I should try Alexander. It really helps. I listen carefully. I would watch the person play and see what their habits are and say, great, now let's talk about your neck and releasing the tension in your neck, which connects with the tension in your shoulders and your arms and your back. And so we're always working with the whole and little spotlights on the issues that people come with so alexander's work it's a big connector mind body for something that's never disconnected never disconnected that's so true i love this idea of the conscious

Starting point is 00:27:07 control and what you're saying about being a connector of the mind and body and i can see so clearly how that maps onto our playing bringing more awareness onto everything that we're hearing if we're looking to shape a musical phrase if we're looking to solve a technical problem how having this increased awareness in this conscious control it just translates so well and and the ramifications are so great into applying to our playing very specifically i love that it's a means to more freedom and so we're at you know it's interesting when you hear that in our common language and at least american english you hear control and people are control freaks and they you know they're told you got to loosen up and all this well yeah this is a very particular

Starting point is 00:28:05 we you do have the ability to control yourself but it's for freedom and sometimes what what you notice when people unlock in themselves and their balance is a little easier all of a sudden they're a little less gripped and held in their neck and shoulders and back the sound improves and i i see and hear it virtually in every instrument and including the human voice mostly the human voice because we are our instrument, but absolutely across the board. And it's sometimes stunning when you see someone playing, see and listen to someone playing a piano, for instance. In my classroom at school, the pianists are all playing on the same piano and they're, you know, they're different people. Their sound and their touch is radically different. And yet you hear

Starting point is 00:28:52 that same piano, the sound of it changes tremendously when the person is a little bit more open and at ease in themselves and i say open and at ease that their energy is flowing more because they're grounded because they can feel stability underneath their body connected with the bench or their feet on the ground same with the chalice so this conscious control is a means towards freedom so that you're not getting in your own way you're controlling the reactions that take you askew you know the path to becoming an alexander technique teacher is so thorough you know it's not like you sign up for a program and three months later it's it's quite long and and very in-depth and i know that the relationship teacher and student having these

Starting point is 00:29:45 in-person lessons are so important to create this connection and i would really strongly encourage everyone listening to this episode to maybe see if there's a teacher nearby that they could start taking lessons with but what is something that people can start maybe doing right away today i don't know when they're brushing their teeth well that's a great example brushing the teeth okay so a couple things um first if you you know for catching your interest now or maybe for a little down the line yes find a qualified alexander teacher and qualify so there's an organization called the American Society for the Alexander Technique. You can go on their

Starting point is 00:30:24 website, and you can plug in your zip code, and there's certified teachers listed for whatever your area is. And that information we can also give you later. But find someone and get actual direct help. In the time of

Starting point is 00:30:40 COVID, it's a little trickier to have one-to-one interactions, but as that comes, if you can do it in person safely? Absolutely. It really is fascinating work. And since you mentioned brushing your teeth, and it's something, it's a great one. It's something we, I imagine we all do at least once, probably more than once a day, maybe at least twice. And you have to be standing in front of a mirror generally, not always, but often. So you can see what you're doing. You can ask

Starting point is 00:31:11 yourself this really fundamental question. What am I doing? So I'll clear, yes, the task, you're brushing your teeth. Are you standing on two feet? Are you standing on one leg, all sort of the other foot, all twisted around? Get yourself on two feet, just see what that's like. Make sure you're not locking in your legs. Hold the toothbrush down a little bit for a second. Bend your elbow, bring the toothbrush to your face instead of your face to the toothbrush. And then as you start to brush your teeth and you're looking there in the mirror if your head's dipping off the one side you know to get those back molars do you need to do that maybe you could move your hand or your arm and not to say that either is right or wrong but explore and find out for yourself you may find

Starting point is 00:31:56 out that you're all bent over the sink possibly because there's water involved but you know you're all bent over the sink maybe you don't need to be here's an even equally i don't know if more but perhaps more ubiquitous um circumstances most of us use cell phones these days and i find that a really interesting one and it's always part of an assignment at school is using your phone so you're standing there looking at your phone what are you doing what's your head and neck doing you're reading a text message even briefly just stop what where is your head is your are you holding in the phone in the left or right hand are you tensing your shoulder to hold the phone? Or can you release your shoulder? Can you hold the phone a little more up to your head and

