I have studied Alexander Technique for several years and it has made a huge difference in my body awareness, posture, tennis, playing music, walking, hiking, up and down stairs, breathing.... basically AT has made my life more healthful and healthier since I had suffered back pain, leg pain, sciatica for many years before practicing AT. This talk uncovers the myths and improper advice that we have been told our whole life... Thanks to all the teachers of AT and Ariel Weiss for their passion and dedication to assisting students and people in need of this worthwhile practice.
I discovered the Alexander Technique when I was desperate to get help for neck pain caused by professional flute playing. The first lesson helped a lot, and after a series of weekly lessons, I entered a 4 year teacher training program, from which I graduated and was certified in 2017. I have been attending Ariel's weekly online Alexander Technique Masterclass for Musicians for the last 1 1/2 years, and can say that she is a creative, inspiring, experienced and effective teacher who has helped countless musicians and others with this work. It's no easy task to get the concepts across in the time span of a TED talk, but I think she has done an admirable job here.
The speaker is correct. Dynamic postural support is a legitimate concept in the current scientific literature. The distribution of postural support, and how adaptive it is, differs across people - in fact, substantially so. While there is still much to learn, postural support is likely important clinically. Several studies have now found that the Alexander Technique makes postural support more adaptive, so that it yields or resists more sensitivity depending on the task. In short, there is published evidence consistent with the experience she describes. Moreover, changes in dynamic postural support may explain various reported improvements to mobility and balance from the Alexander Technique.
As a sufferer of me/cfs for the past 20 years, Ariel and AT have been a lifesaver. Ariel’s classes and tablework have been the only effective form of pain management for me, and have slowly but surely helped to reverse my condition through neuroplasticity and a gentle retraining of the autonomic nervous system. I am a professional musician, dancer and improviser, and my AT practice has enriched and improved all aspects of my art. My own body is truly my life’s work. After 12 years of AT study, I have seen remarkable and consistent improvement, and have no plans of stopping. THANK YOU!!
Ariel has an ease and natural grace and flow that I find exemplary. As a dancer, her fluidity and clarity have always been captivating to watch. Thanks, Ariel, for sharing some practical and easy-to-apply ideas.
Ariel Weiss has described how we are given wrong instructions our whole life on how to properly "use" our bodies wrt posture. Thankfully Alexander Technique is a way of using just the right number of muscles needed an no more. I have found my life healthier and it has improved my day to day life with less pain and more ease of movement! Thanks to teachers like Ariel that we have this excellent way to examine how we use our bodies and how to improve how we move through life.
How fabulous! I’ve been working with Ariel for over a year, and although we started virtually, her insights have drastically changed how I think about my body as an opera singer. I can’t wait to keep diving in to this incredible technique!
TED's note is misleading. This talk does not only represent the speaker's personal views and understanding of posture. Ariel's 3 main claims are: (1) Posture is dynamic, not fixed. This is not scientifically dubious; it's well-established fact. (2) The spine is curved, not straight. This is also well-established, and it is apparent to anyone who looks. (3) The shoulder joints are midway between the front and the back. This is also easily observable.
Ariel claims that instability from being weak and uncoordinated is dynamic posture. These “micro-movements” as she says, are not what is meant by “dynamic posture”, which refers to different STABLE postures used in succession, not instability from lack of skill. When you increase skill you reduce the recruitment of auxiliary muscles and also your reduce instability. Sitting around and admiring your own instability and lack of skill does not lead to better skills. It is not “body awareness”, it is the creation of a mental construct that by definition can’t be proprioception (which isn’t a conscious thought at all, despite what your Alexander books say). Dynamic posture requires stabilization. She doesn’t have that. For logical reasons: she rejects the obvious need for isometric tension if you expect to have the postural stability that is the basis for dynamic posture. I would define the goal she fails to achieve as “maintaining at all times the ability to return to a neutral spine”. I define a neutral spine as the lumbar, thoracic, and cervical curves stacked directly on top of each other (according to gravity). She is drawn like a magnet to a “late stance” - anterior pelvic tilt, straight legs, weight forward on the feet, pronounced lumbar curve, head in front of the center of mass - all good things, for a sprinter who is taking off from the ground and about to swing a leg forward. Good ways to get more horizontal when running. And also a very bad way to stand and deliver a TED talk. She doesn’t have dynamic posture. She has a strong bias towards a posture that is not a good choice for the activities she did in the talk. She fails her balance demo and falls into this position. Nothing about this is successful, but you will find a way to gaslight yourself until it is. You can even watch someone with worse than average balance and posture, and convince yourself it’s a successful demonstration of balance and posture. It would be fascinating, were it not so maddening.
