Alexander Technique
Essential, effective education for ease in every situation. The embodied mindfulness practices learned in study of the Alexander Technique help us choose free and easy movement with a centered and resilient state of being, whether in music, in work, in daily life, or in play.
What is The Alexander Technique?
The Alexander Technique is practical, embodied mindfulness for your daily life. Through study of the Alexander Technique, you learn skills for improved posture, more freedom of movement, and reduced tension and strain. You learn practices to bring calm, centered attention to each activity, fostering emotional resilience and personal growth. You learn about your habitual responses — from the way you sit in a chair (which could contribute to pain) to how you deal with difficult news (which could lead to stress) — and discover processes that allow you to stop the cycle of habit from governing your life. You make connections within yourself, between yourself and your environment, and with the world around you. You open to the possibility of lasting transformation at all levels.
How can the Alexander Technique help me?
For more than a century, performers (musicians, actors, dancers) have studied the Alexander Technique to support healthy performance, and have learned skills that facilitate growth in artistry, freedom, and creativity. People with chronic pain — or who are recovering from performance-related injuries — may find in the Alexander Technique a way of moving, thinking, and being that reduces incidence of pain and strain and offers a return to buoyancy and poise.
The Alexander Technique can benefit those living with Parkinson’s, offering them tools for attention and awareness that bring more balance and grace to movement. This work also supports caregivers, parents, busy professionals, educators, activists, or anyone who needs a concrete and practical form of self-care to take into the bustle of daily life.
Schedule a Lesson
Individual lessons (in-person or online) provide an opportunity for focused attention that leads to deep and lasting change. Since each of us has our own habits, which are unique to us (our bodies, our work, and our personalities), the safe and supportive environment of an individual Alexander Technique lesson with Meagan gives you support to learn about yourself with expert guidance. Both lesson formats utilize, simple, everyday activities as a real-life laboratory to learn about our habits. During in-person lessons, Meagan provides gentle, hands-on and verbal instruction, to help you learn new ways of moving and being. During online lessons, verbal instruction gives you the opportunity to learn concretely how your mind and body work together in movement, and how changes in thinking and attention have a direct impact on your body. Whatever the format, Alexander Technique lessons are a way to discover more about yourself, to make connections, to open the door to your own transformation.
Schedule a lesson directly online or contact Meagan to learn how study of the Alexander Technique may benefit you.
Group classes, offered from time to time, provide a fun and collaborative space for self-discovery. Check out the current schedule of public classes below, or contact Meagan to organize a class for your community.
Current Schedule of Classes
Are you a studio music teacher, private lesson instructor, or other educator who works individually or in small groups with musicians? I have a class coming up JUST FOR YOU!
Read more or register today! Please contact me with questions.
If you are interested in group learning opportunities and this doesn’t feel like the right one for you, please reach out! We may be able to put together a class to meet your interests and needs.
What People Are Saying
Plagued by a combination of artistic frustration and back pain, and with the endorsement of Alexander Technique from some of the country’s most respected musicians, I decided to reach out to Meagan Johnson for help. It was one of the best decisions I’ve made. I realize now that I had forgotten what progress looks like. I have been making steady and pronounced improvement. My back pain improved quickly and I am particularly excited about my musical growth. I have gained skills of self-awareness of the habits which get in my way. If you have a problem and you think you understand it, but you still have the problem, you do not understand it. Investigate differently. I am 40 years old now, and I only wish I had done this earlier in life.”
Patrick Dalton-Holmes,
violinist, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra
Peter Jacobson,
Founder, Total Vocal Freedom
Meagan can meet you wherever your technology can take you, and gives helpful advice and cues in any and all situations. She has watched me play at the keyboard, pick up books, wash dishes, and we even made pie dough and pasta with my tablet against the end of the kitchen wall. Doing these ‘mundane’ kitchen activities really helped me to bring Alexander Technique into my daily life.
I haven’t altered all my habits in my twenty lessons with Meagan. I have, however, created an incredibly strong base to continue to move with freedom and ease no matter the circumstance, and am incredibly thankful for the intensive lessons and experience.
John Allegar,
DMA, August 2020
Ready? Contact meagan
Further Reading on
The Alexander Technique
The Goggles of Habit
Let's say that one day, you were doing something that required goggles: perhaps painting, woodworking, swimming, or officiating a Nerf battle (yes, this is a real example from my life!) And let's say that after the activity was over, you didn't take your goggles off....
Alexander Technique: A Foundational Practice
In my professional life, I’ve been privileged to work in a number of different fields. I teach the Alexander Technique to individuals and groups, I direct a choir, I teach voice, and I’ve done all of those in a range of settings. However, in every one of those...
You Can Never Hold Back Spring
Earlier this year, I had the wonderful privilege of presenting at the Midwest American Choral Directors Association conference, with “Process, Poise, Presence: Tools from the Alexander Technique for Wellbeing in Music and Daily Life.” Teaching Alexander Technique to...