Starting point is 00:32:40 your head a little less down to the phone? Now, those things you can read in all kinds of articles about eye and neck and hunching and stuff. An Alexander teacher is going to help you look at that from a little more broader and deeper perspective. Really what's happening, if you're dipping your head toward your hand, the weight of your head is pulling your spine down. you can start to feel that that's throwing you off balance as your kinesthetic sense gets better and better you can release the tension in your legs lengthen up through your spine and you realize you know it's actually a lot easier to hold this phone up here and what you have done again in alexander terms is prevented a whole slew of reactions they're called neuromuscular

Starting point is 00:33:24 chain of reactions that get in the way so the question i think you can ask yourself is what am I doing meaning with your whole self curiosity this I love what you said about do you need to do that first of all I feel like I will never brush my teeth the same way anymore but it's so simple yet so powerful to just stand there and say do I need to do that is this necessary I think that's going to become one of my favorite question for sure if you're lifting a bow you might a student might examine well how do they just lift the bow i mean people have been playing for years like okay i'm going to practice and they get themselves together and they start to play but you had to get that bow to the strings so what's happening where did the movement begin

Starting point is 00:34:19 did you start by lifting your shoulder and then your arm or did you think maybe just bend the elbow or the bow is an extension of your arm the tip of the bow is pretty far away for a lot of arms so if you think okay i'm the tip of the bow is an extension of my arm i'm going to lead with the tip of the bow so then that will guide my arm exactly how much it needs to get to the instrument maybe i can leave out some tension in my neck and shoulder before i even start so you know this is what i mean by what am i doing um to ask yourself another thing that i find incredibly useful um even in the very in the very beginning with alexander twos um for instrumentalists is video so if you have a simple video device an iphone or something

Starting point is 00:35:16 and can put it a few feet away from yourself and go profile to it so that the image you see of yourself is not from the front but from the side you'll be able to see the shape of yourself much more clearly um video is flat medium so it's you'll see your the dimension a little bit differently the and you can also with video it's just play you know play the opening of a concerto or something video it but you know and then keep exiting and then look at what you did separately different it's great to have a mirror to watch but there's so much going on when you're watching in a mirror and you're trying to correct and everything else it's really great to do because you can fix stuff in a moment. But I find video particularly a good coach. And now when we

Starting point is 00:36:06 are getting more and more accustomed to working with screens and technology, it's a pretty simple one. And you simply ask yourself, what am I doing? Not look at it and say I have bad posture, but I wonder if that's necessary. Oh, I can see I'm leaning on my leg, well on my left leg okay that's nice i wonder what happens if i don't like that so that you can give yourself opportunities to be in a more upright open balance generally you move when you play if you're a musician and i we have these discussions a lot in my classes people say but I feel so still and it feels like it's stiff I'm like okay well

Starting point is 00:36:57 this is different it's new you're standing on two feet in a good balance you don't need to move as much perhaps but that feels so different it also reminds the students that this is music if you don't move to music you might be in the wrong business you might you might need a different art form so don't be afraid to move but are you getting in your own way are you moving to feel free or are you free and moving in accordance to what's coming through your heart and soul right so allowing yourself to be in a good balance with two feet on the ground releasing tension along your neck and spine does not mean you're in a fixed posture

Starting point is 00:37:40 it means you're available to do what you need to do this is what we're looking for this is incredible information i think that so much of what you just said we can start applying right away and see some changes in our practice and our playing in our life and everything that we do i can see this as i'm cooking yes absolutely the alexander technique is for the whole person in their whole life at virtually anything you do so one of the one of the things that you mentioned that i realized early on taking lessons was i will never be bored again i mean if you're really honest with yourself so you're standing in line um you know waiting at the grocery store or something you don't need your phone but occupy your time start paying

Starting point is 00:38:30 attention to yourself you know are you are you all twisted up holding your bag over your shoulder how are you standing are you breathing i mean there's a whole world in yourself to check in with yes never ever need to be bored if you're honest with yourself although a little boredom is a good thing i mean i don't know if this was influenced because i knew i was talking to you in a few days but i was taking a walk two days ago and i like to take a walk every morning and i was noticing how much with each step i was you know um i forget the word in english but i would just kind of uh you know drop on myself and i start to think i wonder how that would feel if i my head was floating as i walk and all of a sudden everything's starting

