Transcription of Judith Cornell for the show Finding Voice, #98
Dr. Lisa I’m sitting across the microphone from Judith Cornell who is a certified Alexander Technique teacher here in South Portland, Maine. She handed me a brochure. The front of which says, “Change involved carrying out an activity against the habit of life.” It’s a quote from F. Matthias Alexander.
This is very appropriate for our radio show because we’re often talking about change. We’re talking about how one changes. It really is about trying to figure out how to go against things that you’ve been so habitually doing over time.
Judith: That’s right. Alexander Technique is one means of accessing change, not the only way you can do it. It’s absolutely fascinating if you find you enjoy finding more out about yourself, how you handle your daily activities whatever they are. If you have run up against problems, physical pain, or debilitating conditions in the body, how you happen to get that way.
Alexander is a means of improving how you handle your body. How you move, how you react to everything that’s around you; a means toward change, a means of achieving balance and pose.
Dr. Lisa: Why did you become interested in the Alexander Technique yourself? I know that you have a background actually as a singer.
Judith: I’m a musician, a classically-trained soprano. Alexander himself was an actor from Tasmania, an island off of Australia. The Alexander Technique has been known, it’s a hundred years old and been known primarily to performing artists as a means of helping them get out of their own way when they do their art.
The world is full of singers who try too hard and get tight and sound like chickens or a violinist with tight shoulders and who have to give up playing because of the pain. I heard about Alexander through singing circles, people who had tried it. A former teacher of mine, a voice teacher who is very much in favor of Alexander work. I was very curious but there were not teachers in Maine.
I succeeded in getting a teacher to come up from New York and give a workshop at Bowdoin where I was teaching voice. I found it a startling experience. One, I didn’t know what it was exactly but to find in the middle of a workweek when you’re really tired that someone can help you to float as you walk down the hallway for example or get out of a chair really easily was fascinating.
Later on, I decided to train as an Alexander Technique teacher. It’s a three-year teacher training program. The nearest one was in Cambridge, Mass. I went there for three years and trained and started teaching back here in Portland in 1992.
Dr. Lisa: As I’m talking with you, I’m noticing that you do have a very open posture. We ask people to come into the studio and sit on these high stools in front of a microphone. It’s not always easiest thing to do. You somehow manage to relax your shoulders back and your hips are a little open. You just have this very comfortable feel about you.
Judith: Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: Does these have something to do with the work that you’re trying to get others involved in?
Judith: Everything because as teachers, one reason for studying for three years is that we have good enough use of ourselves so that we can be a good example to a student. Most Alexander work is done with one student and the teacher. It’s hands-on in a very gentle way to guide and to listen with your hands to ascertain where areas of tension might be in the student.
We want to transmit from our bodies to the student ease, releasing, lengthening and widening so it’s easier for the student to start experiencing that. Alexander Technique is experiential in the sense that if you go to a teacher planning on a series of lessons so that you can start to get a little bit of an idea of what it’s about and you felt something’s changing in yourself.
Dr. Lisa: What about this idea that people get tighter because they think it’s going to help them be more efficient and more effective. What it really does is just you said the chicken voice. It causes the singers to sound like chicken. Why do you think people get tighter in an effort to get better but then it doesn’t help?
Judith: Because the mind and the body are one and whatever you’re thinking for example, I was a singer for many years. If I looked out in their woes, not a competitor but a fellow artist in the first row, it can make you start thinking, “Gee, I better be good because so and so is watching.” It tends to make us try too hard and tense the body.
We also go away from how were things going with me, how does it feel for me to “I wonder what they’re thinking about me.” It causes a lot of trouble for performing artist. You have to stay with yourself and your best balance and ease as you go along.
Dr. Lisa: Artists tend to be very sensitive. I worked with a lot of artists of various sorts, singers and musicians. The people who are best at art are also very tuned in to their environments and thus very tuned in to the people around them. Isn’t that somewhat of a challenge if you’re a performer and you’re tuned in to your audience but at the same time your audience can come back and impact you not always on a positive way? Isn’t that somewhat of a challenge?
Judith: Yes, it is the challenge. It is the challenge. It’s difficult to be a performing artist and to stay steady within yourself. Regardless of what happens out in the audience, the reaction or people or somebody gets up and leaves, whatever it might be, you are not distracted by that but you’re able to stay with yourself. If you’re a singer, you have to keep breathing. You’ll have to keep loose around your vocal mechanism so it’s working well.
Dr. Lisa: Do people begin to feel inhibited at times? Do they start to … the idea would be something like a writer’s block but for singers. Is there an equivalent there?
