What is your kind of holiday?

Here I am in Melbourne, early morning at David’s place, my teenage daughters still sleeping with a cup of tea at hand. Relaxing. Or am I?

What is ‘relaxing’ - what research has been done into this?

One study I can think of was completed by Dan Buettner (you can watch his Ted talk at this link). Dan’s team collected information on the behaviours of 5 communities that have a statistically abnormal number of centenarians in their midst.

"Your own body is a phantom, one that your brain has constructed purely for convenience."
V. S. Ramachandran

Anyone could copy what I have done in Japan. Why doesn't anyone do that?

Because it is too dam hard. Right now, I am planning on building a new biz in Japan and I constantly go into overwhelm: How will I do it? Who do I ask for help? How do I convince people about my idea? These are all questions that seek answers, and while in the midst of asking these questions, I easily become emotionally frightened and panicked.

Depression is like a frozen shoulder - a dull, continuous condition that functions like a black hole, nothing escapes. No insight, no nuance - nothing.

I awoke depressed this morning, just as the weather seemed dull and overcast. Depression is defiant to my analysis. Firstly, it's a challenge to recognise it's true cause. For that I trace back over my previous day until I find the moment, the comment, the thought, the situation that triggered it's onset.

Secondly, it appears to have no nuance, no differentiation.

I don’t understand time - Einstein messed that up.

However, I know my personal time is finite. Even though I can never know the number, I can know my breaths are limited. Each breath is a count down to my last. One day, my last breath will be inhaled, and the countdown over. Every day I am closer to that moment.

Not a person past, present or future can ever overcome the end of their time, and certainly not you.

I am creating quite a ruckus in Japan these days - I announced that we will now call what we do BodyChance Method, not Alexander Technique.

What?!!

Students are exclaiming: we came to learn Alexander Technique!

Yes, well - of course. I do get that.

But how do you define Alexander Technique?

There are two ways to define Alexander Technique:

1.Alexander Technique is what Alexander discovered.
2.Alexander Technique is a way of teaching what Alexander discovered.

It was August 1988, the year of the Brighton Congress and the first time Marj had stepped on to the shores of England since (she said): "…the Germans came and went."

I'd been an Alexander Technique teacher for 8 years, now suffering a humiliating and debilitating injury: I could hardly pick up a cup of tea in my left hand. Three months earlier my father had died; and just before arriving at the Congress, I had dislocated my left shoulder while rock climbing in Sweden.

After I met Marjorie Barstow and started to metamorphose my teaching habits, I began to wonder what my pupils were thinking about. So I asked them. What surprised me most is that they weren't thinking at all - they were busy feeling.

In retrospect, it was obvious that they would be doing that. After all, before I met Marj, I hardly ever had my hands off them. I was busy doing my "Alexander-is-a-feeling" teaching technique: I made sure I was constantly giving them new experiences.

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.

It was constant worry.

I don't see anything!

How can I teach in activities, when I don't notice anything to work with? These thoughts were often running through my mind as I began shifting my teaching from "Alexander-is-a-feeling" into "Alexander-is-how-you-think".

Then I realised - how ridiculous.