We have appreciated and benefited from your teaching so much it is difficult to express. We feel transformed in our body awareness and physical comfort. Both of us have significantly less pain in our backs and necks than before we started studying with you.
It feels like the depth of the teaching and learning was so profound it will stay with us for the rest of our lives.
You are providing a great service to people, helping relieve pain and increasing awareness.
Thank you very much for all your gifts.
Howard Schechter, Ph. D and Barbara Lee
Lisa’s love of the Alexander technique shines in every lesson she gives. She has a deep of understanding of alignment, balance and grace of movement, and is gifted in sharing her knowledge and experience with her students. She is focused, sensitive, caring and passionate about her work – an excellent Alexander teacher.
Maureen Manley, Orthopedic Body Worker
I just wanted to thank you for changing my life for the better. Your teaching of the Alexander Technique is better and more practical than anything else I have ever taken before for my overall well-being.
The Technique has given me a new confidence, peace, passion and control over my body and thus my life. My overall mood is more positive and energetic but at the same time more controlled and at peace. I don’t seem to be so anxious or obsessed about having things or doing certain things. Now I am more relaxed and calm. I used to think that it was my perceptions that exclusively caused me any upset or conflict when the whole time more often than not it was just the balance of my posture. I feel more at ease and light, easy going instead of struggling emotionally or physically.
In short the Alexander Technique is a mood enhancer, which tends to control the direction of your thinking and the actions you take in life. I thank you again, Lisa, for this exciting shift you have made in my life.
Robert Scott, Realtor
The first session of this most recent class was a real breakthrough for me, and has helped me more than any other. The idea of giving myself instructions to free my neck while doing so, was really great to use later by myself. I have been doing more walking than usual and found this to be a perfect time to incorporate this new learning.
The other thing I find really helpful is the statement in “On Giving Directions, Doing and Non-Doing,” where it says… ‘Forward and up’ is a preventive direction and indicates that the usual tensions that pull the head back and down must be inhibited.” It is hard to get the concept of non-doing, but this article really does a good job of explaining.
We really appreciate your class and you, and find it a most rewarding time. We’re glad we found you.
Carol Cunningham
Just a note to let you know how very much I enjoyed and benefited from your class.
The themes that had the most impact on me were: thinking and moving as one event, really gaining an interest in what I am doing, and using my eyes to really see. I have already noticed changes in my thinking and my movements.
I must say, the most impressive part of the class was you. I love the way you use your body, the quality of your voice, and your wonderful sense of humor! Additionally, your poise and relaxed manner created a lovely environment for learning (and for having a lot of fun)! You really are an excellent teacher.
Thank you, once again, for making possible such a positive experience for us all!
Connie Humphrey
Thank you for everything. My journey in so many ways has just begun, but I am grateful for all your good advice and teachings. I hope, if need be, that I find as good an Alexander teacher in San Jose. I’ll miss my class and your wonderful energy.
Ana
A lot of what you did for me in our nine years certainly has kept me going. I could not have continued the rowing without your support. And it was fascinating to see how working with you meshed so easily with our current Alexander Technique teacher. Thanks.
Bill Ollinger, Architect & Competitive Rower
Discovery of the head/spine relationship, releasing and awareness of tensegrity, have all led me to a gradual awareness or understanding of a new way of relating to the world.
The key was Lisa’s effort to get me to observe myself in a mirror in an objective manner, as though observing another person. I had the inclination to somehow become involved with the image, perhaps as a result of dance training.
This leads me to realize that, in some strange way, I have not been living inside myself, but required some confirmation from the outside. As a result of the discoveries mentioned above, I have begun to develop a new awareness of my own inner core, and am beginning to live my own center of reference for what may be the first time in my life. It is mostly an awareness based on the Alexander Technique that gives me this new center from which to view and interact with the world.
The most profound change to date has taken place in dance classes and rehearsals. I view the space, my image in the mirror, and all the activities through my own filter, taking in what I need, but always from my own point of view. This is based on the continual awareness of the head/spine relationship. I learn more quickly, and there seems to be a ready acceptance of what I accomplish, both on my part and in the company.
