Since I invited Pecs Minor to the party, man are "my guys" having fun or what?!

Don't know what I am talking about?

Pecs Minor is a muscle: one of "my guys" = Pectoralis Minor. Pecca for short.

Thanks to Don (not Burton, Weed, but the Burton started all this 40 years ago) I recently discovered my little Pecca.

My little Pecca is behaving in scurrilous manner, getting away with all kinds of mischief for a number of years now.

How's yours behaving?

Here's how you find that out…

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Have you got $30,000 to spare?

Then maybe you can build this machine and start proving to folks that Alexander was really on to something.

Not for everyone, but Tim Cacciatore keeps plugging away, finding hard science to back up the fluffy claims people like me spread about.

Find out about his new machine here…

It amazes me that anyone finds teaching groups difficult.

And I get it. I worried once too. So what's difficult about standing in front of a group of people?

TWO THINGS:

1. The trash in your head
2. Not knowing what to do

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1. THE TRASH IN YOUR HEAD

It's not what is happening in the room that makes it "difficult" - it is what is happening in your head. You look at them all and think: "What do they think of me?" And because you can't possible know that - (can you read minds???) - then you make it up:

After outing my Self, I asked you to write in with your secret.

I got a few, but here’s one that touched me…

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My Alexander secret is that I haven't solved my neck and back tension problem at my pharmacy work (I'm a community pharmacist as well). That makes me think that I can't be a good teacher. That also makes me doubt the whole Alexander discovery.

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Are teachers supposed to be free of pain? No-one told me that. I certainly am not.

Does anyone else have a problem with farting in workshops?

You might laugh, but I am a vegetarian and I sometimes eat beans. You get the drift?

The point is – tighten up, hold it in or…

Be free? But others might not be!

What is ethical and, well, consistent with what I teach?

Can it be right that I am tightening and holding stuff in, while asking them to expand and open up?

What secrets do you keep?

And from who? And why? What are you afraid of?

I’ve never been good at keeping secrets.

In fact, I keep wanting to run a personal policy of “full disclosure” and I never succeed at it. When I was in my final year at school, I decided to write a “truth letter” to each of my closest friends. Four letters.

I laid out as clearly as I could EXACTLY what I thought of each one.

I had to lie to get my first acting job.

I landed a part in Jack Hibberd’s Dimboola – one of Australia’s most successful plays. Trouble was, I was still only 17.

So I instantly became 18, just like that.

Back in those days, things were lazier. Trust was stronger. I said was 18, that was good enough for everyone. I was in!

Boy was I nervous on the opening night. Shaking.

When I was 11, I played a dangerous game of running on rocks at Avoca Beach in Australia.

I didn’t think it was dangerous, instead I was exhilarated.

It was dangerous because the rocks were sharp and bulky – crashing into them could have split my little head open. They were boulders with diameters as wide as my nimble legs. The rocks extended onwards from the beach, reaching into the overhanging cliffs and disappearing around a headland.

The game was simple: running on rocks as fast as I can.

Years ago, an American neighbour of mine expressed mild interest in Alexander's discovery –because of her migraines. One day, she asked if it could help her, and got close to agreeing to have a trial lesson…

Then suddenly she blurted out a startling question:

“It’s not going to change my personality, is it?”

And I immediately thought ‘yes’

and re-wrote a little Shakespeare in my head:

Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the hands of change;

That this great deed shall flow around the earth

Ikigai (生きがい) is a Japanese word derived from ikiru (生きる) which means “to live”. It is usually translated as “reason to live” although in common everyday usage “gai” is often heard as “I like this.”

Therefore it can literally mean: “living like”.

In a country which averages more than 70 suicides a day, have a “living like” in your heart becomes pretty important. In Okinawa, where Japanese live well into their 100s, ikigai has been adopted as an everyday concept that prolongs life.

But is it only Japan that needs this?