Judith: Singers are very, very … I taught voice for 30 years. Being a singer all of that time have a lot of ways of self-defeating. Daring to get up with a lot people staring at you and to be free and loose enough so that your instrument works is a big challenge. Running through lists of instructions in your mind rather than being able to breathe, be balanced and just let the song come through you and to your audience.
It’s wonderful when it happens. It takes a lot of time and experience for that to start to happen. A lot of singers do take Alexander work as one means of trying to get toward that goal.
Dr. Lisa: Isn’t that an interesting oxymoron, I guess is the word I’m looking for that you have somebody who wants to be a performer and yet they have all these self-defeating thoughts. You simultaneously want to put yourself out there but are afraid of putting yourselves out there.
Judith: We’re an insecure bunch of people. Artists tend to be that way; very self-critical. There are some very great performers who have been physically ill off-stage before they come on to sing. It seems startling to the fans to know that but it’s true.
Dr. Lisa: What are some of the things when you were … You used to work at Bowdoin Bates and …
Judith: Colby.
Dr. Lisa: Colby with the music department and as an instructor …
Judith: Of singing.
Dr. Lisa: Of singing. You’ve done that. You’ve been a singer yourself. Now you have your own private practice. What are some of the things that people tend to come to you with as complaints?
Judith: Pain, something in the workplace that feels uncomfortable that’s giving them problems. It doesn’t have to be carpal tunnel but things like sitting at computers for long periods of time, neck and shoulder and arm discomfort. People who are recovering from surgery, performing artists, cases like that. Most of my students have been performers or people who had pain already. Perhaps had tried a lot of other modalities and hadn’t been helped.
Our work is to examine why do you happen to use your neck, shoulders and arms too much and cause them eventually to start talking to you and hurting. If you can identify, recognize and then change that habit, you go about your life differently.
Dr. Lisa: Are there emotional and intellectual reasons why people or social reasons why people can start to do things physically that really don’t work for them in a larger way?
Judith: Sure. That’s probably how we operate. Expectations of ourselves, what we imagine other people want from us and in our society, we’re very goal-oriented. We’re not process-oriented. We’re leaving our brains thinking, “Oh, I’ve got a deadline,” or “I’m late,” or “Somebody expects something of me and I have to deliver it.” It makes tension. Whatever you think in your mind goes into the musculature of the body and into the other systems of the body.
Dr. Lisa: Does some of what you are working on have to do with helping people understand what’s going on with them emotionally? Do you just work …?
Judith: It’s all one, emotion and body is the same thing. It can be an emotional release to free the body. I had the case of somebody who had been a dancer earlier in his life had had injury which then precluded his dancing anymore, lower back injury. We were just having him walk up and down my studio.
He went down in one direction and he said, “I’m so happy.” I said, “Good. Why is that?” He said, “I don’t know.” It’s just the feeling that came over me feeling of freedom and able to move without the pain I was used to experiencing before.” It made him happy. The emotion came.
Dr. Lisa: I understand that in the Alexander Technique there is a concept called End Gaining.
Judith: Yes, there is. It is what we were just talking about when your attention is not on what’s happening right now but on the prize. In other words, what you have to achieve down the road. You’re thinking of the end of your endeavors rather than how am I going to get there in the best possible way so that whatever the end might be, it’s going to be successful.
We call End Gaining that tendency which everybody has. Changing that focus to the means whereby which is, “How am I sitting on this stool? How am I talking? How am I breathing? How am I interacting with you?”
Dr. Lisa: It strikes me that this is very similar to the idea of mindfulness and being fully present.
Judith: Yeah, it is.
Dr. Lisa: You offer in addition to the idea of mindfulness, which I think a lot people understand the concept. You actually offer physical ways of achieving that.
Judith: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: Describe to me some of the ways that you might work with someone who is having a hard time with doing anything other than End Gaining.
Judith: We work on every day movement. If someone were to come for the first time and I would explain a little bit and answer some questions. Perhaps work on something like being seated in a chair and what are you noticing about that. It’s an everyday thing you do constantly. Bringing your attention back to what your body is doing to allow you to balance in an easy way without tension. You don’t slump. You don’t have your head falling forward. You don’t close the front of your body with your arms.
We try something a little bit different. I keep bringing their attention back to how it’s feeling, asking them what they’re noticing. Most people notice a little something not necessarily everyone. You take increments.
Dr. Lisa: What about vocalizing? Do you ever have people do anything with vocalizing and getting back to the deeper breathing?
