Alexander Technique    Postural Re-Education    Voice coaching and Singing lessons      Available: Monday, Thursday pm    Appointments: 45 Mins, 1 hour

Suryagita is a qualified teacher of the Alexander Technique and an experienced voice coach and singing teacher. She is an affiliate member of STAT (the UK Society for Teachers of the Alexander Technique) and a member of ATTSNZ (the Alexander Technique Teacher’s Society of New Zealand). She graduated from the Brighton Alexander Training Centre (an internationally recognised teacher training course) in 1996. She is also a member of NVPN - National Voice Practitioners Network (UK). On her ordination into the Western Buddhist Order in 2004 she was given the name Suryagita, which means “she who sings a song of the sun” (the sun being a symbol for enlightenment).

She built up a private practice in the UK over 12 years, teaching individually in Brighton and Croydon, working with various companies and organisations, and running group workshops She moved to Wellington, New Zealand in July 2008 where she has relocated her practice.
Suryagita was first drawn to the Alexander Technique after a mountaineering accident in New Zealand in 1988. Early lessons in the Technique left her feeling light and pain-free and after she travelled to the UK in 1990 she decided to train to become an Alexander teacher. The training had a transforming effect on her life. Over time her back and neck pain disappeared and she felt calmer, freer, and in harmony with her body and the world around her. The Technique has also helped her to practise meditation and yoga with more ease.

The Alexander training also had a strong effect on her voice. Suryagita is from a musical family and has been singing since she was 2 years old, but throughout her childhood she often felt vocal strain. As a teenager she sometimes lost her voice through laryngitis. Through the Alexander training she realised that this strain was connected to tension in her neck, shoulders, legs and whole body as well as emotional blocks. As her body, heart, and ability to communicate freed up, so did her vocal chords and breathing. Over the last few years her voice has changed into a more natural, supported and “gutsy” sound. She worked with Corinne Shirman-Sati, of the "First Nature" Voice Training, for five years in Brighton, and has developed her own method of teaching people to support their voices effectively through her training in the Alexander Technique, working with First Nature, Buddhist practice and her musical background. She has discovered that the combination of releasing tension, freeing the breath and strengthening the vocal support mechanisms is what gives power and resonance to the human voice. She is continually developing her work and learning from her pupils.

Suryagita loves to sing and write her own songs, finding her heart's expression through music. She also plays the 'cello and flute. She has recorded two albums – “Udana” in 1993 and “Fleeting World” in 1999. She has also recorded a teaching CD for her singing workshops – “Harmony Singing with Suryagita: Learning Pack 1”. Copies of these CDs are available through her website www.alexandervoiceworks.co.nz