“The spine is curved, not straight”. Correct! Which is why literally nobody claims the spine is straight. Please type “straw man fallacy” into your search window.
“The shoulder joints are” - again correct. But again, this doesn’t at all establish that isometric tension in the shoulder girdle is harmful, rather than one of the wonderful isometric holds you can use while changing postures dynamically to work and play efficiently. People who can actually do things will tell you the “shoulders back and down” (I say aim for the back pocket On the opposite side) is a really important cue. They won’t tell you it’s the only cue. To get THAT level of misunderstanding you probably have to study a lot of AT. You also have to avoid sports, or basically any sort of “physical” accomplishment.
@@MisterOpera but the common concept of posture is that one needs to 'sit up straight' or 'stand up straight' and that does involve pulling the shoulder blades back and down. I went to physios and osteopaths for years and was told to do this which exacerbated my problems.
@@MisterOpera "Shoulders back and down" may be an "important cue" to some - but unless the coach or teacher is actually present in the moment and observing HOW the student is interpreting this thought, it can easily become a "position" - tight and held. The speaker is not saying that isometric tension is "bad" or harmful but that it does need to be balanced- not held or applied as a position. When we do this one overuses the very muscles that can help us- no matter the task. I would also agree with Rajal, TED Talks- didn't need the "disclaimer" here. Alexander Technique has been around for decades and does have support from the scientific and medical communities- especially in Britain where a number of studies have been done.
Great talk! I am grateful that I have the chance to study with you, Ariel, and feel first-hand the improvements in my singing through our work together. Thank you!
Thank you for the talk. I really like what you have to say about moving into balance. I have not studied Alexander but moving into balance really resonates with me for singing, and for athletics as well. I also am glad that you talk about not keeping your shoulders back and down. It is a terrible habit that some teachers ingrain into students.
@andrew lijoi but as a regular human, I can see that there is some "real time" self-gaslighting going on before our eyes in this video, and it's a pattern I see over and over again, specifically as a result of AT training. It's almost like a guaranteed way of interfering with honest self-assessment. It's a quite logical result when all your training is "closed loop", and your intended performance is going to be an "open loop". She was not prepared to balance on one foot, on a stage, which is a specifically different skill than the one she practiced. It's AT that tells her she can train for performance without training for the performance. It's AT that tells her she can literally multitask, even though modern cognitive theory says you can't. It's AT that tells her she doesn't need to stabilize her trunk to get stability. These results are all predictable and predicted by newer, better theories. What interfered with her balance? Well for one, physical strength. The move she went for is difficult for her, physically. Second, the emotional context: in front of an audience, you can expect your coordination to be less than when by yourself, unless you spend many hours in performance. And finally, she probably trained in an environment that had a continuous floor, rather than a stage. Standing on a stage, at first, confuses the brain because it's always looking for the horizon, because you have a "righting mechanism" that is tied to visual stimulus. This stimulus has to "agree with" the stimulus provided by the middle ear, an organ specifically evolved to respond to gravity. EVERYBODY, no matter how good at any balance skills in a room with a continuous floor, is able to transfer it to the stage only with TIME to adapt. The brain needs time and stimulus to work out this new relationship between visual stimulus and the middle ear. She did not put in the time. When you reject training specificity, the only results you achieve are in your own imagination. I felt very badly for her while watching the moment she failed her balance demo. But then I watched her face as she flinched a bit, realized what just happened, and then made a decision to rewrite her memory, on the spot. And then she tried to rewrite the audience's memory. She seems like a really nice person. So none of this feels great but... this is a self-own for AT if ever I saw one. At this point, it's not appropriate to feel badly for her, because she's actively inviting others to go down this same road. We all saw her go for a ten count on one foot, and fail. And then... she kept counting. Her imagined reality demanded that. Why are we perpetuating this self-abuse, and abuse of others? What should I conclude, other than that this is a consciously predatory decentralized organization? What should I conclude, if every time someone brings this up, AT teachers roll out the same arguments saying, basically, that all their successes are AT, while all their failures are the fault of some individual alone? If you're an AT teacher and you think you can give good answers to these concerns, I will give you the platform to make your case and answer my claims. FYI the speaker has reached out to me, and we have exchanged emails. She indicated she is interested in defending AT. I've indicated to her that this self-gaslighting is one of my criticisms. Since then she has stopped replying. I am not sure anyone from the AT community is willing to confront the criticism that their ability to assess results is compromised by the training itself. By the layers of inhibition they literally talk about building. If you challenge an AT person, they will always fall back on their "results" or "progress". If you ask to see the progress they will ignore, attack, deflect, ask you who you think you are, portray you as a bully - but they will not show you results.
