A couple of my students have recently commented on how tired they felt on the day they had a lesson. They said it hesitantly, almost apologetically, as if they had no business to feel tired after half an hour spent lying down or sitting down in a chair and getting up from it.
That's a very familiar feeling, and a very familiar response to the feeling.
Alexander teacher trainees typically might comment, if asked what they did in class -
'Oh, nothing much, we just sat and stood up a couple of times, and then we lay down for some more time while the teachers worked on us. Then we had a break; sat and stood up some more and lay down some more.
I'm wiped out - I have to rest!'
There is the understandable view that since an Alexander class doesn't involve - usually - any strenuous movement, there really is no reason to feel tired at all. But we forget that during the lesson, we are continuously giving instructions to our muscles to behave and respond very differently from the way they have been behaving and responding so far. Instant by instant, we are stripping away layers of habitual behaviours which have an impact on muscles we are not even conscious of. The tiredness here is not confined to the outer muscles - it is more subtle, and very very deep.
We should be gentle with ourselves in this process of relearning the old natural way of using ourselves. Allow ourselves to rest and recuperate.
Even more important, we need to not push ourselves into some imaginary level of achievement. We need to unquestioningly give ourselves all the time we need to assimilate and use the new information we've taken on board.
