When you learn the Alexander Technique you’ll enjoy a wider range of movement, better balance, and boost your performance in whatever you do in life. You’ll feel more confidence and calm. With practice of this technique you’ll learn how to prevent habitual patterns of co-contractions that tend to create a harmful use of ourselves (bad habits).
What does this mean?
It means it’s not a therapy as such. It’s not something done to you. You are an active participant in the session. You learn through the experience of been guided in movement. The teacher will help you to improve your posture by specific manipulations, and you’ll collaborate with your attitude, attention and following instructions. In this sense it’s closer to an individual dance class or a sport coaching than a massage.
Even so, the lessons has therapeutic consequences:
It’s hard to say when exactly these benefits will take place as everybody is different, but most people feel a definite improvement within the first few lessons. Of course, the more you practise, the more benefit you’ll get.
What are those “bad habits”?
The “bad habits” we try to prevent are habits of movement, posture and of “use”. The way we use ourselves is going to determine how we tend to react to any stimulus around us.
For example, if we hold a lot of muscular tension, we are going to be more prone to react faster and be more anxious than if we hold ourselves with ease. We would be generally calmer and would react more appropriately. The opposite case would be to do everything with an excessive relaxation of the muscles. We become lethargic and our reactions would be too slow or inexistent.
We need to find a middle ground were we can hold ourselves with ease and proper tone, with stability but without fixation, with freedom but with coordination. This is what we learn in AT lessons. We learn to control our “use” because we want to improve our general state, so that we become, in our thoughts and actions, more awake and attentive with the minimum effort.
Awareness of our use and the possibility to improve it by ourselves give us another level of joy in our daily activities. We are an active part on our health recovery and our improvement in our performance. We become more confidence, responsible and proud of ourselves.
Start enjoying your daily activities from another level.
Hello. I’m Marietta Simarro. I was an accountant, although at the same time I was chasing the dream of becoming an actress when I came across the Alexander Technique. The Alexander Technique turned to be such an essential tool to perform drama that I decided to become a teacher to grasp its full potential. Soon the tool to pursued my dream became the dream itself.
I’ve started in 2003 by having private lessons weekly for two years with Rafa Navarro in Madrid. I was training as an actress in Teatro Guindalera and obtained my diploma in 2005. Then I trained as an Alexander Teacher in London at the Constructive Teaching Centre (CTC), Walter and Dilys Carrington’s school, with excellent teachers: Dilys Carrington, Ruth Murray, Alan Philips, Beryl Tollady and John Brown, among others. It is an STAT-approved Teacher Training Course. The training course consists on 3 years, full time (5 days a week, 3 hours per day), 1,600 hours in total, mostly practical with a great number of teachers per student with plenty of individual work.
After I graduated in 2009, I did a teaching term at CTC, and worked at LAMDA and ArtsED. In 2010 I returned to my birth place, Madrid, and completed a 1,000 hours postgraduate with Andrea Beesley. I continued learning by visiting yearly CTC and having lessons with senior teachers: Elisabeth Walker, Paul Berge, Thomas Pope, John Nicholls, among others, and regularly with Simon Fitzgibbon. I also usually assist to continuing learning workshops run by Ted Dimon and Steven Shaw among others at the International Alexander Technique Congresses.
I run two seminaries for the official Madrid centre for the training of teachers CTIF (Territorial Centre of Innovation and Training, Comunidad de Madrid), “The Alexander Technique applied to teaching at the conservatoire classroom” (12 hours each) for music teachers at Amaniel, Professional Conservatoire of Music in Madrid, in the courses of 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. I run my private practice and worked at Simon Fitzgibbon’s school, El Mono y el Madroño, between 2011-2015.
I moved to Sydney in 2016 and since then I work as the main assistant in Simon Fitzgibbon’s school, City Sydney Alexander Technique, and maintain a private practice in Darlinghurst.
I am a member of ATE, Alexander Technique Education association and AUSTAT, the Australian association of Alexander Technique Teachers.
HOW IS A LESSON?
The lesson may start with either chair work or table work. Table work consist on lying down on a table with books under the head and the knees pointing to the ceiling, while the teacher works very gently moving the legs, arms and head. Chair work consists on exploring the dynamic positions when sitting and standing. We exercise the spine through gentle movements with less co-contraccions, better balance, more freedom, and lightness. We use positions that have a mechanical advantage, more ergonomic, to deal with the pull of the force of gravity. Because sitting in a chair is an activity that we practice everyday, both as a resting position and as an active position when we do other things, you can put into practice what you learn from the first lesson.
WHAT DO I NEED TO WEAR?
Comfortable clothes when possible, and please bring extra socks.
HOW MANY LESSONS?
You don’t need to commit to any number of lessons. It is recommended a minimum of 20 lessons, but it is up to you. People enjoy having lessons for years because they keep learning and improving. It depends on their own goals.
HOW OFTEN?
It is recommended when possible to have three lessons per week the first two months, and then reduce it to one per week. As people are normally very busy even with just one lesson per week has an steady improvement in the student. Less than that it is also worth it.
One-to-one lessons is the best way to learn, no matter what your level is or how much experience you have.
Introductory workshops can be provided either for the general public or for specific groups: musicians, actors, singers, etc.
Small groups of two or three people are available for trainees and teachers that want to practice hands-on work.
Only as an exception, when someone has serious mobility problems can be arranged.
My teaching is in the tradition of F.M. Alexander’s teacher training course (1931-1955), which was continued by Walter Carrington and others (Peggy Williams and Irene Stewart) when F.M. died in 1955, and the school was named Constructive Teaching Centre in 1960. Walter Carrington was qualified in 1939 and continue to work at FM’s school until 1955. I trained in that school and all the remarkable teachers that has had an impact on my teaching come from that school directly or indirectly: Andrea Beesley, Simon Fitzgibbon, John Brown, Ruth Murray, Alan Philps, Chris Sargent, among others.
Per lesson
Per lesson
Per 10 lessons
Open Mondays to Saturdays. Flexible hours.
1/1 Frazier Close, Liberty Grove, NSW, 2138