Where this will lead is hard to say, but it has opened up a whole new world of human potential far beyond the immediate results in the dance world.
Lloyd McCaffery, Dancer, Miniature Ship Builder and Carver
I have not been to a chiropractor since before you left. Think of the business he has lost!
Yesterday I felt like my lower back was hurt and it was Saturday afternoon, so I couldn’t call the chiropractor until Monday. So as soon as I could I lay down with the books, giving myself a lesson, and the hurt has gone away. What you taught me from the Alexander Technique has been very successful in helping with my lower back problem. Thank you.
Joe Forbes
I came to see Lisa to be relieved of pain and that has happened. That, of course, is wonderful. But what is even more wonderful is that I now experience increased serenity because of the mind-body connection she has taught me. Lisa is an excellent teacher—clear, kind, patient, and fun. I am very lucky to have found her.
Mary
I have been attending the classes conducted by Lisa at our work place since her first presentation several months ago. I wish there could have been a video of the condition we were in when we first started and another of the improvement since then in our carriage and movement. Lisa is a delightful person and an articulate and effective teacher. She is always willing to work with us individually to solve our particular physical problems or to help us achieve our goals. Her explanations and demonstrations of the Alexander Technique have been excellent. The emphasis on the whole body’s response to movement and the discussions about the relationship between the head, spine, and body have resulted, for me, in greatly lessened tension of the neck and shoulders and smoother motion. The class participants all agree that they feel much better since joining the program. I very much look forward to my classes each week.
Alana Ellis, Editor
I am writing to extol the virtues of the Alexander Technique classes offered at work. Since participating in these classes, I have felt less neck and shoulder pain while working at my desk job. I have also felt increased ease of motion in a variety of activities and some subtle improvements in posture. Some concrete signs of these benefits are that I have lost certain habits: adjusting the height and angle of my computer screen and chair every week, tending to walk slightly pigeon-toed, grunting when I get up from a chair. At home, I no longer feel lower back pain after pulling weeds. Although I still experience some shoulder pain while practicing the flute, this is lessening and does not last into the following day as it has in the past.
Mary Jo Teplitz, Editor
My goal for attending classes at work was to improve my posture. I have taken classes from Lisa from the beginning, and she has taken me far beyond the narrow goal I had set for myself. She is teaching me how to let the skeletal and muscular systems in my body do their job. I have begun to learn to change my habit of collapsing my body into unfavorable positions into a new awareness of how my body can work for me instead of against me. Backaches, tension in my shoulders, and tension headaches that were part of using a computer and bending over a desk at work five days a week have lessened. Humans need time and constant guidance to overcome unwanted habits.
Karen Shanower, Editor
Just wanted to express my pleasure with and appreciation of Lisa’s Alexander Technique classes at work. Through Lisa’s guidance I have become aware of many ways in which I have used my body to my disadvantage and of the possibility of moving more easily and efficiently.
Through this class, I have sensed the difference in feeling between my usual state of unconsciously slumped misalignment and the ease that comes with letting go into a more unified back/neck/head position. It remains true that real benefit has come from the doing of the technique.
This conscious awareness of the environment makes Alexander immediately useful in every circumstance. I can “tune in” at my desk, while running, playing golf, you name it. Because I spend a great part of my life chained to a word processor, I have found it especially helpful at work.
I don’t think you can really “get” Alexander from reading a book, and you need (at least I definitely do) some hands-on to sense the held positions and the release of same. Lisa is a very professional, personable, and effective teacher.
Victor Aron
Lisa’s class has been a real prize! I find that I am able to sit more comfortably at my desk, because I become pretty quickly aware when I get my neck and body into my “normal” strained positions, and can change them. I’m also practicing walking a la Alexander, which seems to promise a change for the better in my whole way of moving.
Diane King
The Alexander Technique work Lisa has been doing with us at work has been the single most useful health benefit for me that has been offered. Before Lisa started working with us I was developing so much neck and shoulder tension working at my desk and commuting to work, that I thought my eyes were getting worse. I was having frequent headaches and some blurred vision and felt tired an increasing part of the time.
Kate Gowen