About Surya Cox

Surya is a qualified teacher of the Alexander Technique and an experienced voice worker / singing teacher. She is a member of STAT (the Society for Teachers of the Alexander Technique) and graduated from the Brighton Alexander Training Centre in 1996. She is also a member of the NVPN - National Voice Practitioners Network. On her ordination into the Western Buddhist Order in 2004 her name changed from Juliet Cox to Suryagita.

She has built up a private practice, teaching individually in Brighton and Croydon and has worked with various companies and organisations. She also regularly runs group workshops in both Alexander Technique and voice work throughout the southeast of England.

Surya is originally from New Zealand and was first drawn to the Alexander Technique after a mountaineering accident in her home country in 1988. Early lessons in the Technique left her feeling light and pain-free and she decided to train to become an Alexander teacher when she travelled to the UK in 1993. It had a transforming effect on her life. Over time her back and neck pain disappeared and she became calmer, more poised, and in harmony with her body. 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. Surya 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 and heart freed up, so did her vocal chords and breathing. Over the last few years her voice has changed and deepened into a natural and heartfelt sound. She has been exploring these connections between body, breath and voice further with her own voice teacher (Corinne Shirman-Sati, of the "First Nature" Voice Training) and through teaching others to sing and use their voices more freely. She uses the Alexander Technique as a basis to free the body and breathing so that the true resonance of people's voices can emerge.

Surya loves to sing and write her own songs, finding her heart's expression through music. She also plays the 'cello and flute.

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