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Méthode pédagogique

The teaching is practical and individual. In order to respect each student’s rhythm, the work demanded is determined by his or her personal development. There is one teacher for five students, and all work in a shared space, to develop the quality of observation. 

Our program lasts for three years. Evaluation is ongoing and daily. Evaluation is reinforced by an external moderator halfway through the program and again at the end of training. This moderator visits the school every trimester.

At the end of the third year, the student is able to give private lessons to visitors under the supervision of a teacher.
To obtain the diploma, the student should demonstrate competence in practical skills, and write a thesis.
ETAPP students are prepared to teach in diverse fieldsand across cultures, thanks to their participation and inclusion in events and workshops. To name just a few:
>  the fields of health and sport
> the arts: music, voice, dance, theater and painting
> teaching, therapy, industry and services


Three years at ETAPP will give you the competence to transmit to your students, through touch and verbal instructions, a unique quality of being and of self-expression.

Méthode

Alexandra Fridrici

« J’avais l’impression que ses mains entraient en moi sans qu’aucune couche protectrice puisse lui résister. On me demanda alors de chanter quelque chose, ce que je commençais par refuser puis j’ai fini par me lancer et je n’ai pas compris ce qui m’arrivait. Ma voix venait de partout, toutes les parties de mon corps chantaient, « ça » chantait et je ne maitrisais plus rien ! Le son était rond, plein et puissant, et moi je ne faisais que rendre cela possible en étant on ne peut plus connectée."  (extrait de son mémoire)

Anne

Musician and Actress

«  La confiance et le moyen indirect sont les deux principes essentiels de la pédagogie. Le premier facteur à développer est la confiance, la capacité de s’affranchir du jugement, du « comme il faut ». La recherche de la globalité, c’est aussi chercher à restaurer la dignité de l’homme sans cesse bafouée à toutes les époques de l’histoire. » extrait de son mémoire.

Sébastien

Teacher of the Alexander Technique and of Tango

"(...)The training at ETAPP offers a particularly dynamic structure for learning, and with its diversity of teaching and an international openness, allows its students to acquire tools which they can apply to themselves, and then in turn transmit to others. At a personal level, this training course gave me conscious means to improve my well-being and my performance in all my activities. The Alexander Technique helped me in particular to resolve chronic problems of allergic rhinitis, asthma and bronchitis related to my usage in daily life and at work (...)." "

Véronique

Dancer and Yoga teacher

"Throughout my dance training, my body endured a lot of pressure due to physical and mental habits of a very demanding profession. I began AT training in 2007 and, during these three years, the training allowed me to rebuild myself in my private and professional life. It gave me different tools which helped me to turn a new page in my life and in my work, with a better use of myself and greater serenity."

Colin

Cellist

"I’d like to thank I'd like to thank Odyssée, Christine, and Claire for teaching, as well as their patience and tenacity in getting me through three years of training...Another thank you to Odyssée for the training course itself: I've had the opportunity to visit a other Alexander schools, and I honestly think that, going back three years and putting all geographical considerations aside, I'd still choose to do my training here. I find that the opportunity to work with so many outside teachers and the liberty I've had to experiment as a student have contributed to an understanding of the Alexander Technique that I don't think I would have had otherwise."

Sylvie

retired French teacher

« Pour moi la TA est dans tout et tout est dans la TA ! La démarche d’Alexander s’est construite sur une intuition géniale qu’il a suivie sans se décourager malgré les échecs et les impasses.Le récit de ses erreurs ne nous empêche pas de commettre les mêmes. l’école privilégie l’esprit d’ouverture et d’aventure. Les visiteurs  du monde de la TA et d’ailleurs sont nombreux. Cela est parfois perturbant mais le goût de la découverte et du risque préserve de l’enfermement dans une doctrine étriquée et sectaire ou dans un ronron trop rassurant. La TA, dans ses principes universels nous questionne, nous déstabilise, nous transforme, jusqu’au jour où elle nous permet de nous accorder, de nous syntoniser ! » (extrait de son mémoire)

Joëlle

Comedian and Teacher of the Alexander Technique

"(...) The day I began my training, I didn’t know if I’d have the financial means to complete all three years, but I told myself that year by year, things would work out. And indeed it worked out! Or, at least during 3 years, I learned to let things work themselves out. I was lucky to have worked with two directors: first, Astrid Cox for a year and a half. I loved her way of trusting you, her generosity, her smile and her teaching. Then Odyssée arrived, and I loved the rigor, the cheer, and her occasionally caustic remarks which forced me to develop my inhibition (I think it’s part of her way of teaching us). She opened the school to other horizons, and all changes are welcome because they require an adaptation which, for me, is part of a teacher’s training. I learned a great deal with Odyssée; she accompanies the student toward herself, to re-think herself in a different way. The changes that the technique affects in us are destabilizing and as students we need someone who are capable of accepting these disequilibriums. I had the joy of being in the presence of people of quality during my training. Great thanks, again, to Odyssée."
 

