It's teaching a person who doesn't want to be taught.

There are many situations where this might be confronted:

• A music student doing Alexander as part of their degree
• A High School class that being presented with your talk
• Little Tommy dragged along by his Education Mum
• The 2nd friend in BodyChance's "Two For One" workshop
• A corporate gig where the company has mandated attendance

What do you do?

Three things:

At Golden Week - BodyChance's annual residential near Mt Fuji - I usually teach a dozen beginners who brave a world of strangers to explore Alexander's discovery.

This year there was only one.

There is a secret to BodyChance's Golden Week residential, and I am going to reveal it.

Anyone who follows my feed on Facebook knows there is a frenzy of activity every May.

During the Japanese holidays of Golden Week (what a great name!) BodyChance holds its annual residential. We started it in 1999, and still going strong.

Back in the 70s, when I first arrived in London to train, the big scandal was group teaching.

Of course, EVERYONE KNEW you could not teach Alexander's discovery in groups. It was almost a heresy back then, a betrayal of principle. What are you thinking!?

Except that "unreasonable" teachers started to teach in groups.

The story I heard - back then - was of an infuriated Dr Wilfred Barlow, at the last STAT AGM he ever attended, pointing a finger quivering in anger at Walter Carrington:

"It is because of you!"

As you live, injuries are natural part of living.

My right leg has been screaming at me these last few days, and I am wondering why.

Pains like this seem to mysteriously appear – an unexpected discomfort in a part of your movement system that seems to have no rhyme or reason. It’s irritating, consistent and defies your efforts to remedy it.

In cases like these, I whip out my “detective” principle of movement analysis:

There is always a reason.

(Don’t believe Coca Cola’s “No Reason” - it’s bullshit.)

Clare-Newman Constance pished back about my email "Teachers who Speak Nonsense":

Why is “send your back, back” wrong?

All the others I get, and seem like cultural norms but not what AT teachers say.

But we (or some) do say “back, back”

***

OK, you may know what you mean by that.

Does your student?

Here’s a few things I don’t like:

1. Back is a vague term, suggesting a plane or surface area, without volume or substance.

How much do you separate Marketing from Teaching?

Two totally different things right?

Wrong.

You are doing what Carlos Ghosn found in Nissan…

"Fourth was the incredible compartmentalization of the company. … When you're in a company that doesn't work cross-functionally, everyone feels satisfied with his own performance, and assumes that bad results are someone else's fault. … Everyone can tell himself that the company wouldn't be in this fix if the other departments only did a better job."

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:

I have a confession to make.

My original motivation for creating my 2 year certificate course in “BodyThinking” was fear of what would happen if I didn’t. It was 2003 and I was worried.

Fear is not always a negative thing: running away from a fire is clever.

Here’s the story of the fire I was running away from…

A really interesting thing what happened last year in London.

As background – it was during the time we staged ATSuccess’ first foray into live workshops. The ATSuccess London Symposium essentially embodied our core message:

Package Alexander's discovery to a specific group of people.

Your “niche” as the marketing lore goes.

There were 7 different events on offer, and over 50 teachers got involved. Huge success. Now I start to introduce the interesting thing: