When you wake up in the morning – what is your first thought?

What do you usually feel – excitement, sleepiness, dread?

We are literally creatures of habit – fully 99% of our functioning runs on automatic. Neuro-scientists have yet to find a distinct part of the brain that runs our “will power” – it’s still a mystery how that works...

All our systems interact and rely on each other to know what to do: all based on the learning of our past. Our past throws us into our future, and it operates with an unerring consistency.

What could you say if I commanded you:

“Go and look for it NOW!”

An obvious rejoinder is:

“Look for WHAT?!”

To which I’d say:

“Exactly; you’ll know when you find it.”

People who seek, seek to find the unknowable.

Truth starts out in the dark. It shines once you find it, which is how you know you found it.

Self-growth is like that. Your dark is where you have no awareness of how you are generating the problems you are experiencing.

One of my mentors, Brendan Nicholls, was incredibly circuitous in the way he assessed a new business partner. He was driven by a fractal idea that goes like this:

“How You Do Anything Is How You Do Everything”

FM said it in a different way:

“If you apply the principle to the carrying out of one evolution, you have learned the lot.”

What does this mean?

When your biz goes AWOL, when there’s no money to pay your rent, when your inbox has another email from an unhappy student, when you’re partner keeps asking you when are you going to get a real job? When all that is happening, when you are in despair, lost, depressed, confused – this is hell.

Or is it?

Let’s look at pain from the point of view of neuroscience – yes, let’s get off the spiritual train for a minute and jump down into little contested facts about the physiology of movement.

What is the function of pain? Is it friendly or unfriendly?

Funny how the mind works...

For years, when I hit 85kg I’d think:

“Opps. You’re getting fat Jerry. Pay more attention to that.”

And the inevitable discipline would be initiated until I was down to a decent 83kg.

Now my trigger is 79kg. That’s my new fat.

It’s taken a loooooong time to get there. Along the way I discovered it’s most NOT about what I eat – I haven’t actually changed much of that. I still have two eggs on toast. By one toast now, not two.

When was the last time you asked anybody this question:

“What do you know about me that I don’t?”

I tried that question last Sunday with a bunch of trusted biz owners – guys and gals all working in ways similar to me to build their businesses. We were 9 people and as I sat silently listening, I felt my ego being silently ripped out of my guts and spilt all over the floor.

When you do it, be sure you are already secure in your love for your Self.

Keiko Isomura passed away in 2013.

She was one of the first trainees to graduate from BodyChance in 2003 – when it was still called ATA (Alexander Technique Associates) in honour of Don Burton.

I encouraged Keiko-san to explore the world of alternative trainings, so a year after she qualified, she travelled to London and spent 3 months studying with Walter Carrington at the Constructive Teaching Centre in Lansdowne Road.

Keiko became a trainee again.

In January 2016 I am coming to London with a team of teachers to answer the question this blog is posing. We've even set up a free online course at this link to warm you up! I also endeavour to answer this question below...

Alexander’s discoveries are my passion; they have been my life and work since the age of 20, and I intend to be living and teaching them up to my last breath.

“Mad Major” John Boyd, quoted above*, is an undeclared American hero. 

Personally I am not a fan - war is not a arena that engages my respect – and I am not fool enough to ignore valuable insights into human behaviour from whence ever they arise.

Boyd declared this idea to his phenomenally successful American fighter pilots, and the idea is also a central premise within Alexander’s evolutionary theory. It’s all carefully laid out in by F.M. in his laboriously written first section of CCCI, but it’s way more interesting to consider Boyd’s take on the subject.

Years ago I was having dinner in a restaurant in Paris with a dear friend of the time, when a serial killer in the guise of a French intelligence officer strolled over and, uninvited, began intruding on our dinner conversation.