Coming to the end of the year, and I am planning the special series of blogs for January. I will be exploring with teachers and students in my group how to use Facebook to connect to the students you love working with. Are you a teacher focused on building your practise? Then I have managed to gather together an eclectic group of teachers who are united by their passion to make this career work, and help each other doing it. There is no other Alexander Technique group of teachers and students like this in the world.

Where I live in Australia, we have three mail boxes out front. It’s at the bottom of a steep driveway, so someone needs to walk the letters up to the house. One mailbox is disused, and lies neglected on it’s side. One is usually empty - that’s mine, because I check it regularly - and the one is full of letters.

Full of actual letters: bills, a Xmas card, notices of many different kinds. Maybe there’s some junk mail there too, but not the kind of junk I would risk just throwing in the bin. However, my tenants downstairs never check their mailbox.

And here's me thinking it was a quieter week! I see from all my posts - which are always in response to requests and exploration in our Facebook group - that this has been a busy week exploring concepts and ideas to get more students, and grow your business. Membership is open any time, just go to this link to sign up.

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Steven Shaw is a living example of the power of the niche approach in spreading Alexander's work. Steven has managed to build a million dollar business around the activity of swimming. Yesterday, his work was featured in The Guardian's Swimming Blog…

It's the crazy season, but that does not stop my members from continuing to work on their Alexander Technique teaching success. While a lot of people are off to a party, they are here pursuing their passion to stay awake and realise a dream. It's a big purpose, and I am privileged to be learning from them all.

Alexander Technique is a difficult sell - I think we all know that.

How do you sell air? How do you sell nothing? Any words you use - as I expressed in my previous blog - end up situating you with a dozen other techniques, all available at half the price of your lesson and much easier to understand.

They give you a set of exercises!

This week, like every other, the members in my coaching group are continuing to focus on their business skills, and how those skills relate to their teaching skills. I think one of the big surprises when you start to work on your Alexander practise, comes when you realise that the service you offer is inextricably bound to the business you are creating - it's not possible to separate the two, as some of the comments I made this week illuminate…

Are Yoga, Pilates and other “fitness” schemes so different from Alexander Technique?

Alexander Technique teachers suspect they are fundamentally different, but for the public it appears that all these methods, including ours, utilize the study of movements to improve posture, cure pain, and bring about well being with greater awareness. Our outcomes appear to match - even if our methods are different - so our claim that “we are not like them” falls on deaf ears.

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. Note to members - some of these have been lightly edited since I first penned them inside Facebook.