FREE LIVE SESSION — Every Third Tuesday
We Inherited a Cage:
What the Body Does When the Demand Arrives
A free monthly session for music educators, studio teachers, and performing arts faculty.
Every third Tuesday · 4:00 PM PT / 7:00 PM ET · 60 Minutes · Free · Online via Zoom
We spend years learning to teach and play the instrument.
The bow arm.
The breath.
The phrase.
The embouchure.
The articulation.
We develop language for all of it. We refine our ear. We build our pedagogical vocabulary over decades of teaching and learning.
And almost none of that training addresses the body the student brings into the room before a single note is asked for.
Every student arrives already organized. Already predicting what this kind of moment will require. Already shaped by every previous experience of what it has meant to be evaluated, to succeed or fail, to belong or not belong in rooms like this one.
That organization is already shaping their coordination, their breath, their attention, and their capacity to receive what we are offering, before we have said a word.
Most of what we call pedagogical problems, the patterns that return no matter how clearly we explain, the corrections that don't hold, the students who seem to understand but cannot apply, originate there. In the organizing context that precedes performance. At the point of origin that most teaching never reaches.
This session is an introduction to a framework that works there.
WHAT THIS SESSION OFFERS
The Becoming mBODYed Method draws on Alexander Technique, Body Mapping, predictive processing neuroscience, and belonging as a physiological condition. It is a framework for working with the body before performance begins, not during it.
This session explores what happens when performance, evaluation, responsibility, and belonging begin shaping how we organize ourselves before the work even begins.
We will work with one practical concept drawn from Body Mapping and The Alexander Technique. You will experience that idea in your own body, in real time, and notice what becomes available when effort no longer has to do all the organizing.
You will leave with a different question about what students are bringing into the room before instruction begins.
WHO THIS SESSION IS FOR
This session is for music educators, studio teachers, performing arts faculty, and arts administrators who want to understand how the body organizes before performance begins, and what becomes possible when teaching starts there.
For those new to Alexander Technique and Body Mapping, you will leave with a clear sense of what these frameworks are and why they matter in the studio and classroom.
For experienced AT and Body Mapping teachers, this session offers a chance to explore territory these traditions have not always fully articulated.
ABOUT SHAWN L. COPELAND
Shawn L. Copeland, DMA, is the founder of mBODYed and the originator of the Becoming mBODYed Method. He is a certified Alexander Technique teacher, a published Body Mapping educator, and an ISMETA-recognized somatic practitioner. His lineage runs from F.M. Alexander through Marjorie Barstow through Marsha Paludan. He trained directly with William Conable, co-developer of Body Mapping for musicians, who remains his active mentor. He has published Body Mapping for Clarinetists through GIA Publications and has taught this work at the institutional level for more than twenty years. He communicates from within the field, not above it or outside it.
Learn more about the Becoming mBODYed Method
RESERVE YOUR PLACE
Tuesday, June 16 · 4:00 PM PT / 7:00 PM ET · 60 Minutes · Free · Online via Zoom
Reserve your place for June 16 →
The Zoom link will be sent to all registrants before the session. A recording will be available to all registrants after.