by Judy Clegg

For most of my life, I thought discomfort was simply part of being an organist. Long rehearsals, multiple services, hours at the console with my arms raised and feet constantly in motion—it all seemed to come with the territory. By the time I reached mid-career, I had accepted neck tension, lower-back pain, and a chronic tightness in my shoulders as the price of doing the work I loved.

What I didn’t expect was how much those habits would begin to interfere with my playing.

I noticed it first in my endurance. Long preludes and postludes left me fatigued far sooner than they used to. My pedaling felt less reliable, especially in fast passages, and I caught myself bracing before difficult registrations or manual changes. The harder I tried to “hold myself together,” the less coordinated I became. Practice sessions turned into battles with my own body.

I came to the Alexander Technique out of curiosity more than desperation. A colleague mentioned it casually, saying it had helped her breathe more easily while singing. I was skeptical. I wasn’t looking for a new posture system or a set of exercises—I had tried plenty of those already. Still, something in her description intrigued me: this was not about fixing the body, but about changing how one uses it.

That distinction turned out to be crucial.

In my first Alexander lesson, I was surprised by how little we talked about the organ at all. Instead, the teacher asked me to notice how I sat, how I stood, and how I initiated even simple movements. I began to see how often I tightened my neck and pulled my head back and down—especially when I was concentrating or anticipating difficulty.

At the organ, that same pattern showed up everywhere. I “locked on” to the manuals with my eyes and neck, compressed my spine as I reached for distant stops, and stiffened my legs in an effort to control the pedals. None of this was conscious. It felt like focus. But it was actually interference.

The Alexander Technique helped me recognize that my conscious mind was doing far more than it needed to. I was micromanaging movements that my nervous system already knew how to coordinate—if I would stop getting in the way. Instead of trying to correct my posture or force myself to relax, I learned to pause, inhibit my usual reactions, and allow a different organization to emerge.

One of the most profound changes was in my sitting. At the console, I had always “set” myself before playing—tightening slightly, pulling myself upright, preparing for action. Through the Technique, I learned that balance is not something you impose; it’s something you allow. When I stopped bracing and let my head balance freely on my spine, sitting required far less effort. My arms felt lighter on the manuals, and my legs moved more independently over the pedals.

Breathing changed too, without my trying to change it. As unnecessary tension dropped away, phrases felt more musical and less forced. I stopped rushing through difficult passages simply to get them over with. There was more time—time to listen, to shape, to respond to the instrument and the acoustic.

Perhaps most importantly, the Alexander Technique altered my relationship to performance. I used to associate concerts and services with a subtle sense of pressure: Don’t make a mistake. Don’t tense up. Hold it together. Those thoughts inevitably led to exactly the problems I was trying to avoid. Learning to think clearly and simply—to choose an intention and trust my unconscious coordination to carry it out—made performing calmer and more reliable.

This work didn’t make me a different organist. It gave me back the one I was before effort and strain crept in unnoticed.

Today, I still practice and perform regularly, but with far greater ease. Pain is no longer my baseline. Difficult repertoire feels challenging rather than overwhelming. And perhaps most gratifying of all, playing the organ once again feels expansive instead of constricted—physically, musically, and mentally.

The Alexander Technique didn’t teach me how to play the organ. It taught me how not to interfere with my ability to play it. For an organist, that has made all the difference for me.

I hope my little article will help other organists, and musicians generally.