The Alexander Technique: What it is, what it isn’t, and what it might do for you — from a teacher in Berlin

Most people who end up in my studio didn’t come looking for the Alexander Technique. They came because their back hurt. Or their neck. Or they’d been to physiotherapy, tried massage, done yoga, and something still wasn’t right. They arrived a little skeptical and a little desperate — and that’s completely fine. I was too, the first time I encountered this work.

Many of my students first came to me for yoga or meditation — and discovered the Alexander Technique along the way.

So what is the Alexander Technique?

The Alexander Technique is a method of re-education — not exercise, not therapy, not massage — that helps you notice and change the habitual ways you use your body. The ways you sit, stand, walk, reach, type, breathe. Most of us have accumulated years of patterns that quietly create tension and pain without us ever realising it. The Alexander Technique makes those patterns visible, and then gives you the tools to change them — not by forcing your body into a different shape, but by learning to get out of your own way.

What actually happens in a session?

Alexander Technik in Berlin

The first session often surprises people. There are no exercises to follow, no poses to hold. We talk, we move through ordinary everyday movements — sitting down, standing up, walking across the room — and I use gentle hands-on guidance to help you feel the difference between your habitual way of doing something and a freer, easier way.We also spend time on the table — lying down fully clothed, in what might look like rest but is anything but. It’s often in this stillness that the body reveals its most persistent habits, and where the deepest releasing happens. It’s subtle. And then it isn’t.

What my students say

One of my students, Avital, described it like this after her ten sessions: “It sounds like magic, I know. It is not. It is a lot of mindfulness in moments when we are usually on autopilot.” That’s probably the most accurate description I’ve ever heard.

Then there’s Gareth, who came because of chronic tension in his shoulder and neck from working at a computer. After a few months, the pain in his shoulder was gone. So was the pain that had been running from his hip to his ankle for years. “My overall body awareness is much better,” he told me, “and I am hardly stressed anymore.”

Katherine came to me with lower back pain from her work in preschools — spending her days sitting in tiny children’s chairs, constantly up and down. What she found through Alexander Technique surprised her: “When I sit at the rowdy lunch table with a bunch of kids, I can think ‘back is back’ and release my lower back.” Simple cues, available to her in the middle of a chaotic working day. That’s the whole point.

And most recently, Tom came to me with his cello. He had developed some bad habits that were creating shoulder tension — something many musicians know well. He found it helpful, he told me, “to find a teacher in Berlin who was willing to help instrumentalists.” Within the first session we had identified the pattern and found new ways of practising that allowed easier, more natural movement to emerge. The technique doesn’t care whether you’re sitting at a desk or playing Bach — it goes wherever your body goes.

Why Alexander Technique is different

These are not unusual stories. They are, in my experience, quite typical.

What makes the Alexander Technique different from other approaches is that it doesn’t treat symptoms in isolation. It looks at the whole person — how you organise yourself, how you respond to stress, how your habits of movement ripple through everything you do. A session with me in Berlin will always begin with curiosity rather than correction. I am not here to fix you. I am here to help you notice what you are already doing, and to offer you a choice you didn’t know you had.

Alexander Technique lessons in Berlin — in English

I teach Alexander Technique in English in Kreuzberg, Berlin — though German works too if that feels more comfortable. Sessions are one to one, 50 minutes, and most people find that a course of sessions works better than a single visit, since the real learning happens in the space between lessons, in your daily life, as the technique quietly becomes part of how you move through the world. 🧅

If any of this sounds like something your body has been waiting for, you’re welcome to get in touch.

About the teacher:

Pinelopi began her yoga journey in 1999 and founded English Yoga Berlin in 2010. She holds a 600-hour Hatha Yoga Teacher Training and completed a 1,600-hour Alexander Technique Teacher Training in 2023 under Jörg Aßhoff — one of the most intensive trainings of its kind.

