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.

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.)

The Dalai Lama wrote that the best way to help others is to be selfish first: he called it "selfish wisdom."

The most obvious example is on an aeroplane.

When your hostess shows you how to use the oxygen mask, she will also advise that you put your mask on first, before you help a child with their mask. You before the child, not the child first (as most people would think).

It's obvious when you think about it - how can you help a child if you pass out? Then two of you would be harmed.

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.

Back in the 1980s, I negotiated a deal with an upmarket Chiropractic Centre in Neutral Bay, a suburb full of married woman who practised Yoga because they hadn't heard of Pilates yet. Luckily, Alexander was in vogue back then, so I could demand my terms.

I told the Manager: I can pay you when I teach, that's it. No monthly rent, sorry.

I was happy to walk away from the deal.

*** SIDE BAR ***

That's the simple secret to being strong in a negotiation. As English billionaire Felix Dennis puts it in 88 The Narrow Road:

It amazes me that anyone finds teaching groups difficult.

And I get it. I worried once too. So what's difficult about standing in front of a group of people?

TWO THINGS:

1. The trash in your head
2. Not knowing what to do

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1. THE TRASH IN YOUR HEAD

It's not what is happening in the room that makes it "difficult" - it is what is happening in your head. You look at them all and think: "What do they think of me?" And because you can't possible know that - (can you read minds???) - then you make it up:

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.

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?

Years ago, an American neighbour of mine expressed mild interest in Alexander's discovery –because of her migraines. One day, she asked if it could help her, and got close to agreeing to have a trial lesson…

Then suddenly she blurted out a startling question:

“It’s not going to change my personality, is it?”

And I immediately thought ‘yes’

and re-wrote a little Shakespeare in my head:

Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the hands of change;

That this great deed shall flow around the earth

If you want a bizarre sexual experience, one place to find it is on a Tokyo peak hour train.

I know, because I have had occasional unsolicited experiences. This phenomenon led to the creation of “woman only” carriages during peak periods of travel. It involves people steadfastly avoiding eye contact, while trying to read books or smart phones in impossibly tight circumstances.

What happens?