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.

There is a secret to BodyChance's Golden Week residential, and I am going to reveal it.

Anyone who follows my feed on Facebook knows there is a frenzy of activity every May.

During the Japanese holidays of Golden Week (what a great name!) BodyChance holds its annual residential. We started it in 1999, and still going strong.

In the third module of my BodyThinking Online course, I illuminate how we manage to be an upright mammalian being.

The leg is the door into the miracle of bipedal locomotion.

As I describe hip, knee and foot movements, I make this phenonomen of two-legged locomotion a recurring theme, throughout the third module of BodyThinking Online.

Back in the 70s, when I first arrived in London to train, the big scandal was group teaching.

Of course, EVERYONE KNEW you could not teach Alexander's discovery in groups. It was almost a heresy back then, a betrayal of principle. What are you thinking!?

Except that "unreasonable" teachers started to teach in groups.

The story I heard - back then - was of an infuriated Dr Wilfred Barlow, at the last STAT AGM he ever attended, pointing a finger quivering in anger at Walter Carrington:

"It is because of you!"

"You're all weak."

At BodyChance, most of my staff are teachers who have trained with me. They spend their time teaching / marketing for the school.

The non-teaching work is administration of that activity.

What a weird day.

I got just what I had been asking for, as I often ask in class:

"Does anyone have any questions, comments or complaints?"

It was inspired by my daughter Grace. When she was little, we used to play a game. She would complain to me. I would look outraged. I would puff and blow my Self up to over- size, then bellow in a loud voice:

"Grace! How dare you behave this way!!

Stop behaving like a 5 year old!!!"

And then Grace - with a little sparkle on her face - would quickly reply:

As you get older, your systems start to fail. It's normal, but not nice.

My sister claims: After 40, something is lost every decade.

My score is 2 all. Are you scoring yet?

First decade, both my eyes popped out - retina detachments, new lenses, a lot of grief.

Second decade, I fell over and shattered my wrist - iron insert, operation, a lot of grief.

Now my leg is giving me grief! Is this the 3rd decade coming? NOT YET.

BodyThinking Online - my compendium of everything I learnt, studied and taught about the art of movement from an anatomical perspective - is on its last day of discount.

FIRST - why don't I like discounts?

It's simple.

A person who buys is a person who buys.

THE POETRY

By the river in Kyoto. I remember.

Family. Two girls lying flat, a father writing. The river flowing by.

Tribes. A dad holidaying his brood. Takes the time.

Blood. Girls. Teenagers about to fly. Different times of life.

What holds all this together?

THE ENGINEERING

“People overestimate what can be achieved in a year,
and underestimate what can be achieved in five”

Glenn Livingston made that remark. I’ve thought it over many times and concluded that it is a great remark.

Not immediately obvious though, is it?

First – to get it - you must be a person with a vision, with a mission. I believe EVERY reader of my Daily dispatches has the heart of a missionary, is a great lover of Alexander's discovery and enjoys being reassured that they are “not wrong”.