Katri-Mari

Alexander Technique teacher

"I started studying the Alexander Technique 20 years ago because it made people beautiful. They all had this radiant air about them. Since then, I’ve realized there’s much more to the technique than that! The technique connects me with my true nature, and keeps surprising me with so many possibilities, as it continuously reveals more layers of our existence. During my post-graduate course at ETAPP, the richness of the teaching, and the diversity of viewpoints, has allowed me to deepen and widen my understanding of the Alexander Technique, of myself and my way of teaching. My post-graduate term in Odyssées school has been a great joy."

Jenny

"It’s really a super school and I’m very happy to have finished my training here. It’s true that there are a lot of different teachers, and if you are sensitive that can be difficult, but it’s also a great advantage, because you have to find your own path, and the teachers invite us to do that, stimulating us to grow."

Ulysse

Pianist

My first visit to ETAPP
"I arrived at school one Spring morning, just in time for tea, which took place in a kitchen upstairs from the main work room. I felt a bit shy as I took a seat at a long wooden table, facing a dozen strangers, but the the others were friendly and put me at ease.
They each introduced themselves in turn. The disparate group included an actress, a pianist, a singer, an art dealer, a tango instructor, an English teacher, even a woman who trained aircraft pilots... They asked me questions-- how had I come to discover the Technique? How had my lessons changed me? I ended up mimicking how I used to play the piano, my head bobbing forward and back in an attempt to be “expressive”-- and how now, after a series of lessons, I played more upright, with greater sense of groundedness. We drank mugs of hot tea and munched on bread and cheese, apple slices, and crunchy biscuits.

After an efficient, collective tidying-up, we got down to work. I watched as the trainees broke off into pairs by some unspoken process and began working. There was conversation and occasional laughter, but overall the atmosphere was calm and meditative. Odyssée, the director of the school, asked two of the three-year students to give me mini-lessons.
Colin had a solid touch, which made me think of Tai Chi push-hands. After guiding me from standing to sitting a few times, he said he’d observed that I was bending at the waist each time I got in and out of the chair. Did I notice that I was disconnecting my pelvis from the rest of my back? To illustrate, he held up his hand and flapped it back and forth from the wrist, like a floppy fishtail. That was roughly analogous to what I was doing with my pelvis. It took me a few more cycles of standing and sitting before I even noticed what I was doing. And then Colin went one step further and asked me to inhibit that pelvic tilt. His reason was: why ask the lower back to bend, when the same movement goal could be achieved byusing the much more naturally “bendy” joints of the hips, knees and ankles?
The rationale made sense to me, but it was surprisingly difficult to stop doing something so familiar to me. I laughed many times as I tried and failed to inhibit my pelvic flop, before finally getting something that satisfied us both. This work was very absorbing and time went by quickly.
Now it was time for a mini-lesson with Sebastien. I was surprised by how different his style was. His voice and touch were very gentle, coaxing. A film title popped into my mind: “The Horse Whisperer.” With his hands at my waist, he asked me to imagine the floor rising up through my legs. I felt my legs grow long, like tree trunks. Placing his hands on my ribcage, Sebastien then invited me to imagine that my thorax was floating up, lifted by helium balloons under my elbows. I felt my entire body expand and grow light. It was as if my consciousness could flow unimpeded into every part of my body. I was intrigued that two people could train for years under the same professors, amongst the same classmates, and still develop such contrasting teaching styles (or at least employ such different styles in their first lesson with me). With Colin there was a playful challenge of observing my habits and seeing to what extent I could be free of them: The problem-solving, or rational-, model, I’ve come to think of it. With Sebastien, the lesson was more like zen meditation, or a dance, in which he was the choreographer and I the dancer-- a dancer surprised to receive a sudden boost in grace, ease and fluidity: The experiential- or aesthetic- model, I like to call it: or, Alexander Technique practiced just for the beauty of the experience.

Both approaches were compelling. I sensed that there was a common element underlying these two approaches, but this common element was mysterious, hard to define. This intrigued me, too.
Later that very day, back at home, I sent an e-mail to the school, asking to be admitted to the training program. » 

Benoit

Ingénieur

"(...) I’m 37, work as an engineer in demanding and often stressful contexts. After a year and four months of AT, I can see the results, in my posture at work (my initial reason to come to AT), but more than just that. The technique allowed me to notice progressively, to what extent my body could function better in many circumstances and many contexts. To put it roughly, my body was folded, hunched under the stress and work, sitting at a desk in front of a computer, since my student years. Even my voice was muffled by tensions in my neck, and it was during AT lessons that revealed my true voice, that I first became aware of this simple fact. I suffered from chronic tendinitis in my wrist because of working with a computer mouse, but now this tendinitis is gone(...)"
 

Clément Deboever

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 «  A l’ETAPP, en pratiquant la technique, il m’est possible d’accéder à un autre espace-temps tout d’abord inconnu puis familier, à une terre que je défriche sans cesse avec étonnement, en réalisant que je l’habite et qu’elle est bien différente de celle que je me destinais. La technique me réjouit par sa simplicité, sa profondeur, sa densité. Je peux me détacher de l’espace-temps qui m’était imposé par l’environnement, mes conceptions et mes habitudes. Je me surprends petit à petit à interagir avec une pulsation d’un autre ordre, calme, bienveillante, toujours en mouvement. En faisant corps avec cette pulsation, la peur s’éloigne, le passé et le futur ne sont plus des freins, l’expansion est la permanence »

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