[Tango-L] Head Tilt

[Trini y Sean (PATangoS)]

--- On Tue, 4/21/09, larrynla at juno.com <larrynla at juno.com> wrote:

> All of this is leading up to this question: How do we learn
> not to tilt our heads?  And: Do we need to look down?  If so: When? 
> And if not, How do we learn not to?

My Alexander Technique teacher has been very helpful with this.  She teaches us that the head should be free as it sits on top of the neck, sort of like a bobblehead doll.  The problem for most is that they cannot separate the movement of the head from the movement of the neck.  

The bones that the skull sits on are curved to allow the head to glide forward and backwards. If you finger the back of your neck upwards until find where the skull sits on top of the neck, you'll realize how far up the skull sits and where it moves from.  The problem is that many people engage too many neck muscles when trying to just tilt their head. If people relax their neck, they can move their head quite freely.

To help people get the feeling of this, she uses both hands, placing her thumbs on either side of the chin and the tips of her other fingers lightly behind the ears.  She then simply glides the head back & forth and then side-to-side.  She does the moving of the head while the student concentrates on relaxing the neck muscles.  The feeling of having a free head is so clear, that it's actually pretty easy to correct oneself later.  I am able to help student myself using this same technique.

So, it's not the tilting itself that's the problem.  It's HOW one tilts the head.

Trini de Pittsburgh