Jennifer Roig-Francoli (Alexander Technique)

Hi, Michael. Thank you so much for having me.

Actually, this is the e-book. The e-book is out, but the audio version will be a little little longer.

Hardcover will be last, and um audiobook is second to last. I still need to record the audiobook at this time.

That's too much, Michael. [Laughs]

Ah, what an introduction! [Laughs] I'm humbled. Um, there's so much I can say, um, but as you were talking and, you know, talking about my voice, I I can't help but remember how I used to be terrified to speak in public. And it's really been many years of a work in progress to not only be able to express myself through my voice, um, and my violin, and now through the written word. But my work is actually really about being yourself, being fully yourself, and being able to express yourself through whatever medium you have at your disposal. And the book is for musicians, but it's really I've had so many people tell me it's just as interesting for non-musicians because it's really about being yourself and being fully human, and being able to um get out of your own way. And, like you said, so many musicians are full of tension, and a lot of us don't even know it. Um, we may know that there's tension there, but we may not know the extent of it. So, you know, become First, the first step is to become more fully aware of what our habits are to interfere with just being ourselves.

Well, [Laughs] in the book, I talk about how this has been a constant refrain in my life, and it was my dad who always used to tell me, "Jennifer, just be yourself." And I had no idea how to do that. I was very, very shy. I really was terrified to speak. I would not get on the phone, let alone say anything from a stage. And interviews like this were terrifying for me. Now, it's fun. [Laughs]

Yes, that helps, too! [Laughs] But still, I actually love to speak from a stage now, and it makes me feel more at ease to connect with an audience now even before I play, uh verbally. When I am myself and I'm at ease within myself, that puts the audience at ease. And when the audience is at ease, then we can just relax and have a good time, which is, you know, really what music is about. It's about communicating and sharing experience.

That's a great example. I mean, like I said, it's really about being yourself. And when you're playing a different composer's music, if I'm playing Beethoven, I need to be fully myself in the sense that I'm open and receptive to allowing things come through me. And so, Beethoven is obviously was obviously a different person with different ideas that were not mine. So, I take them in, if I'm receptive to them, and but then they the ideas are colored by my personal experience. And when I allow Beethoven's ideas to affect me, when I let them in, and I let them move me, and then I let them pass through me, if I don't get in the way of that transmission, if I can be a pure, so to speak, pure channel, basically empty, and letting letting those ideas pass through me, and yet they move me because I'm human, too, then I bring a fresh, new interpretation of Beethoven's music to my audience that in that moment has never been the same before. It's not possible to play the same piece twice—

—at all, ever.

[Laughs] Well, they're wrong. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Actually, define mumbo jumbo first. [Laughs]

No, I understand. A lot of people really just don't know what it is, or they haven't experienced it, or maybe they haven't had a good experience. And that in actually was my the case for me, the first two times that I tried Alexander Technique. And, you know, just like a musician, a violinist isn't going to go to just any other violin teacher. You're not just going to go to, I mean, hopefully, you won't just go to the yellow pages and pick any old violin teacher out of [Laughs] Well, now it's online. I'm saying the yellow pages, they don't even exist anymore, I think. But [Laughs] but basically, what I mean is you need to find the teacher that is right for you, whether you're a musician or you're an Alexander student. Um, and you know, there are a lot of music teachers out of there that are really terrible. And there are, unfortunately, in any profession, there are practitioners of that modality there that really don't know what they're doing. And sadly, the especially the first experience I had was with a teacher, I don't even remember who it was, it was so long ago, but it was a it was a very unpleasant experience. It was a teacher being very critical of how I was walking, how I was moving. She told me everything that she thought was wrong with my hips and the way I held myself and my posture. And I left thinking, "This is ridiculous. I'm not interested in this at all." And then it wasn't until um 10 years or more later when I had another experience. It was a much better experience, but it still wasn't wasn't the right teacher for me. And so, I I wrote it off until a friend of mine told me, "You know, Jennifer, you really have to try this again." I was having neck pain at the time that doctors and chiropractors were not able to help me with. So, my my friend said, "You've just got to try this Alexander Technique one more time. I know you would love it. You just have to right find the right teacher for you." And so, thankfully, I went to one more teacher, and he literally opened up the door, and I saw that it would work. I knew that it would work with this teacher. We just clicked. And my neck pain was gone within the first few lessons. But, again, like I wrote in the book, it it just opened a completely new world for me. I fell in love with life again. I had been pretty unhappy up to that point, and I had the pain, and a lot of things were just really difficult. But within just a few lessons, my perspective on life completely shifted. And um I felt great. I had all this energy that I had never had before, and I was happier. My relationships were improving. It was really pretty miraculous.

Mm.

Fantastic!

Yes.