Starting point is 00:39:19 to feel so different yeah you're you're right on it and this would be the kind of thing we would talk about if you and yeah it does feel different when you're not bouncing up and down in your spine the spine's a great shock absorber but you don't have to sink into yourself all the time and And in Alexander, we work with people walking all the time. And what you would see, I do it in the hallways at school. It's pretty funny, actually. But what you would see with the Alexander teacher has their hand on the person's, on their student's skull, the base of the skull, very gently. And they're just walking along and encouraging the person to stay free and leave their head up and balanced on the spine,

Starting point is 00:40:01 as opposed to down and up and down and up and jolting the spine as you realized in yourself. And yeah, it's way healthier to stay more up. Far less compression, not only in your spine, but in your hips, your knees, and your ankles. I feel like people coming out of listening to this podcast will never brush their teeth or walk the same way again. Well, hopefully it'll all be for the sake of improvement.

Starting point is 00:40:27 Lori, you and I both talked about the importance of private lessons in Alexander Technique. What can people expect out of a lesson with an Alexander Technique teacher? First of all, if you don't mind just telling us a little bit why it's so important that to have these one-on-one interactions and what people can expect when they take an Alexander Technique lesson. The huge value of one-on-one is going to be that the teacher can really focus on the individual, so the student themselves and whatever issues they arrive with so it's it's absolutely the personal attention and the the interaction of being with someone who's really listening and paying attention to exactly what you're saying

Starting point is 00:41:08 but in context of a whole person so you can expect the teacher is going to watch and listen we need to see people we need to be able to listen you can expect that in normal times when you come one-to-one it is literally hands-on so I always suggest people just wear regular clothes put something loose and comfortable when a musician comes for whatever their reasons are I listen to what they would say and why they're there and then have them play a little bit and I just watch their habits I don't play violin or viola or cello or any of that stuff I so I don't have any particular knowledge about that but I'm watching the person as a whole human being playing and a whole series of reactions so we're very skilled observers and

Starting point is 00:41:58 able to connect the dots and movements and reactions so i'll watch and say great i mean i need about a minute of playing not really not much and then we put the instrument aside and talk about the alexander work and that it's about consciousness as we've said throughout this interview and then i make sure it's fine with the student i'm going to have my hands on their neck and back very gently and then i start to guide them in really simple things for instance that usually they're sitting to begin with or maybe standing and if you were watching it looks very still if the person was in the chair you'd think well they're just sitting there but what happens with a an alexander teacher's guidance and the particular touch of an alexander teacher

Starting point is 00:42:43 which is trained it's not an accident it's not magic it's trained the particular touch encourages a quieting in the nervous system so after a little bit student gets a little calmer and you start to just feel a little bit easier some people will get that very quickly and some that might take quite a while and then the teacher might guide you say all right you know we're going to lean forward a little and we simply do very simple actions leaning forward and backward but keeping the whole person's coordination so that they're not sinking down and leaning forward or tightening their shoulders or if these things happen you pause victor frankl's space you pause and observe that and connect with the ability of the student to say oh stop tightening my shoulders

Starting point is 00:43:33 let go some people might just call that relax the muscles but i stay away from using the term relaxation like a lunatic i stay away from it because people often have a misperception about that and actually i think people's energy is great you just need to redistribute it you don't actually want to lose it so and you don't want to relax into the heat so we guide people in movement very gently standing sitting maybe if it's a violinist or violist lifting the instrument and then i work with them lying down on the table which we call constructive rest which is also something people can do on their own i won't take the time now to do it but lying on the floor and um you're connecting again mind and body because they are always connected but you're improving that the

Starting point is 00:44:20 teacher uses very very gentle guidance to help people let go of the the tension that holds them close to tight your muscles are like a little network of of strings around your skeleton if you've tied them too tight you're stiff but as you start to loosen that network of strings the whole skeleton's kind of springy as you experienced on your walk and so we're encouraging that now lesson generally 30 to 45 minutes depending on the teacher and the situation um i am very experienced at this point i've been at it for more than 30 years so i might be quicker than somebody who's a brand new teacher also um what i find i either teach 30 minute or 45 minute private lessons um in 45 and generally 45 minutes when i'm teaching at home school i just need to see

