She complained about her whole arm.

So I questioned here more.

"When do you feel this tension most?"

I discovered it had to do when fingering her flute at certain pitches. I thought, hmmm. Funny she mentioned fingering. I asked:

"So how about your fingers? Are they OK?"

"No!" she replied, "This one always hurts." And she held up one of her pinkies.

Luckily there was another flautist in the group so I asked her:

"Hey - do you have problems with this finger too?"

What do I know about playing the flute?

Suddenly Bessie blurts out:

“But how will I help all the people around me in such tension?! How can they bear it? What can I do?”

Bessie is tightening up worse than the people she is talking about!

What to do?

Welcome to group teaching, where my response to Bessie is being witnessed by 10 other people. It is no longer just Bessie than I am responding to, I need to include 10 other listeners…

“Bessie,” I say, “Just remember how lucky you are that you know something that they don’t know…”

Every week I am publishing some of the comments made in the hidden Facebook group (ATCS) with the 47 teachers and students working together on building their Alexander Technique businesses. Some of the comments are public, and the rest are in the paid area of my blog. You can join us now for less than the cost of one Alexander lesson with me a month.

Think Different.

This was a hugely successful prelaunch campaign instigated by Steve Jobs to put Apple back on the map after years in the wilderness. It also sums up my approach to Group Teaching. This is not about adding another fiddle to your concert performance, this is about re-orchestration of the entire show.

As teachers have found in my Facebook coaching group, moving your 121 (one to one) people into groups does not always work out. In some cases, it’s fabulous, but in others “I miss my hands-on” is the refrain.

Why is that?

Group teaching can become your main source of income, the primary way you teach. The advantage to you is that you can leverage your time and reach a wider range of people. Does that fit with your vision?

It will demand more of you as a teacher. You have to go verbal. Using touch as a communication tool alone (i.e. “hands on”) simply won’t cut it any more. Many teachers – to their dismay – have already discovered the truth of this with a bored group of students watching another person getting in and out of the chair.

It gets crazy inside our Facebook group sometimes - there are many possibilities that awaken in the minds of those participating, and they tend to share with each other about that. I realize it is equally important that now and again we stop and take stock of what we are learning.

As a service to those who read my blog, but are not in the Facebook group as Basic Members, every now and again I am posting some of the answers I am giving to members' questions. Not all of them are here, but enough to give you some encouragement to build your Alexander Technique practise.

I am standing there, looking out on an ocean of people - all wearing orange!

It was a Sydney Easter in 1981, and the crowd was gathered for another "celebration" with Bhagwan Rajneesh's band of merry followers. The Orange People, as they were called then, wanted Alexander Technique in their line up of workshops, but it was all gratis: pitch your workshop to the crowd, see who comes.

As I stood there I thought: I have a unique marketing opportunity: I better not screw up.

A feeling is a report from your past.

It is about what just happened, even if you are imagining the future. You see an image, you react to it. We dream, we imagine, we create - then we have feelings about these constructions. Our hormones are triggered; we feel multiple emotions coursing through our system.

As an Alexander Technique teacher, I used to think it was my job to supply a new feeling to my student. I was very good at it - people marvelled after my lessons how different they felt, how amazing the Alexander Technique was…

I watched his bowing arm as it moved across the strings. Something happened. I couldn't quite catch it, but it seemed out of place. So I asked him:

"Have you got some idea of transitioning your arm as you stroke down?"

"Yes! Oh yes, yes, yes. How do you know that?"

I saw it. And I guessed that he was thinking something, overriding natural movement with a pre-conceived notion - I must control this moment, I must do something. I was teaching a group class in BodyChance.

Susannah Keebler is an Alexander Technique teacher living in Mallacoota, Australia - a small town in Victoria whose population fluctuates between 972 and 8,000, depending on the time of year. Where she lives is odd enough, but the life and work she is creating makes that seem mundane. Her story has the potential to challenge your own idea of what you can do with the work. Are you interested in people who climb out of the box in order to change the world? Then you must be interested in Susannah's story…

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