Teachers Sharing their Expertise—and Transformation—Online

I am a teacher of singing and Alexander Technique in New York City. I have been attending the Kanes’ seminars for over 3 years and sharing Transformation with my students. Many times I invite them to attend seminars or read the Kanes’ books or listen to the radio show. Recently I had the amazing and delightful experience of sharing Transformation with a colleague by simply being myself.

Along with seeing students in my own program, FreeBody FreeVoice, I also teach on the faculty of an online academy for singers called Total Vocal Freedom, where I met another teacher, Eleni Vosniadou, in an online faculty meeting over the summer. Eleni and I felt an immediate connection and decided to barter online lessons with each other. After the first of these lessons, Eleni told me that she had been inspired by me to check out Instantaneous Transformation. Here is her story of how that happened.    —Michael Hanko

I came across Ariel and Shya’s work in quite an indirect way. I work as an Alexander Technique teacher in Brazil. The Alexander Technique is a mind-body method in which we learn to unravel habitual patterns of thinking that interfere with our natural coordination. Since I have lately also been interested in voice, I watched a couple of online videos of Michael Hanko’s voice technique classes. From the very beginning I got amazed and caught by Michael’s quality of presence. Watching him, it just felt great to experience his firm, easy and connected communication with his students. I thought to myself, “I want what he’s got!” I started looking around on his website and noticed several references to Ariel and Shya Kane. I clicked on a link and eventually ended up watching one of their interviews.

It was for me a particularly tough day, as I was feeling sick from having stayed in the sun for too long. The concept of Working on yourself doesn’t work sounded awkward in the beginning, but as I was lying in bed feeling poorly, I noticed that each time I allowed my feeling sick to be exactly what it was without resisting it, my overall coordination immediately got easier, and I felt better! I experienced a powerful release throughout my body! During those first moments I became aware of all the excess effort I have been associating with the idea of working on myself for a really long time. And how that effort mainly came from the fact that I wanted to improve my experience at the moment, and there was a hidden “I need to improve myself because I am not good enough” in the background.

For the first time I was seeing the connection between future-oriented thinking and tightening in my body. Now, when I am simply BEING HERE, the coordination offered by the Alexander Technique is more readily available to me. It’s so much easier and simpler to access than I had thought!

The Kanes’ and Michael’s living example of being here and communicating according to the Three Principles of Instantaneous Transformation inspire me and give me permission and confidence to be as creative and easy as I am NOW. This is absolutely liberating and allows me to teach, learn and grow in easy, joyful and pleasurable ways that I never thought possible. Deep gratitude to you Michael, Ariel and Shya!!!

Michael from New York and Eleni from Sāo Paulo, Brazil