Embody Wholeness—Enhance Breath Capacity

This online interactive 5-week class will help you enhance your breathing, expand lung capacity and practice a moment-to-moment ability to return to center in this time of uncertainty and change.Anyone can learn these somatic tools—

• How to catch yourself when you’ve disconnected from your wholeness and bring yourself back to presence.

• Full capacity breathing, as you are designed to do, with minimal effort and maximum efficiency. When the breathing mechanisms function optimally, the fully oxygenated system increases alertness and health.

• Breathing practice as something that can be incorporated into daily life, not as an extra thing to do.

• Self-sustainability and Resilience

Intermediate Alexander for Musicians:

Effective Practice, Embodied Performance

This 5 week interactive online class continues from the introductory class to explore how we can play music with less tension, more kinesthetic awareness, fuller breath and clarity of focus. Do you struggle with tension when you make music? Do you want to have better posture but feel like you are working too hard at it? Does performance anxiety interfere with your ability to enjoy yourself? For over two decades I have helped performers from all disciplines come closer to their potential and perform with more ease and fluidity. This class will help you:

• Reduce unnecessary muscular tension

• Improve your sound

• Clarify your focus

• Hone your rehearsal strategies

• Open up your artistic interpretations

Constance’s online classes explore embodiment within a nurturing, supportive, and lively Zoom classroom. For musicians of all levels: amateur to professional. Everyone will have an opportunity to receive individual coaching on a short musical excerpt of their choice. Enrollment limited to 8 students.

Sitting for Meditators—Easy & Upright with the balanced poise of the Alexander Technique

• A rich exploration of how bodily habits influence your meditation practice and your daily life.

• Hands-on work while you sit on the cushion (or chair) that will help you kinesthetically find more ease, mobility, breath and grounding.

• Feel more in tune with softer, lighter sensations in your body.

• Cultivate a balance of easeful support that invites gentle aliveness to show up. With a more relaxed posture your mind can become less agitated and quiet down.

Centering and Resilience: Self-Sustainability for Activists

This 4-week mind/body class is for any activist who wants to be able to shore up presence and resilience. The cultural norm of burn-out and illness is not necessary, and certainly does not model what we want in the world!  Many of us hold onto and embody the stress of these turbulent times and with all the demands for attention we feel like we’re running on fumes.

For the sake of the common good, activists Can work in a sustainable way. Somatic tools and practices for centering will be learned to access inner resources for self-sustenance, well-being and action in the world. Experiential exercises will include sensory awareness, breathwork for emotional self-regulation and embodied strength in posture, movement and voice. We will explore individually and as a group the following questions:

• How has being an activist impacted your body?

• How does “being different” create hyper-sensitivity and hyper-vigilence?

• What do overwork and depletion do to your mind/body being?

• What self-sustaining practices can work for you?

• How can holding space for change be a source of strength?

You will explore how some habits and patterns have become stuck in your body and what options you have to change. You will learn mind/body skills that will facilitate feeling centered and finding balance within yourself, during times of rest and rejuvenation, and during action and in times of challenge. You will take away practices to sustain yourself, being present to the big picture and being present to your daily life with it’s logistics and responsibilities.

Embody Wholeness with the Alexander Technique—5 week Problem Solving Class

In this online class, we will practice the classic Alexander principles for effortless posture, fuller breath, efficient movement, calmer mind and enhanced awareness. In each class I will address a problem that participants bring. For example:  “My neck hurts when I’m on the computer.” “My TMJ is acting up” “I can’t stop my mind from racing.” “My posture is terrible.” The problems that come up are relevant to all, even if you currently aren’t experiencing TMJ, or anxiety or back pain.  As we explore what not to do, what tension or patterns we can un-do, we find where we can stop reacting and start responding in the present moment with choice. In these small classes, we increase connection with ourselves and others as we navigate these times—experiencing community care as part of self-care.

Less Effort, More Ease: A one-hour Introduction to the Alexander Technique

Feel lighter, stand taller, walk easier.

Explore new ways to ease up on your body and increase your effectiveness. Constance teaches principles and practices from this 100-year-old mind-body method. Group exercises explore posture, movement and breath from the inside-out. Hands-on guidance helps you release excess tension, decompress your spine and tune into a dynamic balance of the whole self.

Great for clubs and groups!

Avoid Text Neck by Learning the Poise of the Alexander Technique

Experience less tension, strain and effort. More awareness, balance and ease.

• Do you want to improve your posture, avoid text neck, back pain and RSI?

• Do you slouch over your electronics and then try to sit up straight, then find yourself slouching again?

• With the Alexander Technique you can learn how to use digital devices in a way that cares for your body, reduces tension and helps you find balance in all your activities. Enjoyable class that includes group exercises, demonstrations and gentle hands-on guidance.

Great for clubs and groups!

Aging and Posture

You don’t have to compress and shrink as you age.

You can learn to de-compress your spine, release tension and move easier. The Alexander Technique has been helping actors and singers for over a century to stand tall, breath fully, and move efficiently. In this enjoyable class, Constance will guide you with this hands-on method to explore your potential in postural health.

Great for clubs and groups!

Centered Dog Walking

Don’t let yourself be pulled off your center!

Don’t let your dog trip you! Don’t let your arm be pulled out of your socket! 

Come learn how to stay centered and grounded while teaching your dog to walk politely on leash.

Centering and Resilience: A Workshop for Queer People

How has homophobia and/or transphobia impacted your body?

• What does shame and humiliation do to the body?

• How does being victimized live in the tissues?

• How often have you experienced the fight or flight response, when the only option was freeze?

• How does the knowledge of “being different” create hyper-sensitivity and hyper-vigilence?

• What does internalized homophobia/transphobia do to your body?

Come explore this question with other queer people in an introduction to how mind/body (somatic) work can be a resource for being fully present to your whole self.

Constance will introduce you to skills that build resilience and resources for grounding and presence in the body. Building embodied awareness will deepen your ability to return to your own felt sense and your own authenticity even in times of challenge.

Since the Alexander Technique is fundamental to being and movement, it can be helpful to a wide variety of human endeavors. Below are some more specific classes Constance has taught:

Effortlessly Upright: No slouching, no forcing

Walking with Spring: Light and easy

Exercise: Using the “just right” amount of effort

Your Harmonious Design: For musicians

Back Pain: Decompressing the spine

RSI: New patterns for repetitive movements

Integrated Ease: Yoga students

Embody Wholeness and Presence: For teachers and therapists

Embody Wholeness for Performers:

Effective Practice, Embodied Performance 

This 5 week interactive online class will introduce you to how the Alexander Technique helps you play an instrument, practice dance, sing a song, do a monologue, or any other performance activity—with less tension, more kinesthetic awareness, and fuller presence.

Constance will lead movement, breath and body explorations. Class is a time to come into wholeness, relaxed yet alert, grounded yet energized, soft yet strong. Everyone will receive individual guidance, group feedback and practices to help you work on your own.

Every performer can benefit by:

·      better body awareness

·      less tension

·      increased physical range

·      fuller breath and voice

·      amplified confidence and presence

·      practices of ongoing self-sustenance