Well, it really is, I keep saying the same thing, but [Laughs] it really is about becoming more fully human, being more fully yourself. And that includes every aspect of who you are. That's how I understand the Alexander Technique. And I have to say that I teach Alexander Technique in a way that it's different from most people, and I just love what you took away from those lessons, what you just said. [Laughs] Makes me very happy because a lot of people do think Alexander Technique is about posture. And it's not at all about posture. Posture is a really nice, positive side effect that [Laughs] can happen from Alexander lessons, but it really is about learning how to connect the different aspects of yourself and bring them together. It's about self-integration. And I've put my Alexander teaching into a wider holistic context that I call the Art of Freedom method for conscious living and masterful artistry. And this method has five what I call life pillars, and they are purpose, mind, body, spirit, and artistry. So, when you pay attention to purpose, and your mind and your body, and your creative spirit, and then you bring all of that to your activity, it becomes art. So, that's where the artistry comes in. And I've chosen to specialize in sharing this work with musicians. Um actually, I resisted that for a long time. I taught everybody but musicians in the beginning, [Laughs] because I I've been living and breathing music from the moment I was born because I'm a from from a musical family. And so, I had to go through a period of not I wouldn't say rejecting it, but really wanting to step outside of that world. And uh it was a revelation to go into the Alexander Technique world, which was not about music. And my 3-year training to become certified as a teacher was not for musicians. And then when I graduated, I taught firefighters, teachers, journalists, doctors, you know, all kinds of other people, and it made me so happy. I loved I think what I loved about it the most was that everybody who came in the door had their unique problems, but ultimately everybody was exactly the same. You know, we all have a mind, we all have a body, and we all interfere with our natural coordination, and we all put on masks to protect ourselves and hide who we really are unconsciously. So, my job becomes helping a person to see how they are blocking themselves from sharing who they really are in a joyful way.

Yeah.

No, actually I think that's a a massive form of interfering with who you really are, hiding who you really are.

It's really hard to understand. Right. I you know, personally, you know, I have a lot of ideas about this, um and really, for me, it goes into a spiritual way of looking at life and, you know, who we are, Right. which I shied away from talking about for a long time. But when I was writing this book, I couldn't not put that in there because the book really is about me and my work. Um Right. So, there was a point where I got really scared to write [Laughs] this book and to share all that, and then I realized, "Hey, you know what? This is just me." So, here it goes. And, you know, people can take it or leave it.

So, and I I am very far from claiming very far from claiming to have the answers, you know, to your question, but I do have I do wonder about it, and I have some thoughts that I've received from other traditions, you know, various traditions. I am interested in comparative religions, I always have been. I'm most interested in the universal perspective that includes them all because I believe that at the heart of us we are the same. And I think that at the core, at the heart of every religion, every true religion, every spirituality, um we are made for love and beauty and joy, and I do think that that is truly who we are, and we are not separate when we when we are really connected to that true self with capital T and capital S. And that includes a Hitler, as hard as as it is to say. The baby Hitler, as you said. [Laughs]

And I don't know his story, and I wasn't there, thank God. Um but I can only imagine that there must have been really, really horrible, you know, horrific things in his past. And who's to say there weren't past lives, and who's to say karma isn't real? I don't know. But those are ways to explain some of the things that seem unexplainable.

Yes. Save me from this trajectory, Michael. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Actually, there's a funny quote um that I would butcher if I tried to say it exactly, but he talked about it it's it'll all be like a giant cauliflower open- opening up. [Laughs] So, how does it work? You're asking me how the Alexander Technique works.

Yeah, so again, the way I teach it is very different from what other people may come across because I don't use my hands. I don't use touch. I've always been fascinated in how our thoughts influence our bodies and emotions and our movements. And so, the way I help people is to help them notice when they're thinking a certain way, I get them to experiment. What happens to you when you think this way? What happens to your body? What happens to your mood? What happens to your state of being when you think this way? And then when they can start to link up, "Oh, if I think this way..." For example, if I think, "Oh, I hate that person over there." Well, as soon as I started thinking that, my body got tight.

And on on the contrary, if I think, "Oh, I'm on a beach, and I'm with a person I love, and I have no work and no responsibilities, and I'm just happy I don't even have to think," my whole self starts to relax and you know, imagination is a part of it. But really, what what it comes down to in the simplest way that I can say it is what you think is what you get. So, you pretty darn well pay attention [Laughs] to what you're thinking, because most of the time we are we are mindless. We are not paying attention to the millions, billions of thoughts that flit through our minds all day long, and most of them are repetitive. So, we need to become more conscious of the thoughts that we are feeding ourselves and how those thoughts affect us. What does this have to do with a musician? Well, if I just had an argument with somebody and I'm stewing over it, and then I go on stage and I haven't quite left it behind, or even if I think, "Okay, now I need to focus on my music. Um I'm not going to think about that anymore," but the residue of those thoughts are in my body. My body is tight and constricted, and maybe I'm not even aware of it. Then I walk out on stage and, you know, maybe I'm feeling a little more nervous than usual, and I have no idea why. Or maybe I feel really confident like, "I'm going to just destroy the world [Laughs] because I'm this warrior that can handle anything." Either way, I have too much tension in my body.

Then when I bring that to my violin, it's not going to sound as fluid, as responsive, as it's not going to have the subtle nuances that are possible

when I let go of all that. And I'm thinking in ways that are constructive. We call it constructive thinking in the form of Alexander technique that I teach, which actually I should mention is called Primal Alexander. It's a hands-free, touch-free way of teaching, which was developed by my partner, Mio Morales, who has been doing this for more than 50 years now. [Laughs] So, the very practical method that I teach within the Art of Freedom method, which is bigger than that, in the sense that it includes those five life pillars. But the very practical tools, those are Primal Alexander, and we do something called constructive thinking. So, from day one, I teach my students a very simple way to think that instantly has an effect on the whole system, which calms down the nervous system, and then can be repeated to continue calming the nervous system. It's the best way to counter performance anxiety that I've ever come across.

Yes.

Well, we call them awareness études, studies.

Yes, and it's actually very easy. Really quick. You can do it in a moment. Alexander said, "You can change the habit of a lifetime in an instant if you use your brains."

Yes.

No. [Laughs] It's everything but. And we have a good time, so there's a lot of nonsense in there, too. Just to—

Oh, thank you so much, Michael. As always, it's a huge pleasure to speak with you.