I was in Betty and Paul Collins’ house in Onslow Gardens, N10 in London.

It was 1977 and I was in my second year of AT training. Robert Rickover was waxing lyrical about this American teacher I had never heard of – Marjorie Barstow.

“She talks about the head moving…” I remember Rickover whispering to a few of us in the back room. I was scandalized.

That’s dreadful, I thought to myself, doesn’t this woman understand non-doing?

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.

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.

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

I was requested to write a blog about discipline i.e. using time effectively.

The two words in that previous phrase - "time" and "effectiveness" are two of three concepts essential to getting to that place of "discipline".

Discipline itself is almost a dirty word, because it implies you need to be doing something other than what you are doing. i.e. you must "discipline" your Self to do this, instead of doing that. Right?

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.

I am offering a workshop for Japanese Yoginis today, and it has taken me back into my many years of collecting the tenets of Buddhist philosophy.

The most vexing concept of those studies was that all my efforts - to meditate, to practise good morality, to follow precepts - would not be the cause of my enlightenment. Satori - as the Zen masters call it - has no cause.

Huh?

I do this all this work, and that isn't the cause for me to wake up? What does cause enlightenment then?

Nothing.

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 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.