Many readers have told me that they like my Daily Blog – and hate it. BOTH.

Every day, you just never know.

Which is my point of course.

It’s also why – in ATSuccess these days – I advocate this method to build your own market. It would surprise you to know that it DOESN’T irritate everyone, not when what you are writing about is dear to their hearts. Musicians can't get enough about breathing and embouchure. Yoginis want to explore their heart, body and mind every day, why not your email too? If you write about that, they'll read it.

This Daily Blog is emailed out to around 500 people, both in Japan and overseas.

The readers of the original English version are a mixture of AT teachers, trainees, some devoted AT students, friends and ex-students.

(BTW: You can sign up if you don't get it by email here)

In Japan, it goes out mainly to my trainees – I have 137 of them now – and Graduates – now 80. The rest, I don’t know. BodyChance Basic members, public and friends I guess.

Carol Dweck, in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success* tells the story of hugely successful athletes, who all started out, with no particular signs of greatness about them.

Michael Jordan wasn't recruited by the college he wanted to play for. He wasn't drafted by the first two NBA teams that could have chosen him. He was cut from his varsity team.

His response?

What if you could improve 3 systems by only focusing on one?

Wouldn't that be cool?

Here are 3 modern-day health obsessions, concerning input and distribution:

1. what you eat
   (digestive system)
2. how you breathe
   (respiratory system)
3. fitness
   (cardio-vascular system)

What if there was a way to improve ALL THREE SYSTEMS AT ONCE?

Firstly, I wonder if people would be suspicious…

I've always been trying to run away from Japan.

I feel like Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in the Godfather III* movie, when he growls:

"Every time I think I have left, they keep pulling me back in!"

The first time, I took a 6 month sabbatical from BodyChance, and lived in Australia with my family. I tried to start BodyChance in Sydney, and all I succeeded in doing was losing $40,000, disappointing 5 trainees, ending my marriage, getting another retinal detachment and very nearly destroying a beautiful friendship.

While everyone is rushing off to master the latest science about our miraculous human brain, I might take a right turn and follow the ethologists for a bit.

Is it just a coincidence that one of our finest advocates - Noble prizing-winning scientist Nikko Tinbergen - was himself an ethologist?

Why my sudden fascination?

Losing a lover as a partner in life has highlighted for me how much of an animal I am. I mean that in a clinical, not derogatory sense. I am a mammal, and so are you.

Part of my work involves getting up at 3.30am to coach clients scattered around the world.

At first I reacted with horror; now I get up at 3.30am anyway.

In Tokyo, the light is already peeping through the clouds by 4am.

The streets are deserted, the traffic lights aimlessly changing in vacant stupidity. It's quiet, and there you see a tall, erect-looking man, thumping along the side of the river alone, wondering why he would want anyone to love him?

It's impossible not to be strategic, manipulative, plotting and Machiavellian, when you are unable to listen to the clear communication of another human being.

A case in point is the way I am continuing to treat my ex-partner, as if he were an animal needing to be re-captured. Despite his clear request to remain free.

As if he didn't know his own mind?

As if he can be tricked into thinking like mine?

How could I objectify another human being this way?

It's mammalian behaviour. It's how I am programmed to respond.

Years ago I was having dinner in a restaurant in Paris with Marie-Françoise Le Foll, when a serial killer - in the guise of a French intelligence officer - strolled over and, uninvited, began intruding on our dinner conversation.

Our table was on a raised platform, and he stood below, his arm over the rail...

Of course at the time I did not immediately know he was a killer, but he soon happily let us know about a murder he had completed a week before in South Africa. This was in the early 80's, before Mandala's magic had cast it's spell.

Or even hugged by a chimpanzee?

I haven't, but Zoologist Desmond Morris relates his experience of both in his book Initmate Behaviours: