Who was Alexander?
F.M. Alexander (1869-1955) was a reciter of Shakespeare who repeatedly struggled with vocal loss, but he wasn’t sick and he didn't have any physiological abnormalities. Why then was he losing his voice?
No one, doctors and medical men alike, could provide him with a satisfactory answer as to why this was happening, so he eventually took matters into his own hands. Thus the Alexander Technique was created! Through careful observation he indentified and addressed habits of movement and posture that were holding him back from reaching his full potential.
In essence, he discovered that he was causing his own problems. All we have to do is unlearn and undo what's already holding us back.
Who is Joe Schaefer?
I'm a musician who lost the ability to play the upright bass. Why? It’s not that I was lazy or that I wasn’t trying hard enough. Try practicing 6 hours a day!
Just like F.M. I found I was causing a lot my own problems by doing too much. I was holding my breath because I was nervous of being on stage and I was overfocusing because I was terrified of making a mistake. I worried too much about the music and not enough about my body and it eventually caught up with me.
After suffering from two elbow surgeries I was introduced to the Alexander Technique. Right away I could see that I wasn't helping myself out in any way, shape, or form. A lot of my own issues were from how I was using, or rather misusing, my body. Thanks to the Alexander Technique I'm back to playing and making music with RIVERS.
Joe Schaefer is AmSAT-certified and completed his training with Baltimore's AT Mid-Atlantic in 2015. He trained with Nancy Romita and Wendy Salkind and has worked with Robert Bedford, Jerri-Lynn Pilarski, Mary Hamlin-Spencer, Sarah Ittmann Leite, Wen Pickering, Brooke Lieb, and Malcolm Balk.