Starting point is 00:45:15 more people that's enough attention spans are not much longer because the work is quite in a really pleasant way it's very focused and very intense that's enough i will often again if a musician's coming for first lesson i'll have them play again at the end to feel and experience the differences and uh it's a lot of fun actually because often their eyes are just all lit up going oh my god this is so different or it sounds so much different like that uh if it's not a musician we don't we just leave out that part you know it just depends the thing also about one-to-one lessons is that again the teacher's addressing the individual and exactly where they're coming from so if i have someone who comes because they're trying to fix their golf game

Starting point is 00:46:04 i use that as a point of departure but i teach the alexander technique i don't teach them a golf swing i teach them how to use themselves in whatever they do like you realized earlier you cook okay you're standing in front of a chopping block what are you doing so and and know that this is not a fast process it is by no means a quick fix so if you are interested in pursuing this know that it's going to take many lessons typically people will ask how many lessons does this take well how many lessons does it take to play the violin it depends on what you want for one and if you're interested so to make real use out of it i suggest people be be open to having at least eight or ten lessons to find out what it's actually about

Starting point is 00:46:53 and then consider it's going to take a while longer but at that point if it's not for them they will have made that decision you know if this is just not what they're looking for that's fine you know but often people will come for probably 20 or 30 lessons I suggest the lessons closer together any Alexander teacher will say this we're dealing with habit the habit of how you stand in front of the sink brushing your teeth you've been doing that a couple times a day since you learned how to do it there's a lot of habits involved so habits pretty strong stuff It's what Frankl refers to also. So to change habit takes, and particularly habit that's infused with sensation,

Starting point is 00:47:40 it takes a frequency more than duration to deal with. So I recommend as many lessons as possible close together. If someone comes to me and says they want to try this and are really into it, can they come once a month, I'll say, you know what, you could do that. But I would suggest save up, save up your resources, find a time when you can come at least once a week for a couple weeks. Once a month, you'll have a nice experience. I would hope that you get a lot out of it. But I would feel like I did you a disservice.

Starting point is 00:48:17 I would say, you know, you really, it would be so much better if you can get it together to come off. An analogy I love for this is by Stephen Covey, where he talks about how to both create and change a habit is like launching a rocket ship. For the rocket to leave the earth requires such a huge amount of fuel, but once it's out of the atmosphere, it uses momentum and it requires very little energy. Perfect. Absolutely perfect analogy. also what i think is extraordinary too is when you talk about and i've experienced this too

Starting point is 00:48:52 in those group courses that we had with john hennis granted it would be on a smaller scale because the group classes does not quite have that same impact but you do experience a difference you play it you change your focus you experience a difference so i think it's so extraordinary to think of the fact that there is a difference there's a different result within a few minutes where i am not a different person with a different set of skills and yet this shows the depth of possibilities that become accessible once you can tap into that and raise your awareness this is crazy absolutely absolutely and in fact you're not a different person you're more of you and and as you say you know i start i had group classes too when i was a beginner in this and i

Starting point is 00:49:41 teach a whole lot of group classes on zoom as well or whatever medium we use on online it's incredibly effective because i think what happens is people's perspective is expanded so you shift the perspective and expand a person with a person their sense of themselves like oh i'm i didn't know i was doing that is often a reaction that people have and it's perfectly fine that's why they're perhaps having an alexander lesson or a violin lesson they came for help they didn't know what was happening and yet now you when you start to open that awareness you realize the depth of the possibility of any individual particularly oneself so you know you do you you truly get to be not somebody different actually you get to be

Starting point is 00:50:33 more of you and i i firmly believe that about the alexander work i know it from my own life experience as well as that of people i work with that's incredible laurie thank you so much for all of this how about a round of rapid fire questions before we wrap the interview okay let's go what skills do you think young musicians studying today should acquire in addition to learning to play their instruments that's quite a question i think listening the ability to listen and i think that training studying musical instruments is a phenomenal way for anyone to learn how to listen um imagine playing chamber music you have to listen to the other people by learning to listen quietly without judgment.

Starting point is 00:51:24 It's a tremendous communicating skill. Do you have a favorite tool in the practice room or maybe one you would recommend students use in the practice room? Yeah, I have two. Is that okay, two? Oh, absolutely. First is an open mind. That one.

