“My wish is to teach the Alexander Technique with enthusiasm, empathy, humor and commitment!”
About me
My name is Maaike Aarts and my passions in life are music, Alexander Technique, self-development, and discovering new things.
I teach Alexander Technique in my private practice and at the Conservatory of Amsterdam.
I also give workshops for companies, orchestras, teach at summer courses and give audition training.
Last but not least, I organise my own Alexander Technique retreats together with my wonderful colleague Doris Hochscheid.
After receiving my Masters degree from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, I played first violin in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra from 2004-2010. However, I then left the orchestra to make more time for my Alexander Technique practice.
From 2014-2018 I was associate concertmaster of the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, playing next to the orchestra’s artistic leader and concertmaster Gordan Nikolic. It was a 65% position so I felt I would be able to combine it with my full-time private practice. But the balance was not ideal. At the end of 2018 I decided to sacrifice my job to follow my dream and spread the Alexander Technique more widely in society and the music world.
Between 2019 and 2023 I developed my Alexander Technique app called Think Up, and expanded my Alexander Technique work: teaching workshops, organising retreats and teaching at the Amsterdam Conservatory. But I started to miss playing regularly in the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra too much... so in June 2023 I auditioned for tutti first violin, got the job (50%, so part time) and now I am back in my band!
Don’t worry, I am still teaching Alexander Technique the other 50% of the time 🙂
I am eager to share my 20+ years of teaching experience and see the clear need in society in general and the music world in particular to learn how to;
- prevent injuriesÂ
- learn about posture, movement and coordination without creating unnecessary tension
- use our minds to re-coordinate our bodies & reprogram unhelpful movements
- re-connect to ourselves, each other and our surroundings
- enhance mental strength
- allow for flow to happen.
I have worked with musicians from:
- the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
- the Academy of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
- the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra
- the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra
- the Dutch Ballet Orchestra
- the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra / Netherlands Chamber Orchestra
- the Arnhem Philharmonic Orchestra, now Phion.
- North Netherlands Orchestra.
- Jeugd Orkest Nederland
- Nederlandse fluit academie (NeFLAC)
I am a certified teacher registered with STAT and NeVLAT. I studied at the Alexander Technique Centre Amsterdam for three years, graduating in December 2002. My teachers were Paul Versteeg and Tessa Marwick. From 2002 till 2019 I have been a member of the teaching staff at ATCA, teaching hands-on to new Alexander Technique trainees.
I am always eager to learn more and I have had private lessons with Missy Vineyard and John Nicholls. I followed extra training on pregnancy and childbirth with Ilana Machover. I’ve attended all international congresses on the Alexander Technique since 2008.
Would you like to hear me play Debussy sonata? Click here
My story, the blind spot
When I was nine years old I began to play the violin. I listened to Isabelle van Keulen playing from my seat in the very first row and decided on the spot that I wanted to become a violinist. I always enjoyed playing the violin and never needed any encouragement from my parents. If anything, they would say ‘Stop practising for a bit, come down and play a game for a change!’
I went to the conservatoire at the same time as beginning high school, so it was hard work. I often took the train to Utrecht for violin lessons after school, doing my homework in the train and bus. I started participating in competitions and also won prizes. I felt more and more pressure to perform well and I had the feeling that I needed to work extremely hard in order to meet all the high expectations. That way, whatever happened, at least I had done my very best! My playing did continue to improve, but at the same time I felt increasingly inhibited from a musical point of view. My nervousness and fear of making mistakes grew. After my final exams I enrolled in the conservatoire and then the problems started. I began suffering from injuries: on three occasions an inflammation of the tendons in my left wrist and also a case of tennis elbow in my right arm. In addition, I suffered from repeated attacks of the flu. Something was considerably out of balance, but what?
