In the summer of 2010, I was acting and singing in a touring theater festival.
At the same time, I was getting up early in the morning to film for a TV series almost every day of the week. I got barely any sleep. It was the busiest time of my career.
And then..I started having voice problems. I started getting hoarse and dealing with throat ache. I blamed my busy schedule, the loud band we were playing with, the malfunctioning headsets, the noise at the festival where we performed. All exterior causes were to blame for my vocal problems.
Then I realized, that the other actors of my group, who were also busy in their own ways (Ok, some of them ‘just’ went drinking and screaming in the loud bar till late at night, but that counts too!), had no problems at all, performing under the same conditions as I did.
So it was something that was MY problem and that I had to take responsibility for.
My voice has always been something I had to take extra care of. At the theater school, here was a point that they wanted me to get an operation on my vocal chords, since I had polyps on them. I cancelled the operation at the last minute and took a break from school. With rest and voice lessons, the polyps disappeared. But since then voice always stayed my weakest point. Whenever I was in a stressful period, with lots of performances, my voice would become hoarse again. Rest helped, but only temporarily. It meant I couldn’t perform steadily. I needed to solve this for good.
One of my dearest friends, a top concert violinist, who happens to be an Alexander Technique teacher, observed my habits as a performer and encouraged me to give Alexander Technique lessons a try. I finally did.
During my Alexander Technique lessons I learned that it was not just something ‘physical’ that caused my voice to become hoarse. It was also my mental attitude. I had to deal with stage freight and performance anxiety. I put too much stress on myself, I practiced too long and hard, straining my voice during rehearsals. This made it extra stressful to go into the actual performances and auditions, with the threat of a hoarse throat always there!
I always thought that in order to deal with stage freight and performance anxiety, I had to prevent myself from being nervous. I learned from The Technique that I don’t need to prevent them from happening. Nerves will always happen. It’s healthy. If you are going to perform, you have to be at your best, top level. You need some adrenaline for that.
Instead, I changed my reaction to the nerves. I learned how to prevent them from overpowering me, by choosing another reaction than my former, habitual reaction.
My vocal problems have never returned since. Further, I noticed many more changes in myself. Not only my vocal difficulties slowly disappeared, but also other inconveniences like lower back pain, shoulder pain, and fatigue slowly became less and less.
What I like the most about the Alexander Technique, is that it is an empowering technique, which teaches you how to change yourself for the better. Eventually you will not need a teacher anymore to feel better. You can bring about changes in yourself by using your thinking in a different way. You have the choice to react to situations differently than before, you are not just subject to your habitual mannerisms. It is a very simple and down-to-earth method that can bring about big changes in how you are feeling, emotionally and physically.