Postgraduate Refresher Courses

Postgraduate workshops dates and courses

Post Graduate study on the training course.

We welcome teachers who would like to deepen their study or refresh their skills by spending time on the training course. We will tailor the course to your needs.

We now offer regular postgraduate workshops that encourage you to continue your Alexander Technique journey in a supported environment. Each workshop includes hands on work from Carolyn and Francesca, demonstrations and opportunities for you to explore procedures and discussions. We will dip in and out of F.M’s books (and other AT writers) to offer insight in to our work. Our underlying theme is always observing our own use, and translating that into our work as teachers.

Annual Postgraduate Autumn Refresher with Carolyn Nicholls and Ron Colyer Sept 2020  (date tab) £275.00, includes a private lesson. 

Come and join us for our annual autumn course. This course runs over a 4 day period and has become a much loved with people coming year after year. We run a very practical course, featuring lots of hands on work and our ever-deepening thinking about the technique, how to teach it and how to use your hands skillfully.It includes a private lesson with either Ron or Carolyn. As always our themes is your use, your hands, your teaching. Questions always welcome. To book a place email: carolyn.nicholls@me.com Please do tell any interested friends!

Past workshops have included the following themes and can be taken in small hands on groups of 2-4 teachers with Carolyn at times to suit you.

Theme 1. Your Inner Spring. Dynamic opposition and the spiral web of muscles

In these workshops we will examine procedures that highlight and improve our own use and take them into practical teaching aids. We will explore our springy nature in stillness and movement and how this informs our hands as teachers.

We will examine our classic procedures in the light of our mobile spiral nature, and how we can use different depths of contact with our hands. Procedures include a sideways look at Hands on the Back of the Chair, why it is so effective and how spirals can inform both our own released and unraveling process and our teaching. We will apply these experiences to our pupils.

Theme 2. A delicate exploration of how we can create opposition between our hands and our pupil’s body and how we can use this to encourage springy release. We will look at how the use of our whole body and the use of individual fingers in teaching can stimulate significant releases and understanding in our pupils. Three CPD hours per workshop.

Theme 3. Working with hyper-mobility and chronic pain. What to do and what not to do with a hyper-mobile pupil and how to help them manage pain and balance issues.

 

Small ‘Hands-on’ groups

My favourite way of working with teachers is in small hands on groups of 2-4 teachers. So I am now opening up these popular sessions to more teachers. It’s a chance to work in a focused way on the use of your hands in teaching and usually includes working on each other using the ‘classical’ way of taking a pupil in or out of a chair, with one hand on the occiput and the other under the chin.

This is ultimately quite a difficult thing to do really well, but has within it all the subtlety and power you need to generate in your hands from your entire body.

The way I teach this is a culmination of having been additionally trained in this skill by Dilys Carrington and my own 30 years of experience of both teaching and training students. I come to this as a thorough but simple way that engages your full attention. You can read more about my work here:

http://www.blurb.co.uk/b/5204664-alexander-technique-workbooks-1-hands-on-the-back

http://www.blurb.co.uk/b/4484450-notes-on-the-work-of-dilys-carrington

I am happy to work with whatever you would like to study, maybe lifting a leg or working with a challenging pupil, you can even bring the pupil if you wish.