@@MisterOpera i'm confused about your criticism, i'm an AT student and no teacher has ever told me i "can train for performance without training for the performance". but, of course, i'd prefer to use whichever method gets me the best results for improving my movement as a musician. what newer and better theories would you recommend?
@@MisterOpera I trained as an AT teacher and that training is the thing that has helped me not have back pain, parasthesia in my hands and wrists and voice problems which were caused by my work as a music teacher in primary schools. I trained alongside professional musicians who had been severely injured by their music school training and professional practice. Not one of those people has said that you can be an elite performer without practising - the objective is to box clever, practise efficiently and maximise ease. There have been trials of the AT in which AT comes out well for people suffering back and neck pain. There was an interesting trial examining violinists and their necks - when they could see their neck muscles on the screen and consciously quieten them they found improved performance.
@@kathyhulme5389 I always find it curious that AT teachers will tell you "all AT teachers are so different, you can't really criticize them as a group", often just after or before claiming there is evidence that AT works to treat chronic pain. So before I ask for a link, can I get you to concede that AT actually IS a set of common beliefs and practices, which can be BOTH criticized and defended? If you have a chance, and you have any complete studies I can see, I would appreciate a link or an email attachment. In particular I need complete studies with the experimental design and other information I would need. Abstracts don't have the needed details.
@@MisterOpera I will be upfront about my situation/relationship to alexander technique so that you don't accuse me of lying by omission or ignoring my biases. First off, I have personally benefited from AT training as a professional oboist since in 2019 I developed severe tendinitis/carpal tunnel symptoms as a result of repetitive stress and tension while playing my instrument. I went to doctors who told me the best thing I could do for my injury was to rest and recover which I did, but there was no pathway provided to me through physical therapy that could address the issues of tension that led to my injury in the first place especially when my occupation requires such refined use of my hands and body. I began studying Alexander technique with Ariel through weekly lessons and was able to return to playing my instrument within a few months. However, not only did I return to the same high level of proficiency on my instrument, I began to improve rapidly in my execution of technical/physical feats required of me to perform music at the Curtis Institute of Music. This was a direct result of the consistent reinforcement of concepts discussed in this Ted Talk that allowed me to use my body more freely and efficiently to play my instrument. My rapid improvement was of interest to my doctor at Jefferson here in Philadelphia who was interested in studying my specific case of occupational tendinitis after discussing what I worked on with Ariel in my lessons. So, from personal experience, and the experiences of my colleagues at this prestigious institution, the concepts discussed in this video do in fact work. Secondly, your pedantic "takedown" of AT as a "self-gaslighting" training method ignores centuries of evidence found in athletic/performance psychology and somehow makes the leap in logic that an academic authority giving a presentation should be able to instantaneously emulate every concept they discuss or have their credibility revoked. Imagine a world where every presidential speech, opera performance, or graduate honors presentation is rendered meaningless by one mistake. You seem to ignore the fact that Ariel is training professionals to perform at a high level and attempting to share that wisdom and likely does not have the time to perfectly execute a feat of balance in her free time. The concepts take precedent over the performance in this situation clearly. To circle back to athletic/performance psychology, I find your concepts of "closed loop" and "open loop" very unusual. I may be confused but it seems that you are implying that a performer can only improve in a true performance setting. If that is the argument being made I'm sure you'd have to agree that this is categorically false. Considering the hours any performer whether they be a musician, surgeon, or swimmer puts into training muscle memory off stage, you can't deny that they are improving their consistency of high level performance once they enter the stage. There's a reason musical prodigies exist at a young age and