Above all I considered myself dogged by bad luck. I worked incredibly hard, did my best; what more could I possibly do? During my exam year I again experienced problems with my left wrist. At this point I decided to get to the bottom of the matter. I decided that I would only start to play again once the pain had totally disappeared and I had discovered the cause of all this misery. In the end I did play my final exam and was even awarded a 9.5 with distinction. The frustrating thing was that I did in fact have talent but that I made things very difficult for myself in lots of ways. However, at the time I had not yet realised this.
In 1999 I began my quest that was to last a year and a half. I did everything to be free of the pain and to be able to play again: physiotherapy, manual therapy, Mensendieck, massage, acupuncture, cortisone injections, playing sport, resting my arm, visiting various specialists in the music clinics and undergoing MRI scans. Nothing helped, no one could pinpoint the cause of the problem, the pain did not go away and everyone offered conflicting advice. It was then that a friend of mine recommended the Alexander Technique. Without much hope I decided to try this also. I found the first lesson rather vague. What on earth was the connection between my injury and how I sat down on a chair? During the second lesson I thought: ‘Maybe this is worth trying after all.’ During the third lesson light dawned on me: ‘Aha, that’s how it works!’
It all began to become clear to me: I had developed certain unhealthy physical and mental habits of which I was totally unaware and these had a negative effect on the way I moved. I began to understand that these movement patterns were the same in everything that I did. Whether vacuuming, sitting behind a computer or playing the violin, I performed all these activities with the same unhealthy habits involving too much muscular tension in my neck, back, arms and legs. And thus feeling stressed and holding my breath.
More lessons down the track I also began to discover more about my mental habits: I was highly perfectionistic, overly self-disciplined and I had an iron will. Nothing and nobody could divert me from my purpose. Having goals is naturally fine in itself; the problem was the intensity with which I pursued my goals. I permitted myself few breaks, constantly forced myself to practise endlessly and only allowed myself to do something enjoyable after I had practised for at least four to five hours. I even sacrificed my nightly rest: I considered six hours sleep was more than enough, whereas I actually needed eight hours. While studying I was extremely hard on myself. It was never good enough; there was always room for improvement.
Gradually I discovered that all this pushing and internal self-criticism led to a physical reaction: an excess of muscular tension, which negatively affected my coordination. This in turn led to ‘over-practising’ in order to compensate for my fear of not performing well enough on stage. At a certain moment my body forced me to stop; I would come down with the flu or with an injury. Finally a chance to recover!
In the end I was operated on by a plastic surgeon specialised in hand surgery, in the year 2000. The cause of my chronic pain then became apparent: my tendons were no longer able to move independently from each other, due to the forming of scar tissue. This scar tissue did not show up on scans and would never have gone away by itself. It was fantastic to finally be free of the pain in my wrist, but I also immediately understood that if I did not change my mental habits and movement patterns the problem would certainly return. I would have to break the vicious circle if I wanted to have a healthy future with my violin. The surgeon told me I could probably never play more than 1,5 hours a day after the operation, but I had just started the Alexander teacher training course and thought.... Well, let’s see about that! Two years later I graduated as an Alexander technique teacher. One year after that I got the job in the Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Ultimately studying the Alexander Technique taught me to deal with the physical and mental causes of my many injuries. What a blessing! I have now been injury-free for the past 21 years, I play with greater musical freedom, am little troubled by performance anxiety, I practise the violin in a much more efficient and positive manner and my tone and bowing technique are much improved.
In retrospect I find it odd that, with the exception of the Alexander Technique, no doctor or health practitioner came up with the idea to take a look at how I moved while playing the violin (too tense), what I thought during playing (unhelpful thoughts), and how I felt during playing the violin (scared and uncomfortable). From the Alexander Technique perspective, it was clearly evident that I had overly tense movement patterns, didn’t know how to connect to my musical feelings while playing and that I created unnecessary stress in my body in all my activities.
I believe, and have since observed in my own Alexander Technique practice, that the causes of many people’s problems lie in their unconscious uncoordinated and tense manner of movement, unhelpful mental habits and disconnection to their feeling life. This is given far less attention than it deserves. It is almost a blind spot.