Lecturer II in Music, Theatre & Dance, School of Music, Theatre & Dance
Alexander Technique: Balanced Posture for Ease and Comfort
What You'll Learn
- Organize the head, neck, and spine to promote spinal length and fluid movement and improve your relationship to the ground.
- Understand the mental processes behind a new way of inhabiting your body, creating a newfound sense of lightness and freedom in all your movements.
- Combat stress, anxiety, and discomfort using a different approach to breathing than what you've likely been taught.
5 Modules
10 Hours
2 hrs per module (approx.)
Rating
About Alexander Technique: Balanced Posture for Ease and Comfort
Many of us spend our days sitting at a desk, looking down at our phones, or moving in ways that cause significant discomfort for our bodies. In the Alexander Technique: Balanced Posture for Ease and Comfort, explore how this novel approach to your body’s organization and coordinated movement can help relieve pain and tension, promote calm, improve sleep, and allow you to breathe fully and easily without effort.
The Alexander Technique has been taught for more than 100 years to help artists, musicians, and actors improve their craft, but this method can help anyone examine our body's natural movements and readjust based on the wears and tears of everyday life. Through verbal instructions, graphics, videos, and demonstrations, you’ll learn to better align with our body's natural movements.
By the end of this course, you will be thinking of your relationship to your body and its movements in an entirely new – and more comfortable – way.
Skills You'll Gain
- Health Education
- Workplace Wellness
What You'll Earn
- Certificate of Completion:
- Certificates of completion acknowledge knowledge acquired upon completion of a non-credit course or program.
Welcome Message
Welcome to Alexander Technique: Balanced Posture for Ease and Comfort, a course introducing a mindful approach to posture, movement, and balance. You will learn how awareness of body alignment and thought patterns can reduce tension and support ease in daily activities such as sitting, standing, breathing, and walking. The course emphasizes practical exploration and improved mind–body coordination.
This abbreviated syllabus description was created with the help of AI tools and reviewed by staff. The full syllabus is available to those who enroll in the course.
Course Schedule
Module 1: Looking at the Mind Body Relationship
- Reading: Course Syllabus
- Reading: Help Us Learn About You
- Reading: Weekly Slide Decks
- Video: Introduction and History
- Video: The Brain Creates Habits
- Discussion Prompt: Module 1 Discussion
- Video: Using a Different Part of our Brain
- Video: F.M. Alexander and His Story
- Reading: Module 1 Reading Summary
- Graded: Week 1 Assessment
Module 2: Head-Neck-Back Relationship While Sitting
- Reading: Weekly Slide Decks
- Video: The Lie-Down
- Video: Body Mapping/Head Balance
- Video: Sitting Bones Rock
- Video: The Basic Pivot Seated
- Reading: Module 2 Reading Summary
- Discussion Prompt: Module 2 Discussion
- Graded: Module 2 Assessment
Module 3: From Sitting to Standing
- Reading: Weekly Slide Decks
- Video: Using Props
- Video: Faulty Sensory Awareness and Inhibition
- Video: Standing to Bouncing
- Video: Standing to Sitting
- Discussion Prompt: Week 3 Discussion
- Reading: Module 3 Reading Summary
- Graded: Module 3 Assessment
Module 4: The Strength of the Torso
- Reading: Weekly Slide Decks
- Video: Picking up Something off the Floor
- Video: Suspension and Widening
- Discussion Prompt: Module 4 Discussion
- Video: The Use of the Arms from the Torso
- Video: The Four Movements of the Spine
- Reading: Module 4 Reading Summary Part 1
- Reading: Module 4 Reading Summary Part 2
- Reading: Module 4 Reading Summary Part 3
- Graded: Module 4 Assessment
Module 5: Calming the Nervous System With Breath
- Reading: Weekly Slide Decks
- Video: The Biology of Stress
- Video: The Anatomy of Breathing
- Video: The Controlled Exhale
- Video: Walking to Restore the Natural Breath
- Reading: The Art of Breathing
- Discussion Prompt: Module 5 Discussion
- Graded: Module 5 Assessment
- Reading: Course Attributions
- Reading: Alexander Technique Resources
Grading Policy
Learners must complete all graded assessments and earn an overall score of 80% to pass. There are five assessments in this course, and each is worth 20% of your final grade.
Course content developed by U-M faculty and managed by the university. Faculty titles and affiliations are updated periodically.
Beginner Level
This class is for everybody.
What Learners Are Saying
Awareness of the breath is one of the best tools to help calm our nervous systems when we feel under threat, and Alexander Technique provides a very specific way to do that.
Michelle Obrecht Alexander Technique Lecturer, University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance
