A conversation with Hailey McAvoy on cerebral palsy, somatic education, and the Alexander Technique
First, a reminder that there are only 11 days left to register for the upcoming 12 week Cranial Nerve Sequencing course that starts September 12. I’m so excited to be diving into this blissful material again with a new cohort of intrepid explorers!
And now, for this weeks thoughts.
I’ve learned how important self-agency is over the years from somatic educators, therapists, and students – and from my own teachers. All of us are bravely navigating the intersection of science, healing, and lived experience.
As practitioners, we learn to trust our forms, and our instincts. We take calculated risks in helping each individual student or client we meet.
In our role as practitioners, we can experiment and learn in ways that are not available to researchers and scientists. Our experience matters just as much as scientific studies, but it’s hard to find places where these two realms intersect and can inform each other.
Up to now, I hadn’t realized how needed conversations about this are for my audience. I didn’t realize how shy people are to discuss these things openly, in public, with colleagues and critics looking on.
That’s why I’m double thrilled to share this conversation with Hailey McAvoy, mezzo-soprano, disability advocate, and Alexander Technique teacher-in-training! Hailey and I first met in the lobby at Balance Arts Center, where I teach private lessons in Manhattan, and we hit it off right away.
Our conversation deepened recently on a FB thread about polyvagal theory where colleagues were discussing the potential for pseudoscience to cause harm. Hailey piped in to say that, in her life, science-based treatment has also caused harm – even if it also had benefits.
I see both sides of the quandary. There are no easy answers, but there are many somatic explorers out here on the learning edge, trying to find what works! Healing wisdom comes hard-won, after years of trial, error, and, as Hailey describes, not always fitting into prescribed molds. It’s often not in “the books.”
I hope you will enjoy the conversation (just click the image above for the video), and make use of a few insights from our conversation.
- Lead with Curiosity, Not Assumptions
Students and practitioners alike have learned to scan for what’s “wrong,”particularly when a difference between us and some normative ideal is obvious. But as Hailey recounts, the simple fact of her first Alexander Technique teacher asking “How does that feel to you?” instead of, “Can you walk straighter?” opened a whole new world of possibilities.
When you meet someone (yourself included) with curiosity rather than prescription, possibilities for positive transformation multiply.
- Agency and Self-Feeling Matters More Than Appearance
When we focus – or are encouraged to focus – on how things look from the outside, we sideline agency and inner experience. This experience can be tripled by medical treatment and social realities for disabled people! The reality is, for some it makes life easier at certain points to preference fitting in, especially when you are a child and depend on all the adults around you.
Hailey chose to step away from painful, appearance-driven interventions and towards practices that honored her sensations and intuitions. We all know that wellbeing flows from honoring our individual lived reality, not chasing external approval; but it’s easier said than done to step away! How can we change this in our professions?
- “Doing Less” Can Be Revolutionary
It’s a common refrain in somatic worlds, but bears repeating. Many of us (especially those with disabilities or in high-pressure environments) have been taught to overwork, compensate, and “try harder” even to our own detriment. Hailey describes the freedom that came when she was allowed (and encouraged) to do less, to allow instead of force. The gentle path unlocked more transformation than decades of pushing.
- Integration Takes Time—Honor the Pace
Slowing down is not a flaw; it’s a superpower. Pausing, breathing, taking in the bigger picture – these are all life skills necessary for thriving and success.
For Hailey, extending her Alexander Technique training timeline was crucial. Integration required time, patience, and self-compassion. If your process (or your client’s) seems slow, trust that pacing is wisdom.
- Your Intuition is a Compass—Use It
Hailey’s advice for anyone on a healing or learning journey: make space for quiet, for inner listening, for your own sense of what’s right. Even in the face of established authorities and powerful systems, your intuition is a vital tool. As she put it: “It was without a doubt my own deep intuition that led me to Alexander Technique and … for the first time I can see an upswing coming my way.” Don’t overlook your own quiet, insistent knowing.
Medical Paradigms Meet Somatic Curiosity
A pivotal point in the conversation is the introduction of Leonid Blyum’s (pronounced “bloom”) Advanced Bio-mechanical Rehabilitation, which reframes cerebral palsy not merely as a collection of misfiring muscles, but as a system-wide adaptation arising from developmental injury, one that the body continually tries to solve for, sometimes via “spastic” tension that’s actually a bid for support.
ABR makes use of a theory called bio-tensegrity, which is not, scientifically speaking, a accurate model for explaining human movement. Is it pseudoscience? Maybe, but there are still many people benefitting from manual practices focused on fascia, fascia geeks tend to think it has some merit, and the manual therapies based on it are not, as far as I know, doing harm.
You can watch the educational videos on Leonid Blyum’s website and see that something is happening there! What is it? We’ll find out someday! For Hailey, it was like hearing a description of her own experience for the first time.
The ABR model, on a practical level, dovetails with Alexander’s own century-old philosophy: the spine, breath, and head-neck-back relationship are crucial to healthy overall wellbeing, not just isolated limbs.
Somatic education isn’t about normalizing movement by force. It’s about facilitating agency, curiosity, and incremental reclamation of possibility in dialogue with a living, breathing human.
What’s Realistic? What’s Possible?
Nothing in our conversation makes utopian promises. Results are frustratingly individual, but that has its place! We all need to be met as individuals. For Hailey, the hands-on component, which she calls absolutely necessary, enabled access to subtle shifts in proprioception and grounding that “exercises” alone simply couldn’t reach.
Nothing in our conversation makes utopian promises. Results are frustratingly individual, but that has its place! We all need to be met as individuals. For Hailey, the hands-on component, which she calls absolutely necessary, enabled access to subtle shifts in proprioception and grounding that “exercises” alone simply couldn’t reach.
That kind of methodology demands skilled, patient teachers; a respect for personal limits and pacing; and an ability to include internal felt sensations in the conversation. These things are often not a possibility for many medical professionals, nor are they included in their training.
Is somatic education beneficial for those with disabilities, medical trauma, or a science-skeptical history? If the approach is collaborative and includes plenty of room for self-agency, the answer is yes.
Somatic education can be a powerful a framework for reclaiming sensation, agency, and participation in onels healing process. Slowing down helps us perceive and relinquish habitual judgments that may have contributed to but not caused the problem.
Then, we are free to explore new possibilities!