it's not because people are making their 4 year olds perform on stage every week. In a sense, a performance is just a showcase of muscle memory and artistic vision and so there's no reason why training in a closed loop can't have profound positive effects on an open loop performance. To further add, she quite literally is training specificity as you claimed she didn't, but she is doing so within the context of the entire unified body. Lastly, this entire comment is largely an attack on the ego. Accusing someone of being "consciously predatory", saying "it's not appropriate to feel bad for her", etc is more telling of your lack of empathy and self-awareness. I struggle to find any point in your comment where you are not attempting the dangerous act of assuming someone's intentions. It's very easy to justify your own negative reaction when you can dehumanize the person before you attack them. Your last paragraph speaks volumes into your binary and caricature-esq thinking: "If you challange an *AT person*...*they* will ignore, attack, deflect, ask you who you think you are, portray you as a bully - but they will not show you results". Who is this mysterious "They"? This gives the impression that you carry a large weight of assumptions for anyone who wears the title "AT person". I really hope you can take on a more nuanced view of this technique and the people who support and teach it. In any case I hope I can provide a view worth reading and considering.
![[UA] Team Vitality проти NAVI | IEM Cologne 2024](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wttO1zVRTC0/mqdefault.jpg)
I have studied Alexander Technique for several years and it has made a huge difference in my body awareness, posture, tennis, playing music, walking, hiking, up and down stairs, breathing.... basically AT has made my life more healthful and healthier since I had suffered back pain, leg pain, sciatica for many years before practicing AT. This talk uncovers the myths and improper advice that we have been told our whole life... Thanks to all the teachers of AT and Ariel Weiss for their passion and dedication to assisting students and people in need of this worthwhile practice.
I discovered the Alexander Technique when I was desperate to get help for neck pain caused by professional flute playing. The first lesson helped a lot, and after a series of weekly lessons, I entered a 4 year teacher training program, from which I graduated and was certified in 2017. I have been attending Ariel's weekly online Alexander Technique Masterclass for Musicians for the last 1 1/2 years, and can say that she is a creative, inspiring, experienced and effective teacher who has helped countless musicians and others with this work. It's no easy task to get the concepts across in the time span of a TED talk, but I think she has done an admirable job here.
The speaker is correct. Dynamic postural support is a legitimate concept in the current scientific literature. The distribution of postural support, and how adaptive it is, differs across people - in fact, substantially so. While there is still much to learn, postural support is likely important clinically. Several studies have now found that the Alexander Technique makes postural support more adaptive, so that it yields or resists more sensitivity depending on the task. In short, there is published evidence consistent with the experience she describes. Moreover, changes in dynamic postural support may explain various reported improvements to mobility and balance from the Alexander Technique.
As a sufferer of me/cfs for the past 20 years, Ariel and AT have been a lifesaver. Ariel’s classes and tablework have been the only effective form of pain management for me, and have slowly but surely helped to reverse my condition through neuroplasticity and a gentle retraining of the autonomic nervous system. I am a professional musician, dancer and improviser, and my AT practice has enriched and improved all aspects of my art. My own body is truly my life’s work. After 12 years of AT study, I have seen remarkable and consistent improvement, and have no plans of stopping. THANK YOU!!
Ariel has an ease and natural grace and flow that I find exemplary. As a dancer, her fluidity and clarity have always been captivating to watch. Thanks, Ariel, for sharing some practical and easy-to-apply ideas.
Ariel Weiss has described how we are given wrong instructions our whole life on how to properly "use" our bodies wrt posture. Thankfully Alexander Technique is a way of using just the right number of muscles needed an no more. I have found my life healthier and it has improved my day to day life with less pain and more ease of movement! Thanks to teachers like Ariel that we have this excellent way to examine how we use our bodies and how to improve how we move through life.
