Our world has a lot of noise. At first, this sentence might seem to have a negative connotation. We want to stop the noise, avoid it, or escape it. Who hasn’t dreamed of peaceful quietude at some point in their lives? But there is something to be said for learning how to embrace the noise. Learning how to differentiate between sounds, how to pay attention. Once you begin to do this, the cacophony of the world becomes a little less overwhelming, and a little more approachable.
I was lost at the beginning of this pandemic. With all singing gigs cancelled, being forced to teach online, and then moving to a new city, I felt completely out of my element. Many of the in-person connections I valued felt less than satisfying when I attempted them over zoom. After months of feeling like a failure, I reached out to my former classmate to catch up… or she reached out to me? Hard to remember, but I’m glad it happened.
Through our conversation, Alexandra and I decided that we wanted to collaborate on a project. We had always worked well together on our teacher-training course, and we were having similar experiences as new teachers during the pandemic. We wanted a way to share our knowledge of the Alexander Technique with a larger network, and we wanted to still feel like teachers, even when teaching in-person was limited. Because we had each practiced listening to our own inner voice, we were able to come together to create something that met our own needs, and something that could benefit others, precisely at a time when we both needed a colleague to connect with.
It is wonderful to look back at the end of this year to see the body of work we have created together. We now have twenty lie-down talks that are available to listeners, and twenty newsletters in which we reflect upon the Alexander Technique and its role in our lives. And there is more to come! We are currently working on a website, and plan to continue our collaboration in the new year.
We are grateful to you, our readers, for welcoming the Alexander Technique into your own lives, and for giving us an audience to share our ideas with. You can look forward to new material after we take a short break. Please reach out to us if there is anything you would like to hear more about, we welcome your feedback. We hope that through these lie-downs, you have expanded your idea of what it means to listen to yourself. We have learned so much through this process.
Kateri & Alexandra
