Alexander died on October 10th, 1955, but did he really?

He still lives in the minds and hearts of many of his followers. It's a blessing and a curse. Twirling around the air at my school in Japan, you can often catch the phrase…

"Is that really the Alexander Technique?"

Véronique is ATSuccess's resident muddle-headed wombat. I am chief muddle-headed wombat - but as a muddle head, I'm not quite sure if that's right. Hmmm.

You probably have no idea what I am talking about do you?

After Marj visited Australia in 1986, I totally switched my teaching.

I made a decision, quite clear cut, that I would:

1.Do no more table work
2.Do no more chair work
3.Insist that my pupil choose the activity of the lesson

It was a simple plan, but for the next year I stumbled about in total confusion and disarray. Although I had been teaching for 7 years by this time, this 8th year felt like I had reverted back to my 1st: I was a novice teacher all over again.

Victoria Stanham is an Alexander Technique teacher working Montevideo, Uruguay. She volunteered to be a case study in my free three month online course "12 Steps to Financial Success as an Alexander Technique Teacher" earlier this year.

How precious do you need to be about the work?

Dr. Barlow, back in the days after Alexander's death, strove to identify Alexander Technique teachers with Doctors. The constitution of STAT – and the affiliated Societies that followed it – were shaped by strict, purist values: protect our profession; behave in a dignified manner.

I have often written that the incubation time for landing a new student in our Alexander Technique business can be long, and Dawn Robinson is living proof of that fact. Her incubation from a lecture about Alexander Technique to taking her first lesson was fifteen years! Take heart everyone – start building your list, you never know who might lurk there for a long, long time until finally taking up one of your offers.

Continuing my series this month of stories from Alexander Technique teachers in my paid coaching program, Annie Turner from Cornwall in the UK – a teacher for over 30 years – relates a moving account of a life spent in pursuit of authenticity, and how Alexander's work informed her journey. There is a lot here you will identify with. Annie pulls up the veil and offers an account of a dark, inner journey that finally offered her enough courage to write for you today.

My beloved Aunt Mono died when she was 96.

The last time I visited her in Grafton, she asked me in a quiet voice:

"Jerry, what is a computer?"

I started out confident, but as I watched her listen, her eyes started to get glassy and I knew I'd lost her. She had no reference for my explanations. Part of the problem was that, well – it was too many things: a typewriter, a TV, a filing cabinet, a telephone..

The more I tried to explain, the more incomprehensible it became.

Julie Rothschild is an Alexander Technique teacher in Boulder, Colorado. She is also a passionate dancer for whom everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. And some things went right – this is her (unfinished) story about the life of a dancer as she first encounters and learns…

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Alexander Technique… My Technique

Today is the 58th anniversary of Alexander’s death.

He died October 10th, 1955. So yeah, his copyright has run out in most places, but not his long persuasive influence on the work. Chair and table work is still the international norm, and a BodyChance purpose is to change that totally over the next 25 years. I want to live to see it.