How fabulous! I’ve been working with Ariel for over a year, and although we started virtually, her insights have drastically changed how I think about my body as an opera singer. I can’t wait to keep diving in to this incredible technique!
such a pleasure to be of help Sarah!
It feels good to liberate myself from my "sit up straight" strategy!! In all seriousness, these shifts in thinking are so valuable!
TED's note is misleading. This talk does not only represent the speaker's personal views and understanding of posture. Ariel's 3 main claims are: (1) Posture is dynamic, not fixed. This is not scientifically dubious; it's well-established fact. (2) The spine is curved, not straight. This is also well-established, and it is apparent to anyone who looks. (3) The shoulder joints are midway between the front and the back. This is also easily observable.
Ariel claims that instability from being weak and uncoordinated is dynamic posture. These “micro-movements” as she says, are not what is meant by “dynamic posture”, which refers to different STABLE postures used in succession, not instability from lack of skill. When you increase skill you reduce the recruitment of auxiliary muscles and also your reduce instability.
Sitting around and admiring your own instability and lack of
skill does not lead to better skills. It is not “body awareness”, it is the creation of a mental construct that by definition can’t be proprioception (which isn’t a conscious thought at all, despite what your Alexander books say).
Dynamic posture requires stabilization. She doesn’t have that. For logical reasons: she rejects the obvious need for isometric tension if you expect to have the postural stability that is the basis for dynamic posture.
I would define the goal she fails to achieve as “maintaining at all times the ability to return to a neutral spine”. I define a neutral spine as the lumbar, thoracic, and cervical curves stacked directly on top of each other (according to gravity).
She is drawn like a magnet to a “late stance” - anterior pelvic tilt, straight legs, weight forward on the feet, pronounced lumbar curve, head in front of the center of mass - all good things, for a sprinter who is taking off from the ground and about to swing a leg forward. Good ways to get more horizontal when running. And also a very bad way to stand and deliver a TED talk.
She doesn’t have dynamic posture. She has a strong bias towards a posture that is not a good choice for the activities she did in the talk. She fails her balance demo and falls into this position.
Nothing about this is successful, but you will find a way to gaslight yourself until it is. You can even watch someone with worse than average balance and posture, and convince yourself it’s a successful demonstration of balance and posture.
It would be fascinating, were it not so maddening.
“The spine is curved, not straight”.
Correct! Which is why literally nobody claims the spine is straight. Please type “straw man fallacy” into your search window.
“The shoulder joints are” - again correct. But again, this doesn’t at all establish that isometric tension in the shoulder girdle is harmful, rather than one of the wonderful isometric holds you can use while changing postures dynamically to work and play efficiently.
People who can actually do things will tell you the “shoulders back and down” (I say aim for the back pocket
On the opposite side) is a really important cue. They won’t tell you it’s the only cue. To get THAT level of misunderstanding you probably have to study a lot of AT. You also have to avoid sports, or basically any sort of “physical” accomplishment.
@@MisterOpera but the common concept of posture is that one needs to 'sit up straight' or 'stand up straight' and that does involve pulling the shoulder blades back and down. I went to physios and osteopaths for years and was told to do this which exacerbated my problems.
@@MisterOpera "Shoulders back and down" may be an "important cue" to some - but unless the coach or teacher is actually present in the moment and observing HOW the student is interpreting this thought, it can easily become a "position" - tight and held. The speaker is not saying that isometric tension is "bad" or harmful but that it does need to be balanced- not held or applied as a position. When we do this one overuses the very muscles that can help us- no matter the task.
I would also agree with Rajal, TED Talks- didn't need the "disclaimer" here. Alexander Technique has been around for decades and does have support from the scientific and medical communities- especially in Britain where a number of studies have been done.
Such a good talk! I love how she guides the audience through some movement in the talk. Probably a good break during a long day of talks.
Great talk! I am grateful that I have the chance to study with you, Ariel, and feel first-hand the improvements in my singing through our work together. Thank you!