Judith: Breathing is very important part of lessening tension in the body. Holding and compressing the body happens if we hold our breath. If we’re anxious, anticipating something bad is going to happen, it’s a defense mechanism but it’s nice if it’s not there all the time.
If we have a tough job and we find we’re holding our breath all day, this is bad. Examining breathing, how people it. If it can be loosened and opened up a little bit, let the body occupy all the space it’s entitled to not to be pulled in and down.
Dr. Lisa: This occupying of space is very interesting because there are many people who walk around believing that maybe they’re not worthy of occupying space. Do you find that that is true?
Judith: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: Give me an example that someone that you’ve worked with before that you have the sense they really didn’t feel as if they deserve to be out in the world occupying the space that they were meant to occupy.
Judith: I had an older lady who was a very hardworking employee of a college. She had a lot of responsibility and deadlines and pressure. They would be worse when there an event coming up. She is in-charge of details. I know she had neck and shoulder tension. I can’t now remember if it was also headaches, may have been. Grinding of teeth, it certainly could have been. Very nice person, an older person from a different generation.
She asks if what I did might be helpful. I said, “It definitely would if it suits you. Please come and let’s find out.” She came over. We had a series of lessons, perhaps four or five. I was happy. She seemed happy. She finally told me, “I don’t think I’m going to continue because I don’t feel justified in spending this much time on myself,” which set me back a little bit.
I did not say, “But of course you deserve to,” because it was her beliefs. That was something that she’d formulated her life around. I felt sorry for that. I said, “Well, please feel free to come back if you’d like to.”
Dr. Lisa: Could that also apply to people who are perhaps have either truly been victimized or perceived themselves to have been victimized?
Judith: Physically?
Dr. Lisa: Physically or emotionally or otherwise.
Judith: Yes. Those emotions can come up if it’s something that has been held down or ignored. I can think of some examples during my training course where there were a group of us meeting everyday. We got to know one another well. Some of the younger women I remember had periods of crying because they could remember as they were trying to let go of holding and protection in their bodies where that habit had begun. In other words, it went back to unfortunate circumstances.
Dr. Lisa: What about the idea of shame and people who perhaps they have been in the situation where something has gone wrong and they felt deeply embarrassed or deeply ashamed. Even if it’s something they haven’t done wrong but other people have accused them of something. Does this tends to cause people to be inhibited in themselves?
Judith: Yes, because all of that is kept in the body; in the same sense that a physical injury if you’ve had whiplash, your neck will remember that. If I put my hand on the neck of somebody who’s complaining of whiplash, you can feel the rigidity in the musculature there.
Helping that person to dare let go in a safe environment where they trust their teacher can be very beneficial if they choose to do it. Of course, they have to decide to do that.
What we are going for I would like to share with our students is how the body itself is wonderfully designed, works beautifully. We all as children sat, ran, squatted, did somersaults with no pain or discomfort. Life teaches us habits not all of them good ones. If we can shed some of those, we come closer to the ease and freedom that we had when we were younger. It’s a wonderful feeling.
Dr. Lisa: You have a practice in South Portland.
Judith: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: You said you’ve treated things from carpal tunnel to pain to other various constrictions.
Judith: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: People who are listening right now, what types of things might they stick you out for in addition to those?
Judith: I’ve worked with speakers. I have worked with students who sign for the deaf, where there is tension involved in the arms and shoulders from that profession which has a lot of involvement from the hands and arms. I’ve worked with all sorts of musicians, guitarists, cellist, flute players, violinist, a little bit of everything really. I’ve been teaching since 1992 in the Portland area. I’m the only teacher in Maine.
Dr. Lisa: How can people find you?
Judith: My telephone number 772-1984. You can also access online Alexander Technique. There is a directory of teachers from our professional organization that’s online.
Dr. Lisa: You have something that you would like to read to us.
Judith: I thought I could read something that seems very clear and precise. We are designed for movement whether we are dancing, hammering a nail, working at a computer, singing a song or walking to the store. We possess and inherit capacity to move naturally. Naturalness encourages ease, flexibility, power and expressiveness.
Unwittingly, we often interfere with this design. Energy, delight and grace give way to effort, tension and fatigue. The Alexander Technique gives us a working knowledge of the principles which govern human coordination. The Alexander Technique can imbue our lives with time, appreciation and significance.
Dr. Lisa: Judith, thank you for coming in and speaking with me and with all of us who are listening today. I’ve been speaking with Judith Cornell, who is a certified Alexander Technique teacher and instructor to many artists, musicians and people around the State of Maine. Thank you for all the work you’re doing and for talking to us today.
Judith: My pleasure, Lisa. Thank you.