In a session - just yesterday - an ATSuccess member asked an innocent question:

“Do I need to be an expert of a student’s activity, to be able to help them?”

Intellectually it’s obvious – Tiger Woods’ coach doesn’t play golf like Tiger! Does that stop him seeing areas for development? Older, beer-gutted men are often coaching baseball teams in America – would these old guys survive on the field?

No.

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.

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.)

In 1999, I started touching in a new kind of way.

I touch like a Catholic – reverent, studious and caring. (The good ones)

The “studious” part is related to my anatomical studies, and putting together BodyThinking – my new online training program for analysing movements.

I would specifically target a muscle group - say the iliopsoas muscle in the pelvis upper leg and back are – and induce an action specific of that muscle.

It fascinates me how I avoid deeply thinking through doing difficult things.

Another name for that is "Conscious, Constructive Guidance" from You-Know-Who.

I first noticed this years ago during the frustrating years of not having a Japanese accountant who spoke English. For several YEARS (!) it irked me that I could not communicate with the accountant I had - but looking at the maze of incomprehensible Japanese websites, I despaired of being able to find anyone.

Then one day I just decided: fix this thing.

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."

When I first started my school in Japan, I once wanted to die.

Not suicide, but almost. Because something happened…

And I reacted badly to it.

I was washed away by a tsunami of emotions so brutal that, for a moment, I wanted to drown. I wanted to escape from a darkness so overwhelming, it took my breath away.

I was co-teaching a workshop in Kyoto, in 2001.

My daughter Angelica was relieved to finally get her driver’s license.

It had been a long time coming, with some bad luck along the way. Last month she finally passed.

However, her bad luck was to continue…

Once she got her license, she already had a car to drive. It was a vehicle passed down through the family, but quite old. She lives in Mullumbimby, which proudly claims it is “The Biggest Little Town in Australia” on a big sign you see when you come to the turnoff.

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?