Alexander Interview

An Interview with Lucia Walker May/8/2003 in Tokyo

I met Lucia for the first time in June 1999, in the last year of my teachers training. She visited our training course in Japan and taught for 3 weeks as a guest teacher. Before her visit, people had talked about her, saying that her parents were also great teachers who is learnt directly from F. M. Alexander (the founder of the AT).

My first impression of her was very ordinary person. She didn't seem special -she almost disappeared among students. But in 3 weeks, I found out that she always has a clear intention when teaching, and communicated it to the student just as much as each student needed at certain moment. And she didn't turn the technique into something special but as the tool we can use.

As well as being an Alexander Technique teacher, she is a dancer and a dance teacher well-experienced in contact improvisation. Using such experience, she teaches the Alexander Technique in a practical way helping us learn how to be aware of oneself/world moment by moment, and how that is related to movements.

I am grateful that she's been coming to Japan almost every year since her first visit. This year I asked her to come to our class, and also do an interview with me. The interview was done in a friendly atmosphere at a neighboring park, sitting round a simple wooden table.

"it's curious when people talk about it, when they say, 'But you approach the whole thing through the body' - because of course, in all our learning, we get drummed into us that it's thinking that counts. So is Alexander's doorway body or thought? "

"I certainly don't think it's the only way to teach, or even the best way of teaching. It seems to be the one I do."

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