You are not designed to spend a good part of your day looking down at your tummy.
And yet, I met a man who did mostly that.
I was working backstage at a theatre in London in the late 70s - yes, THAT long ago - when I met him: his posture was so rounded that he looked like his head was consuming his body for breakfast.
When I told him I was in London to do the 3-year training as an Alexscovery Teacher, he got curious.
"3 years?" he remarked in a strong Cornish accent. "Maybe you can help with my stomach?"
It's night time now, and the Mullumbimby moon is just past being full.
Tomorrow at 6am - in Australia - I start my online group teaching course, and enter a new world. Like most things I do, one of my motivations is my belief that the best way to go deeper into anything is to teach it to others.
There is a huge future for our work in online teaching - and the promise of Alexander's discovery being more widely disseminated and utilized. I intend to be surfing at the front of this Tsunami.
In a session - just yesterday - an ATSuccess member asked an innocent question:
“Do I need to be an expert of a student’s activity, to be able to help them?”
Intellectually it’s obvious – Tiger Woods’ coach doesn’t play golf like Tiger! Does that stop him seeing areas for development? Older, beer-gutted men are often coaching baseball teams in America – would these old guys survive on the field?
“Why do you insist on calling our work ‘Alexander's discovery’?”
It’s a valid question, and one I continue to ask my Self. The simplist answer I have is this:
Alexander's discovery is just that, a discovery. It is not a technique or method.
It’s like the realization that the earth revolves around the sun. Knowing it doesn’t change it, but it changes you. It changes your ideas, your beleifs, your choices.
Alexander's discovery can be expressed in several different ways:
In Japan, it goes out mainly to my trainees – I have 137 of them now – and Graduates – now 80. The rest, I don’t know. BodyChance Basic members, public and friends I guess.
I personally follow one of two stategies: medicate or meditate. The first takes the form of netflixing, shopping, drinking - you get the idea. Alternatively, I become the monk: withdraw, go silent, pray, be good and hope insight will lighten my mood.
However, there is a middle way, that straddles two worlds and it all starts with with physical/emotional/spiritual pain.
I find myself - when teaching in BodyChance - telling my trainees over and over:
Desmond Morris, in his 1971 book Intimate Behaviour writes:
"If the monkey is a male, it will never again, as an adult, know the total intimacy of a loving bond. Until the day it dies, it will continue to exist in a loveless world of rivalries and partnerships, of competition and co-operation."
Isn't that the life of an increasing number of people today?
Reflecting on an end of intimacy I experienced recently, I wrote to a dear friend that I was mourning the loss of
How long would it take you to give 24 individual lessons to 20 people?
First off, would you work an 8 hour day?
If so, how many in the morning and afternoon? 8? 12? 16?
In my heyday, I gave 13 on average, 16 on a busy day. Now, I wouldn't dream of it. But 6 in the morning, and 4 in the afternoon, I could do that. 10 a day.
