Sit Up and Listen!

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Before I went to train to become an Alexander technique teacher, I was gifted a trip to Paris to meet and work with Professor Alfred Tomatis. He was an ear, nose and throat surgeon who was the first to devise a method of stimulating the brain with the use of the music of Mozart. Later to be dubbed by one of his students ‘the Mozart effect’.

I was lucky enough to attend a weeks singing course with him, and only a few years later did I really fully understand what I had been taught in that time. Tomatis would speak about ‘the listening posture’ (in French of course), referring to the connection between the head, neck and back. He claimed that the ears did not function, were not listening as long as the connection between all of the above was broken. A few years later I was again overseas training to become an Alexander teacher and the basis of FM Alexander’s principle is the connection between the head, neck and back. He called it ‘the primary control’. He, Alexander, claimed that when the primary control went out of alignment the rest of the body changed shape. Think of all those children slumped over their desks at school, and the very poor posture many of the children keep, particularly while sitting at their desks at school, exactly where we want them to be listening. As it happens, there are a number of reasons why children don’t listen, however I feel strongly that the body alignment is certainly an important factor that is often overlooked. I have seen many children and adults with low muscle tone, a condition when the back of the body is over tightened, creating a body that looks like a question mark. A number of those people also had trouble with their listening skills. As a joke, the only one it really worked for was a politician.

Anyway, I digress, my point I was making today is that listening, and keeping one’s ears open has to do with what is happening in the body alignment. We all know children who this may apply to however, adults too, through poor posture may not be listening.

Step lightly, be spritely. www.alextechnz.com