The Muscle That Said "Never Mind"
What one Alexander Technique session revealed about how your body already knows how to lift
One of my Embodied Voice members has been going to the gym lately. New for her. And in her monthly Alexander Technique lesson — the one that comes built right into her tuition, alongside her voice work — she asked if we could explore the overhead press she'd been practicing.
She wanted to get it right. And she had a bigger goal in mind: eventually bringing the bar up and over, to rest on her shoulders for a squat. She came in holding that question.
We never got there. And that's exactly the point.
We picked up a cardboard tube — no weight, just the movement — and we started asking a different set of questions. Not "am I doing it right?" but "what is actually happening here?"
What we found? It applies to lifting, to singing, and to just about everything in between.
"Movement habits feel like form. They feel correct because they're familiar. And the more you practice them, the more invisible they become."
〰️
"Movement habits feel like form. They feel correct because they're familiar. And the more you practice them, the more invisible they become." 〰️
The thing we always do
Here's what I notice — in the voice studio, in AT lessons, in the gym and out of it: we learn a movement as ONE THING.
Pick it up, do it, put it down. Done.
And if there's tension somewhere? If something doesn't feel quite right? We just... keep doing the thing. Over and over. Now under load. Now with more reps. Now wondering why our shoulder hurts or our lower back is talking to us.
What if, instead, we asked: can each PART of this movement happen freely — on its own — before we ask it to do the whole job?
That's what we explored.
Just the elbow. That's it.
We took the press apart. First: just the elbow. Folding back. Unfolding. Like a drawer sliding in and out.
Nothing else moving. No shoulders joining the party. No back "helping."
It sounds almost too simple to bother with. But when Debbie slowed down to JUST that movement, she noticed her habit immediately wanted to recruit everything else. The back. The shoulders. All in, before she even asked them to be.
Can you let just one part move? Just that part?
Try it right now — fold your elbow slowly, with nothing else joining in. Notice what else shows up uninvited.
Then the joint at the top of the arm
Next, we found the joint where the arm meets the body — the one that lets the upper arm rotate, separate from the elbow. Elbow stays put. This joint moves on its own.
Another piece. Another "just this, nothing else."
And here's where the real discovery started to happen — because Debbie had never separated these two before. She'd been doing them simultaneously, which meant neither one was doing its actual job clearly. They were blurring together into one big effortful motion.
And then we put it back together
Once each piece had been felt on its own, we let them work together. Elbow unfolding while the shoulder joint did its thing. At the same time. As one coordinated movement.
Debbie described her range of motion before and after like this:
"What I was doing before felt like I only needed the space the size of my head. But this — it's the whole circumference. From hand to hand, the whole arm structure. Broader. More expansive."
Same movement. Same goal. Completely different felt sense of space.
And then — the moment that stopped me in my tracks.
I invited her to notice what her lats were doing as the bar went up. She paused.
"They just released," she said. "Like, 'oh — never mind. We're not needed here.'"
I love that so much. Never mind. We're not needed here.
Because here's what was actually happening: when Debbie's body had been trying to combine all the movements at once — to do everything simultaneously — her lats were working overtime to compensate for the confusion. They were bracing and stabilizing and assisting in ways that were genuinely unnecessary, because the whole system was in a kind of low-level overdrive.
But once each joint was invited to do its own specific job, in sequence, the lats could finally look around and go — oh. We're fine. This is handled.
Oh — and you're not a Barbie doll
Here's a fun one. Most of us picture the shoulder as a simple ball in a socket. Rotates. Done. Like a doll's arm.
It's not that.
When you lift your arm overhead, your collarbone moves too — at the joint where it meets your breastbone. And your shoulder blade is sliding and rotating on your back, the whole time, whether you can feel it directly or not.
Three bones. Multiple joints. All moving together. THAT'S what "lifting your arm" actually is.
Want to feel it? Let’s do a quick bit of Body-Mapping:
Put the fingers of your right hand on your left collarbone, near your breastbone. Slowly raise your left arm. Notice the collarbone shift?
This is why simplifying matters so much. When one part of that whole system isn't moving freely, something else compensates — usually with extra effort in a place that doesn't need it.
We didn't get to the squat. And that's alright.
Debbie originally came in wanting to work toward the full barbell squat. We spent the whole session on the press.
Because if the press isn't coordinated — if the joints haven't found their own jobs — adding more (more weight, more complexity, more steps) just means practicing the same inefficiency with higher stakes.
By the end of the session, she said something I keep turning over:
"I'm just adding trust back into my frame. I can trust that my structure can handle this — as long as I'm not combining too many things together."
Trust your structure. What a thing to arrive at.
Not because you've finally mastered the technique. But because you've gotten curious enough — and still enough — to feel that your body already knows how to do this. The design is sound. The joints are designed to hinge. The muscles work efficiently when they're not being recruited to fix a problem that movement clarity already solved.
Try it yourself
You don't need a barbell. A broomstick works. A cardboard tube works. Even just your hands clasped together works.
Fold and unfold just your elbow — what else shows up?
Then just the joint at the top of your arm — elbow staying still
Put your fingers on your collarbone and reach overhead — notice it move?
Now let them all work together — slowly
What do you notice?
This is what an Alexander Technique lesson looks like — even when the topic is something new, like a trip to the gym. The work isn't about singing, or lifting, or any one activity. It's about HOW you show up inside whatever you're doing.
If you're curious what this kind of exploration might look like for you — in your singing, your workouts, or just your everyday body — I'd love to talk.
Amy Mushall is a certified Alexander Technique teacher and the founder of Your Instrumental Body in Colorado Springs. She works with singers, performers, and movement-curious humans through private lessons, group classes, and her Embodied Voice membership. Learn more at yourinstrumentalbody.com.