Starting point is 00:51:44 And an open spirit, so you're not crushing yourself with judgment before you get involved. And if you're looking for an external device, I think a little video camera of some sort, whether it's through a phone device or a separate video, but video. I love that. How about a favorite book that you'd like to recommend to the listeners? In the realm of education and learning,

Starting point is 00:52:14 one of the ones that I was recently reminded of and recently read myself was Grit by Angela Duckworth. This is not an Alexander book, by the way, but Grit is about the day-to-day deliberate discipline of doing things, if you're inclined to read that kind of work. She also did a TED Talk. It's about six minutes, so you can get a sense of it, Angela Duckworth. um books about the alexander technique the one probably most directly applicable to your listeners would be one called the alexander technique for musicians it's a very sexy title of drawing the audience for sure it's written by um a couple that are in london and they teach at the Royal College of Music, Peter Bacock and Judith Kleinman. And it's a very practical,

Starting point is 00:53:10 very clear book about the Alexander Techniques, specifically as musicians can apply it. They're bass players. They're very knowledgeable. They're wonderful. If you go to the Royal College of Music and find the Alexander Technique in their website, you'll find out about them. And I recommend that book all the time. There's another way more general one, which is also good, called Body Learning by Michael Gelb, which was published. I had like 40 or 50 years ago and he's updated it here and there. You can find that on Amazon. It may not be in publication anymore, but it's still out there.

Starting point is 00:53:57 it's a good general introduction um it's not a how-to book the alexander technique doesn't necessarily lend itself to how-to books quite so easily but the alexander technique for musicians for sure um if you i have a website if you go on there there's some resources listed i'll put that in the show notes for sure and is there a piece of advice that was given to you that you would like to pass on to the listeners? I feel like I have been absorbing so much advice for my whole life. It's hard to know what I think. Yeah, actually. To thine own self be true. So from Shakespeare.

Starting point is 00:54:46 This is great. Yes. Finally, how about a quick actionable tip that the listeners could implement today in their musical lives or in their life in general as we we've already talked about brushing your teeth ask yourself this tell yourself let my neck release let my back lengthen and widen let go and to quote John Hennis who's been a running theme in this let go up oh I love that i love let's not let go and fall in a heap let go up but let go in yourself oh yeah this is

Starting point is 00:55:32 wonderful laurie schiff thank you so much for taking this time to speak with us i feel like i i would like to keep you for two more hours and ask you more questions but i really hope that people look into alexander technique see if this is something that could be helpful for them look into taking taking some lessons and i know that myself i really hope to take some lessons one day um but i'm so grateful for this not only this information that you gave us today but this incredible wisdom in everything that you said i feel like we can start applying it and experience so many new insights already so i'm extremely grateful thank you so much for the opportunity to to talk with you and and your audience out there and um it's just it's been a fun fun chat

Starting point is 00:56:28 and there's one other two-word bit of advice that came it's pretty much the same as the other but be you yes absolutely thank you again so much i really appreciate all this thank you guys so much for listening i hope you enjoyed this conversation with alexander technique super teacher lori schiff and if you did why not spread the word and share with a friend or 10 you think might benefit from lori's insight and knowledge as you've heard me share with lori i've been interested in the Alexander technique for a long time, and this conversation has me more eager than ever to start lessons. With only what she shared with us today, I feel such a renewed sense of awareness in terms of how I use my body, even in the most simple of activities. And that's no

Starting point is 00:57:31 surprise, it feels incredible in the practice room. As part of the deep practice model, which is the method I use with my students and my coaching clients, one of my favorite question is, what else? What else can I see? What else can I hear? What else can I try? And I think that my new favorite question will be, is this necessary? Is this tension necessary? Is this movement necessary? This posture? Is it helpful? So I hope this episode has been of value to you. And I would love to know what your favorite takeaways from today's conversation were. So get in touch with me. I'm mindoverfinger on both Instagram and Facebook and share your thoughts on those topics.

Starting point is 00:58:19 As always, I have all the information related to this episode in the show notes for you, including Lori's bio and website. You can find them via your podcast app or by visiting mindoverfinger.com slash podcast. and while you're on the website you can find more information about mindful efficient practice and performance preparation download my guide to an exceptionally productive practice and all the details on how to work with me finally i hope to see you in the mind over finger tribe that's my private facebook group where i pop in live to talk about mindful practice and answer your questions it's a great community and you can find it at facebook.com slash groups slash mind over finger

Starting point is 00:59:05 tried so that's it for today again thank you and a bientot

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 080 Lori Schiff: The Alexander Technique - At Home with Yourself

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