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 started going to the gym, which is new for her, and I love it. So when she came in for her monthly Alexander Technique lesson (the one 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 tucked behind that one: eventually bringing the bar up and over to rest on her shoulders for a squat.
That was the question she walked in holding. We spent the whole session on the first half of it, and what we found there has been rattling around in my head ever since, because it applies to singing every bit as much as it applies to the gym.
We picked up a cardboard tube (no weight, just the movement) and started with a different kind of question. What is actually happening here? What is your body doing right now, as you lift?
“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
I see this everywhere, in the voice studio, in AT lessons, and definitely in the gym: we learn a movement as ONE THING. We pick it up, we do it, we put it down, and if there's tension somewhere along the way, or something doesn't feel quite right, we just keep doing the thing. Over and over. And then we add load, and then we add reps, and then we start wondering why our shoulder hurts or why our lower back has started talking to us.
Sound familiar?
But what if we asked a different question first? Can each PART of this movement happen freely, on its own, before we ask it to do the whole job together?
That's exactly what Debbie and I explored.
Just the elbow.
We took the press apart and started with just the elbow, folding and unfolding. We mapped how the joint is designed to move, and spent time observing how when the elbow folded, the hands come up. No lifting involved. The shoulders stayed out of it, the back stayed out of it, and the elbow got to do its one job all by itself.
I know, it sounds almost too simple to bother with. But the moment Debbie slowed down to JUST that movement, she could feel her habit wanting to recruit everything else. Her back and shoulders were jumping in to help before she'd even asked them to, like those eager volunteers who raise their hands before you've finished the question.
Try it right now, wherever you're sitting. Fold your elbow slowly and let it be the only thing that moves. What else wants to join in?
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. The elbow stayed put, and this joint got its turn to move on its own.
This is where things got interesting, because Debbie had never separated these two before. She'd always done them at the same time, which meant neither one was really doing its own job clearly. They'd been blurring together into one big, effortful motion, and the rest of her body had been working hard to make that blur function.
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.
