In arts education and learning, like in many skills-based, technical pursuits, student sensitivities to stress and trauma are unavoidable. Successful outcomes are often interrupted by mind-body behaviors and habits that interfere with integrated and lasting learning. The “leave your problems at the door” trope in arts training suggests that students should not bring the entirety of their lived experiences to the learning process, thereby denying the historical, cultural, and personal traumas that students may bring into class. This chapter discusses how stress- and trauma-based habits hinder meaningful arts learning and skill development and offers pedagogical insights and practical applications from the psychophysical practice of the Alexander Technique (AT). Optimal learning can occur when the nervous systems of both the instructor and the students are willing to apply AT principles that address habitual ways of thinking and reacting. A baseline understanding of the Autonomic nervous system (ANS), including how the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Nervous Systems (SNS and PNS) function is crucial for educators to create an AT-adaptive learning space. When students unconsciously perceive the classroom environment, teacher, or fellow students as threats, neurobiological fight, flight or freeze responses are set in motion and need to be downregulated through the PNS, which is largely comprised of the vagus nerve. Principles from Polyvagal Theory and the Alexander Technique are compatible with facilitating students’ capacity for non-reactivity and accurate perception to identify a person or environment as safe. Students need class contexts that provide time and space for mindfulness and non-reactivity, leading to optimal conditions for performing arts skills learning and well-being.