The Edinburgh Alexander Training School (EATS) provides comprehensive training in the Alexander Technique. We offer Professional training to become a STAT-certified Alexander teacher, and we also offer a Foundation course.
If you undertake the full course you will be trained in all aspects needed to become a competent, confident, creative, thoughtful and considerate Alexander teacher, and you will gain a life-transforming professional qualification. Whichever course you choose, we want to provide the best Alexander training possible – enabling you to deepen your Alexander understanding and skills to enrich your life and find greater resilience, poise and joy. You are likely to enjoy some profound mind-body (physical, mental and emotional) changes during the training as you begin to embody Alexander principles and skills.
You will benefit from working in a small group setting with a highly skilled training team and a low student-to-trainer ratio (usually around 3-to-1 and never more than than the STAT standard level of 5-to-1). At EATS our ethos is:
- Supportive: creating an encouraging and affirmative environment for learning through collaborative exploration
- Enquiring: discussion and critical thinking an essential core of the training, facilitated through the course structure
- Comprehensive: covering all aspects needed to produce a successful Alexander teacher additional to the core Alexander hands-on skills and understanding – including different learning and teaching styles; setting up a business and marketing skills
- Fun: exploratory and playful approach to teaching and learning
- Empowering: within a solid teaching framework, students are encouraged to develop their own understanding, styles and approaches
- Transformative and life enhancing: ask any Alexander teacher about their training and they’ll tell you what a huge positive impact it has had on their life
- Collaborative: based on feminist principles of inclusivity, mutual respect and collective, as well as personal, responsibility
- Diverse and inclusive: EATS thrives on a diversity of individual perspectives and contributions to the collective learning space. We seek an inclusive approach, welcoming students and teachers from different backgrounds and life experiences, encompassing (but not limited to) race, class, gender identity, sexuality, age, mental and physical health, pregnancy and carer role
- Wide ranging and rich: many different teaching styles and perspectives come from a diverse training team that includes senior visiting teachers from throughout the UK
- Outward looking: engaging with other disciplines where relevant, for example, neuroscience, myofascial integration, biomechanics, other mindful movement-based practices, and trauma therapies
- Principle and evidence based: teaching based on the fundamental principles of the Alexander Technique supported by the available research, as well as anatomy and physiology
- Openness and inquisitiveness: non-mainstream ideas and influences will be explored wherever this can contribute to understanding
- Rigorous: robust, standardised assessment method for certification. On an ongoing basis, students will be required to actively engage and commit to their own development (on a practical level this includes projects being completed and any missed time made up)
- Professional: In addition to ‘learning by osmosis’ from the professional culture of the course, there will be specific training around codes of conduct, CNHC, running a practice etc. Students are encouraged to think widely about what they can contribute during and after the training – to STAT and to the wider profession of Alexander teaching
- Continuous and Ongoing: graduates are encouraged to continue to visit the school on a regular basis to gain experience as a teacher until they feel sufficiently established. A mentoring system provides each graduate with an experienced teacher who they can call on for ongoing advice and support.