She has studied Yoga Anatomy with Leslie Kaminoff, trauma-informed practice with Legacy Motion and Linda Thai, and ways of applying Internal Family Systems for Social Transformation with Steffi Bednarek. Her meditation work is deeply inspired by Tara Brach and the RAIN technique, which she brought to life in Magic of Rain — the first children’s book on RAIN meditation, with a foreword by Tara Brach herself, to be published in 2026 by Books That Save Lives.

She teaches because she believes it is not what you do in life, but how you do it that matters.

New Year Yoga Standing Sequence

Happy New Year! And welcome to the start of a new decade!

As a thank you for your participation and your readership, we offer you this new year’s yoga standing sequence – asanas you can do anywhere, while you’re on the go, while you’re waiting in line for the Silvester party, or simply for a night in of self-reflection and evaluation. Each pose is accompanied by a question to help guide your process of letting go of what you want to leave behind and make room for what the new decade brings. Enjoy!

tadasana

Mountain Pose:
What is my support / foundation?

chi yoga

Golden Rooster:
What can I peacefully confront?

warrior1

Warrior I :
What are my­­ obstacles?

revolved side angle

Twisted / Revolved Side Angle:
What can I let go of?

warrior2Warrior II:
How can I prepare for surprises?
inverted warriorInverted Warrior:
What are the oppositional forces I encounter?
extended side angleExtended Side Angle:
Where can I find leverage?
forward foldWide-legged Forward Fold:
How do things look from another perspective?
warrior3Warrior III:
How to balance in the face of resistance?
dancer2Dancer:
Can I reach higher?
balanceBalance:
In what ways can I leave my comfort zone?
surrenderSurrender:
In what ways can I give in or let go?

At English Yoga Berlin, we offer Hatha Yoga classes with Pinelopi and Vinyasa yoga with Juli. Our yoga Kreuzberg Berlin classes are open for and welcome to beginners, people struggling with chronic pain. We also offer Berlin business yoga, and private yoga classes, as well as queer and trans prioritized community classes.

Thinking about leaving a yoga class?

Leaving a yoga class

Contemporary western Post-Krishnamacharya yoga claims to be about self-care, so when something’s feeling not right in a yoga class, a participant may take the initiative to leave in the middle of it. In a large yoga class, at a fitness studio for example, where there are many participants crammed into a big space, it may hardly be noticeable. But when it’s in a small room with fewer participants, it could cause a disruption of the community atmosphere that the teacher is trying to create.

Yoga as community

When choosing to attend a yoga class, one is choosing to be led by an experienced teacher in a shared space with other participants. This creates a temporary community yoga experience, if not one over a longer time when practicing with the same people week after week. A yoga teacher attempts to create a shared experience for that group of participants that invites each of them to practice finding balance in mind and body in a room with other people. Feeling part of that community contributes to that balance. The yoga teacher’s job is to not only lead the yoga practice, but to also create a balanced and safe(r) community experience. If someone leaves the class, it can not only create a disruption, but may also signal that a disruption has already occurred.

Creating a safe(r) space

Most yoga teachers have experienced a participant leaving their class at least once in their teaching, and can understand that a person is just taking care and honouring their own needs in the moment. But if it happens regularly, it might be a good idea to check-in and evaluate teaching methods – perhaps asking for feedback from participants, especially from those who have left a class, or upgrading teaching skills.

What is it a teacher can improve upon in creating an environment where participants feel safe, seen and respected?

For every community, what that looks like could be different. At English Yoga Berlin, we’re committed to the practice of Ahimsa (non-harming) and injury-conscious yoga. At our space, we’ve put up a sign of guidelines for a safer space, and provide consent cards for permission to be touched during the class. What are other ways of doing this? We’d be happy to hear about your strategies in the comments below.

Self-care

When a participant leaves a yoga class, they’ve most likely gone through a thought process to decide whether it’s the best thing for them to do in the moment. They’ve made the time for themselves, and have likely already paid for the class, in order to practice self-reflection and self-care. And what they realize in those first moments of the class, is that whatever they’re doing is not helping them achieve that. It could be that the community is not right for them, or something happened or didn’t in order for them to feel safe, or they felt harmed in one way or another.

