I am creating quite a ruckus in Japan these days - I announced that we will now call what we do BodyChance Method, not Alexander Technique.

What?!!

Students are exclaiming: we came to learn Alexander Technique!

Yes, well - of course. I do get that.

But how do you define Alexander Technique?

There are two ways to define Alexander Technique:

1.Alexander Technique is what Alexander discovered.
2.Alexander Technique is a way of teaching what Alexander discovered.

Let's assume that Alexander Technique is what Alexander discovered. Then BodyChance Method is Alexander Technique, there is no difference. When you come to BodyChance to study, you study Alexander Technique.

But what if Alexander Technique is a way of teaching what Alexander discovered?

That equals chairwork, whispered AH, Hands on back of chair, lunge, tablework. It's what you see in teaching rooms the world over. And there are variations on the variations: crawling, hands on the table, spiralling, Dart Procedures. All "procedure-based" things: only indirectly connected to the reality of living in the 21st Century.

And there are totally different models: Steven Shaw's "Shaw Method" is Alexander's Discovery applied to swimming. David Gorman's Learning Methods or Don Weed's Interactive Teaching Method (ITM) are both alternative teaching methods - just as their name says.

In fact, BodyChance Method (and ITM for that matter) is an iteration of Marjorie Barstow's teaching innovations. Let me articulate an example.

1-Click Teaching: Making A Yes Plan

I love that Amazon one day figured out how to eliminate most of the steps in buying a book online. They created 1-click shopping. At BodyChance, we created 1-click teaching. The more rigorous description of that would be: teaching students to create constructive "yes plans" in relation to their activity to co-ordinate it with greater efficiency and ease.

Marj's Marker Pen Inside of Alexander's CCCI

I remember years ago sitting in the dinning room area of Marj's century old home in Lincoln, Nebraska, looking through her weathered and earmarked copy of Alexander's third book: CCCI. At one point of the text - I no longer remember where - I came across a passage about the need to 1. Inhibit the old reaction; then 2. Give the new directions.

In the side margin Marj has written: "Why 2 steps?"

Finally I understood!

While teaching, I had often heard Marj remark: "When I send my head forward and up, haven't I already inhibited it going back and down?"

1-click teaching!

Or as we say in BodyChance Method: making a "yes plan".

Why confuse a person's mind by making inhibition and direction two steps?

The truth is, there is never a moment when they are separate. They always work in concert. It's like two sides of one coin - you can fixate on the 'heads' side, then you can fixate on the 'tails' side, but that doesn't stop it being one coin. Not ever. The idea that there are two things to do is basically a delusion. There are no two things…

There's just You. Deciding. Now.

A yes plan incorporates inhibition into the activity being done.

Instead of inhibition being the first step, inhibition becomes the activity that won't allow the old habit to take place. You roll one into the other, and focus simply on the action. It's how the brain functions best - give it a clear, doable intention.

The rub is in being able to figure out a "yes plan" that will incorporate inhibition - without that, all you have is another doing. Another "positive affirmation" that is laying more stuff on top of what is already there. That doesn't work - we all know that.

Creating this kind of "yes plan" is endlessly creative. It takes a deep understanding of the activity itself - just saying "no" is almost lazy in comparison. Instead, you must gather information to analyse the activity itself: what is necessary and what is not? Then your understanding must be rolled into your 'yes plan' for it to be effective.

It is a teaching methodology.

It is an Art of Teaching.