Sitting in School
Is there anything we can do for a child who sits all day at school?
Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash
When my daughter was in first grade, her teacher told me she wasn’t paying attention. My sweet girl who had gotten in trouble once during Kindergarten was now regularly getting in trouble for being inattentive. She had a wonderful teacher who liked her very much but she still struggled. There were many probable causes for her distraction:
First Grade was more serious than Kindergarten and class sizes had increased
There was less free time and more time spent sitting in chairs and on the floor learning lessons
Recess was 15 minutes
My daughter was small for her age and therefore her feet didn’t touch the floor when she sat in her chair
I could not do much about most of the things on that list, but I could help with the chair! I sent her to school with a yoga block and a sitting disk.
My daughter sat on the disk and put her feet on the yoga block. Within a day her teacher noticed a difference. Was she attentive all the time? Of course not, but there was an improvement. My daughter appreciated the change, too.
What happened?
Since her feet couldn’t reach the floor when she sat in her chair, she felt ungrounded. She did not have stability and she was constantly fighting the sensation sliding down in her seat. That alone would make it difficult to concentrate!
The sitting disk is an air-filled cushion that allows for mobility while sitting on a flat surface or chair. The disk helped my daughter get vestibular input by balancing and rebalancing in her seat. Even though she needed to remain seated for long stretches of time, she could still have a small amount of movement on the disk. The ability to move was subtle enough to not be a distraction to her teacher or her peers. We talk about this in the Alexander Technique: Having openness and freedom in your joints so that you move slightly even in stillness. We call it the “standing dance.” In this case it was a sitting dance.
The nice thing about the sitting disk was that my daughter could take it to the floor with her when the teacher was reading or teaching a lesson while the class sat on the rug. This is something Alexander teachers fret over--children sitting on the floor while the teacher sits in a chair or stands to use the board. This is because it can be difficult to have poise while sitting on the floor. Children will kneel to combat slouching but the teacher will ask them to sit “criss-cross-applesauce” so that the students behind them can see. So the students’ backs grow more rounded the longer they sit and their necks shorten as they look up from their hunched positions. A sitting disk raises their hips and gives them the support they need to have a lengthened posture for the duration of their time on the floor. Enabling them to maintain the length of their spines will allow them to breathe and move and be more open to learning.
It would be better if children were allowed to move more in school. Until that happens, they can use a sitting disk and study the Alexander Technique.
Is your child having difficulty sitting in school? Is desk too big or too small? Does the chair slant back? Is the seat curved and slippery? Is the chair connected to the desk? Is your left-handed child sitting in a right-handed desk? Is your child straining to see the board? There might be a simple solution. An Alexander lesson can be a helpful and quick way to solve your child’s discomfort.
Teaching Flute Lessons with Alexander Principles - Part 3
This is part of the final paper I wrote as part of my AT teacher certification.
V. Finding Freedom & Direction in Your Students
It is very useful to have mirrors in your studio. Doing so will allow you to observe your student from all angles. Rather than asking about pain or tiredness, ask the student what she noticed or felt while playing. Remain as objective as possible to allow the student to be nonjudgmental, too. Have the student put her instrument down and begin anew. Look for ways to hold the flute using the natural hand patterns of the student.
Be sure that the student isn’t using unnecessary tension. Here are some examples of common tension patterns in flutists:
-jamming the flute against chin
-not using all of the joints in the fingers
-bending the right hand thumb in and laying it lengthwise against the flute
-shortening the spine (or lifting the sternum and arching the lower back)
-locking the knees
-hanging on the instrument
-holding the left arm (or the right arm) against the ribcage
-hanging on a hip joint (weight set on one leg, with the weight-bearing hip
jutting out)
-gripping in the feet and ankles so that the feet aren’t grounded
If you observe one of these habits in a student, notice how these tension patterns affect the body as a whole. For instance, locking the knees will also cause the ankles and hips to tighten and the spine to shorten. It is not necessary to correct these issues. You need not discuss it in depth with the student. As long as you are aware and can lead the student through the process of inhibition: pause and do something else instead of playing.
For example, you notice when you ask your student to sight-read that he hunches over the stand to look at the music more closely. As you become aware of your student’s habit, your own head/neck/back relationship has become compressed. You could allow the situation to continue and risk straining yourselves, or you could take a five minute break and think of the Alexander directions. Upon returning to the sight-reading task, you notice that you are both breathing freely and your bodies are whole, enlivened systems.
Field Example:
-During a lesson with a student (age seven), I spent much of the time bringing the flute headjoint towards her and then taking it away. I did this to make her conscious of her habit to bring her head and neck toward the flute. While she was not doing anything wrong, it was unnecessary and took extra energy. I have this habit, too, so I brought humor into the situation. I said that neither of us want to look like ET when we play and that we should remind each other when we see this pattern. We would use the code word “oooouch” (said in my best ET voice).
It later became clear that the student could not comfortably hold the assembled flute. It may be a year or two before she will grow into it, so I lent her my fife. Now she can hold her instrument easily, she doesn’t have to put it together, and it can take a beating and still function. It is important to know when the Alexander work is not enough. It is possible to simply have an unworkable situation. However, it is through the Technique that you can become aware of the difference between a difficult situation and an unworkable one. With the Alexander Technique, you can have options for managing an array of situations.