Annie Robinson : Alexander Technique Teacher
I began studying singing formally at the age of 23. Having sung mostly pop and folk, I was quite surprised when my singing teacher asked me to sing Mozart, and I found I really enjoyed it!  I completed a degree in music and Italian language at La Trobe University in 1989. By then I had arrived at a point where my musicality and my will to sing were insufficient in giving me the freedom that I needed to sing. Quite the opposite was occurring - the harder I tried, the worse my singing seemed to get. I began to struggle to breathe, I began to experience stage fright for the first time, and to lose the joy in singing I had taken for granted. When I attended a lecture on the Alexander Technique given by Vivien Mackie, a London-based teacher and cellist who was visiting Melbourne, I gained a profound insight into why I should be struggling so much with something I had once found so easy. Vivien demonstrated to me how what I had been doing with myself in order to sing was precisely what was stopping me from singing- I was unconsciously pulling my head back and down, stiffening my whole ribcage and depressing my larynx. She was able in a few minutes to prevent me from doing these things and thus enable my voice to come out unimpeded by my habit. This experience was so dramatic I decided that this was something I had to find out more about. I began my training to be an Alexander Technique teacher in 1990, at a three-year full-time course run by Vivien in Melbourne, which was designed specifically for musicians and music teachers.
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