Leading A Workshop: Lessons Learned by Sydney Laurel Harris

On  Saturday, 30 January, 2010, I gave an introductory Alexander Technique (AT) workshop for sixteen people at the lovely home of Vicky Rathje’s, owner of “In the Know Resources”.  It was a wonderful occasion for me and in fact the workshop proceeds contributed $351 to the Breast Cancer Fund.  Also, the feedback from the participants was very positive. 

The workshop was a success, yet, when it was over I felt slightly subdued, even somewhat discontented. For some reason, it became clear that it was hard to allow myself to celebrate the success. To deal with these feelings, I decided to list everything about the workshop that went well and everything that could have gone better or that I wanted to go differently in the future.  I then formulated some lessons that I thought might be useful to me, and therefore to others when giving workshops or thinking about giving workshops:

Take care of yourself:

Long before flight attendants told passengers to put their oxygen masks on first before helping others, Alexander Technique teachers were trained to pay attention to their own use* first and continue to attend to their own use while teaching others.  It is important for an AT teacher to use him-/herself  well because the teacher’s use has a qualitative direct influence on the touch used in guiding our students.  The additional benefit for the teacher is that it provides self-care.  An  Alexander teacher is most effective in teaching the Technique when s/he uses him-/herself well. In this respect, I was successful in January’s workshop.

* Use refers to the manner in which a person moves and uses their whole body, in whatever they are doing.

However, in another quite basic way, I did not take such good care of myself.  Snacks & drinks were provided for the participants, but I didn’t partake.    Similarly, break times were provided for the participants, but I continued to work with individuals during these times.  It’s therefore understandable that I may have felt a little depleted after 6 hours (including the travel and set up).  Even good use is not enough to prevent exhaustion when one overextends oneself.

Don’t Over Teach

Though the temptation and “pull” will be great, you don’t have teach everything you know in one workshop.  A workshop on the Alexander Technique, like most workshops, can only scratch the surface  In fact, the whole point is to leave your participants wanting more, as well as understanding there is much more to learn.

Insight itself may be, in a sense, out of time, but the learning effort to arrive to true insight is a process that takes time, and often the more complex something is, the more time and attention it takes.  We live in such an instant gratification world that it’s often necessary to remind participants/students to not have unrealistic expectations, nor to be impatient with themselves.  Obviously, therefore, it is important that I too am patient and have realistic expectations.  One cannot, and should not therefore attempt in four hours, to do more than point the way toward, i.e., give a flavor of, the hard earned insights that took years for me to learn.

Don’t “End-gain”:

This is another AT term. End-gain means focusing on the end instead of the means-whereby.  I didn’t really try to compress years of understanding into four hours, but I was focusing on wanting everyone to “get it”. The workshop was composed of primary points backed up by one or more activities each.  I wound up dwelling too long on some activities and participants while short-changing or omitting other intended activities of equal importance and value.  More importantly this imbalance caused a loss of connectedness with my full audience as the workshop progressed, because my attention had been diverted by segments of interest that distracted from accomplishing the intended full program.

Limit how many points you want to get across:

Some research has shown that retention and understanding diminishes when you present more than seven key points.  Five is probably an ideal number to present.  I didn’t cover more than six, but I had at least three more that I thought I had wanted to cover when the workshop ended.  Next time, I will have this in mind when I prepare a workshop. Ironically, the workshop was called “Less is More with the Alexander Technique”!

Incorporate different learning styles:

We all have different learning styles.  Based on Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory,    there are linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, body-kinesthetic, spatial-visual, interpersonal & intrapersonal intelligences. For this reason, it is beneficial to present material using techniques that are, at a minimum, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.  Hurrah, I used five (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal)!

For more information on learning styles go to Learning Success Institute http://www.learningsuccessinstitute.com/

Well, that’s five of the lessons learned from teaching the workshop in January.  I’ll save others for the next article.

Sydney Laurel Harris

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