Thank you for the talk. I really like what you have to say about moving into balance. I have not studied Alexander but moving into balance really resonates with me for singing, and for athletics as well. I also am glad that you talk about not keeping your shoulders back and down. It is a terrible habit that some teachers ingrain into students.
I’m so glad you found the talk helpful!
. What a simple and visual way to begin to understand posture! Thank you Ariel for making it fun to sit up straight ;)
Or not sit up straight 😂I'm so glad you found it fun Laura!
That. Was. Fascinating! I guarantee I'm often putting my shoulders in the wrong place. Thank you for this training that was also entertaining!
you are not alone Katie!
This is very informative! Everyone should watch and learn! 👍👏
Many thanks Mona! Please feel free to share :)
.....alriiiiiiiiiighty then
@andrew lijoi but as a regular human, I can see that there is some "real time" self-gaslighting going on before our eyes in this video, and it's a pattern I see over and over again, specifically as a result of AT training. It's almost like a guaranteed way of interfering with honest self-assessment. It's a quite logical result when all your training is "closed loop", and your intended performance is going to be an "open loop". She was not prepared to balance on one foot, on a stage, which is a specifically different skill than the one she practiced. It's AT that tells her she can train for performance without training for the performance. It's AT that tells her she can literally multitask, even though modern cognitive theory says you can't. It's AT that tells her she doesn't need to stabilize her trunk to get stability. These results are all predictable and predicted by newer, better theories. What interfered with her balance? Well for one, physical strength. The move she went for is difficult for her, physically. Second, the emotional context: in front of an audience, you can expect your coordination to be less than when by yourself, unless you spend many hours in performance. And finally, she probably trained in an environment that had a continuous floor, rather than a stage. Standing on a stage, at first, confuses the brain because it's always looking for the horizon, because you have a "righting mechanism" that is tied to visual stimulus. This stimulus has to "agree with" the stimulus provided by the middle ear, an organ specifically evolved to respond to gravity. EVERYBODY, no matter how good at any balance skills in a room with a continuous floor, is able to transfer it to the stage only with TIME to adapt. The brain needs time and stimulus to work out this new relationship between visual stimulus and the middle ear. She did not put in the time.
When you reject training specificity, the only results you achieve are in your own imagination. I felt very badly for her while watching the moment she failed her balance demo. But then I watched her face as she flinched a bit, realized what just happened, and then made a decision to rewrite her memory, on the spot. And then she tried to rewrite the audience's memory. She seems like a really nice person. So none of this feels great but... this is a self-own for AT if ever I saw one. At this point, it's not appropriate to feel badly for her, because she's actively inviting others to go down this same road.
We all saw her go for a ten count on one foot, and fail. And then... she kept counting. Her imagined reality demanded that. Why are we perpetuating this self-abuse, and abuse of others? What should I conclude, other than that this is a consciously predatory decentralized organization? What should I conclude, if every time someone brings this up, AT teachers roll out the same arguments saying, basically, that all their successes are AT, while all their failures are the fault of some individual alone?
If you're an AT teacher and you think you can give good answers to these concerns, I will give you the platform to make your case and answer my claims.
FYI the speaker has reached out to me, and we have exchanged emails. She indicated she is interested in defending AT. I've indicated to her that this self-gaslighting is one of my criticisms. Since then she has stopped replying. I am not sure anyone from the AT community is willing to confront the criticism that their ability to assess results is compromised by the training itself. By the layers of inhibition they literally talk about building. If you challenge an AT person, they will always fall back on their "results" or
"progress". If you ask to see the progress they will ignore, attack, deflect, ask you who you think you are, portray you as a bully - but they will not show you results.
@@MisterOpera i'm confused about your criticism, i'm an AT student and no teacher has ever told me i "can train for performance without training for the performance". but, of course, i'd prefer to use whichever method gets me the best results for improving my movement as a musician. what newer and better theories would you recommend?
@@MisterOpera I trained as an AT teacher and that training is the thing that has helped me not have back pain, parasthesia in my hands and wrists and voice problems which were caused by my work as a music teacher in primary schools. I trained alongside professional musicians who had been severely injured by their music school training and professional practice. Not one of those people has said that you can be an elite performer without practising - the objective is to box clever, practise efficiently and maximise ease. There have been trials of the AT in which AT comes out well for people suffering back and neck pain. There was an interesting trial examining violinists and their necks - when they could see their neck muscles on the screen and consciously quieten them they found improved performance.
