The game of BodyChance success continues to startle and challenge me.

It’s been 17 years now since I started in 1999, and for the first 15 years we experienced an annual growth of around 17%.

Until we didn’t.

When you have 2 trainees, and you add another two trainees, you grow 100%. That’s easy growth. When you have 128 trainees, and you add 2 more, you’ve barely grown more than 1%! Not so easy.

We are at that place now, and I don’t know the rules.

Which way do we go now?

“Wow daddy, everywhere here has free Wi-Fi.”

My two girls – 14 and 17 - are with me in Japan. We are wandering around inside the sultry envelope of a damp Tokyo summer. Of course, two teenage girls are way more interested in free WiFi than temples and boring stuff like that. Unless there’s a photo op…

“Hey dad, take my photo walking down these stairs.”

Why? I wonder.

“I want to post it to Instagram.”

Instagram. Right. Still trying to figure that out.

I am writing at the end of a harrowing and hollowing day of beauty at my Costa Rica Mastermind.

I am getting a brain operation here. It’s about being vulnerable and admitting where I am weak. Admitting that I am failing to deliver on the grandiosity and hope I use to pump myself into action against the crisis and disappointments that tend to wake me up.

Not to belittle my accomplishments though.

What did you feel when you woke up today?

How did you make sense of it?

You don’t need to make sense of your positive experiences – they are wonderful! It is the negative experiences you want to examine. When you experience a strong negative emotion, what do you do?

My guess is that you give this negative experience a name.

You call it “tired” or “worried” or “depressed” or “sad” – whatever. Words are called forth to give your experience a name.

What do you believe about how you are designed to move?

There are two schools of thought:

1. I have a flawed design – I must find a way to improve it.
2. I am perfect – I can discover how to use my design well.

I follow the second idea...

You are already perfect – there is nothing wrong with you.

Pain – if you have pain or discomfort – is friendly. It is trying to tell you something is being used incorrectly. Pain is not what is wrong about you, pain is what is right about you.

When you wake up in the morning – what is your first thought?

What do you usually feel – excitement, sleepiness, dread?

We are literally creatures of habit – fully 99% of our functioning runs on automatic. Neuro-scientists have yet to find a distinct part of the brain that runs our “will power” – it’s still a mystery how that works...

All our systems interact and rely on each other to know what to do: all based on the learning of our past. Our past throws us into our future, and it operates with an unerring consistency.

I am elite Platinum member of my Qantas Frequent Flyer club.

I’d like to think it is because I fly business class all the time and rake in the miles – but sitting here in Economy, cramped up against the seat in front of me, while I peck out my blog, puts that delusion to rest.

So why am I here?

I am off to Florida to be coached by a bunch of fellow biz entrepreneurs in USA. I start my own coaching in a week – at ATSuccess London Symposium on How To Build A Successful Practise – but first I need to limber up and eat some humble pie.

Keiko Isomura passed away in 2013.

She was one of the first trainees to graduate from BodyChance in 2003 – when it was still called ATA (Alexander Technique Associates) in honour of Don Burton.

I encouraged Keiko-san to explore the world of alternative trainings, so a year after she qualified, she travelled to London and spent 3 months studying with Walter Carrington at the Constructive Teaching Centre in Lansdowne Road.

Keiko became a trainee again.

He was their last hope, the desperate solution, the final wacky choice before the lid of their coffin was fastened over the top of their finally resting heads.

And of course – as we know – FM came through.

The only year I did well in Maths at school was when I had an ex-alcoholic teacher, using an amazing ability to engage us schoolboys.

How did I know he was alcoholic?

He told us: regaling us barely post-pubetic boys with extraordinary stories about his lecherous drunken adventures. He was amazing - half his class consisted of these outrageous stories (with a secret sub-plot I now realise), the other half, complex maths reduced for clearly for eager, listening minds.

We all looked forward to Maths that year.