Event Details
This Workshop-Medium has already taken place.
Maaike Aarts
The Netherlands
Zooming out: how to observe details while staying connected to your whole self and the space around you.
As we all know, most people have the tendency to concentrate on something by ‘zooming in’: by excluding the awareness of the rest of themselves and the space around them. Even when our AT students have learned to inhibit and direct this can still happen; very subtly our students can ‘zoom in’ to inhibit and direct, start to focus on a detail, on a particular change, zoom in on parts that are ‘still tense, different or painful’, or zoom in on the teachers hands.
In this way their attention becomes like a ball in a pinball machine, shifting rapidly from detail to detail.
As teachers we can help to prevent this from happening. We can teach our students how to ‘zoom out’ and show them how to observe the feelings/changes/details from wholeness and spatial awareness.
The benefits are big: students will experience more freedom of movement, more connection to themselves and the world, a wonderful sense of wholeness and ease, more curiosity, more eagerness to explore, less judgment and less ‘trying to get it right’.
This is a practical workshop in which we will explore how to tell the difference between zooming in and out, both in ourselves and our students.
We will talk about the difference between ‘input’ and ‘output’.
We will explore what language to use to incorporate a detail into wholeness/spatial awareness.
We will explore how we can use our hands in such a way that we can help the student stay connected to wholeness.
And we’ll talk about the differences between observing, checking and feeling and how to explain these differences to our students.
Let’s have some fun by experimenting and exploring this together!
About Maaike Aarts
My name is Maaike Aarts and my passions in life are music, Alexander Technique, self-development, and learning/discovering new things. I graduated at the Alexander Technique Centre Amsterdam in 2002 (Paul Versteeg and Tessa Marwick). I am always eager to learn more and had private lessons with Missy Vineyard and John Nicholls. I followed extra training on pregnancy and childbirth with Ilana Machover, had AT lessons on swimming and running and have obviously attended all international congresses on the Alexander Technique!
I teach the Alexander Technique full time in my private practice, teach the students of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Academy and teach at the Conservatory of Amsterdam.
I also teach my annual course ‘Freedom and Flow for musicians’, give audition training, give workshops for orchestra members, teach during summer courses and I organise my own Alexander Technique retreats.
I was a first violinist in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from 2004-2010, I was associate concertmaster of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra from 2014-2018. I resigned from my positions to have more time for my Alexander technique private practice.
Currently I play violin as a freelancer and in chamber music groups.
In 2021 I released my Alexander Technique App called Think Up Alexander Technique.
This app will
– help your students to practise ‘monkey’, ‘whispered ah’, ‘going up on toes’ etc between lessons,
– open their eyes to the countless opportunities to apply Alexander Technique to their daily lives,
– help them continue on their own once they have stopped taking lessons.
The app contains over 95 audioguides, divided into 10 categories.
Activities include music making, sitting, walking, running, driving, breathing, speaking, lying down in active rest, carrying a backpack, bending, reading, writing, speaking, breathing, sleeping and many more.
The app is available in the App Store (iPhone) and in the Google Play store (Android) and is rated 5 stars.
For iOS: https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/think-up/id1522422093
For Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nl.thinkup.android&hl=en_US&gl=US
m@thinkup.nl
https://www.thinkup.nl/en
See also: Maaike Aarts – Presenter Detail Page
Workshop-Medium
Saturday, 27 August 2022
14:15 h - 15:30 h (2.15pm-3.30pm)
Main Building
Floor: 3.OG (3rd floor)
Room: H 3012
CATEGORIES
Practical Teaching Skills
1
WORKSHOP STYLE
Fully Practical
Lecture
OPEN FOR
Everyone