I, myself, have left a meditation class once because a fellow participant was behaving in a sexist manner towards me and the teacher did nothing to stop it. I felt directly harmed by the environment created in the room and would not be able to stay through the whole class without continuing to be harmed. This was a weekly class that I had been attending for a long time, and it was offering me relief from my struggle with endometriosis. I felt that my healing process was disrupted by this guy’s behaviour and the fact that the teacher just brushed it off. I couldn’t go back. If I’d thought there was something I could learn from this experience, I might’ve stayed. After having just finished the Svastha Yoga Therapy advanced teacher training program, I’ve learned a lot about sitting through discomfort and examining my own participation in it. In this case, what I could’ve learned was to gather more strength and resilience against sexism. But I also wanted to show to people (him and the teacher) that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable and I will not tolerate it. No need to be a doormat!

Fight or Flight?

Yoga teaches us about balance, and how we react to behaviour in ourselves and in others around us. Sometimes the best way to learn about ourselves is to feel discomfort, to dive into those feelings of unknown territory. If we are resilient enough in the moment to do so, we can come out of that experience transformed. But if we flee too soon without examining what it is about a certain experience that bothers us, it might show us that we are afraid to address this part of ourselves that has taken us here. The amygdala, which governs our fight-or-flight response through the vagus nerve, is designed to be over-active, urging us to flee or be on guard at the slightest hint of danger. It’s a great instinct that was designed into the human structure when we needed to be on the constant look-out for predators. Yes, there are dangers in our current world – and for some of us those are real and life-threatening. But when we haven’t fully addressed those dangers, when we repress them, or don’t have the means to recover from them, then everything that reminds us of them will trigger the vagus nerve, even when those dangers are no longer there. If we continue to flee when that response comes up, we will never recover. The only way to do so, is to meet with it, understand it, and move through it. Self-care isn’t about taking care of immediate gratifying desires, but about knowing when to guide oneself through uncomfortable moments in order to expand one’s understanding of themselves and their interactions with the world.

We at English Yoga Berlin offer Hatha Yoga classes with Pinelopi and Vinyasa flow yoga with Juli.  Our yoga Kreuzberg Berlin classes are open for and welcome to beginners. We also offer Berlin business yoga, pregnancy yoga, and private yoga classes, including for people struggling with chronic pain.”

Queer Yoga takes a break

This Wednesday August 17th is the last Queer Yoga Flow class of the summer season. It has been nice to see the community grow, but now it is time for a break.

queer yoga

community yoga in berlin

Queer Yoga prioritizes a space for queer and trans* folk. Allies and other misfits are welcome.

Read more about Queer* Yoga.

Juli‘s Sunday 4pm classes continue without a break, but with substitutions by 3 different teachers in 3 different styles. Here’s your chance to check out some of the other yoga teachers in our Berlin yoga community!

* August 28: Kanchi – Body Positive Yoga
* Sept. 4: Pedro – Tantric Yoga
* Sept. 11: Pinelopi – injury-conscious Hatha Yoga

All of Juli’s classes (including the classes by the substitute teachers) are available to low- / no-income people at a sliding-scale reduced rate. Read more about our community classes and payment options for low-income students.

Juli’s approach to vinyasa flow is slow and injury-conscious, including postures and techniques learned from the Svastha Yoga Therapy teacher training program that support the body in healing injuries, chronic pain and illnesses. Last winter, Juli offered a 6-week series of workshops based specifically on these trainings. And will begin a new course in winter 2016-17. Stay tuned for more info!

Juli’s aim is to make a class comfortable for those who feel marginalized in other classes but still want to discover the yoga benefits. You are invited to join Juli in creating an atmosphere of alliedness by recognizing our privileges and creating space for others (queers, transfolks, sex-workers, b&pocs, differently abled, abundant bodied, low/no-income).