@@kathyhulme5389 I always find it curious that AT teachers will tell you "all AT teachers are so different, you can't really criticize them as a group", often just after or before claiming there is evidence that AT works to treat chronic pain. So before I ask for a link, can I get you to concede that AT actually IS a set of common beliefs and practices, which can be BOTH criticized and defended? If you have a chance, and you have any complete studies I can see, I would appreciate a link or an email attachment. In particular I need complete studies with the experimental design and other information I would need. Abstracts don't have the needed details.
@@MisterOpera I will be upfront about my situation/relationship to alexander technique so that you don't accuse me of lying by omission or ignoring my biases.
First off, I have personally benefited from AT training as a professional oboist since in 2019 I developed severe tendinitis/carpal tunnel symptoms as a result of repetitive stress and tension while playing my instrument. I went to doctors who told me the best thing I could do for my injury was to rest and recover which I did, but there was no pathway provided to me through physical therapy that could address the issues of tension that led to my injury in the first place especially when my occupation requires such refined use of my hands and body. I began studying Alexander technique with Ariel through weekly lessons and was able to return to playing my instrument within a few months. However, not only did I return to the same high level of proficiency on my instrument, I began to improve rapidly in my execution of technical/physical feats required of me to perform music at the Curtis Institute of Music. This was a direct result of the consistent reinforcement of concepts discussed in this Ted Talk that allowed me to use my body more freely and efficiently to play my instrument. My rapid improvement was of interest to my doctor at Jefferson here in Philadelphia who was interested in studying my specific case of occupational tendinitis after discussing what I worked on with Ariel in my lessons. So, from personal experience, and the experiences of my colleagues at this prestigious institution, the concepts discussed in this video do in fact work.
Secondly, your pedantic "takedown" of AT as a "self-gaslighting" training method ignores centuries of evidence found in athletic/performance psychology and somehow makes the leap in logic that an academic authority giving a presentation should be able to instantaneously emulate every concept they discuss or have their credibility revoked. Imagine a world where every presidential speech, opera performance, or graduate honors presentation is rendered meaningless by one mistake. You seem to ignore the fact that Ariel is training professionals to perform at a high level and attempting to share that wisdom and likely does not have the time to perfectly execute a feat of balance in her free time. The concepts take precedent over the performance in this situation clearly. To circle back to athletic/performance psychology, I find your concepts of "closed loop" and "open loop" very unusual. I may be confused but it seems that you are implying that a performer can only improve in a true performance setting. If that is the argument being made I'm sure you'd have to agree that this is categorically false. Considering the hours any performer whether they be a musician, surgeon, or swimmer puts into training muscle memory off stage, you can't deny that they are improving their consistency of high level performance once they enter the stage. There's a reason musical prodigies exist at a young age and it's not because people are making their 4 year olds perform on stage every week. In a sense, a performance is just a showcase of muscle memory and artistic vision and so there's no reason why training in a closed loop can't have profound positive effects on an open loop performance. To further add, she quite literally is training specificity as you claimed she didn't, but she is doing so within the context of the entire unified body.
Lastly, this entire comment is largely an attack on the ego. Accusing someone of being "consciously predatory", saying "it's not appropriate to feel bad for her", etc is more telling of your lack of empathy and self-awareness. I struggle to find any point in your comment where you are not attempting the dangerous act of assuming someone's intentions. It's very easy to justify your own negative reaction when you can dehumanize the person before you attack them. Your last paragraph speaks volumes into your binary and caricature-esq thinking: "If you challange an *AT person*...*they* will ignore, attack, deflect, ask you who you think you are, portray you as a bully - but they will not show you results". Who is this mysterious "They"? This gives the impression that you carry a large weight of assumptions for anyone who wears the title "AT person". I really hope you can take on a more nuanced view of this technique and the people who support and teach it. In any case I hope I can provide a view worth reading and considering.