In May 2007 I was sitting on a plane on my way to New York. One of the highlights of my visit was to ask advice from Lucy L. Brown Ph.D. at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, on our BodyData project in BodyChance at the time.*

As preparation for our meeting, I was brushing up on her Alexander orientated speculations by re-reading her Paper on Sensory-Motor Contagion† from the first Lugano Conference in Switzerland.

Once at breakfast, I remember being interrupted by a girlfriend pleading with me in an exasperated voice:

“What’s wrong with you this morning?”

I was genuinely surprised (and a little irritated).

“Nothing.” I lifted my eyebrows.

“Fine”, she re-joined “have it your way.”

I was fed up with this.

“What are you talking about!?”

Have you ever noticed how often FM’s work is “discovered” in other methods?

Haven’t you ever wondered about that?

Of course (speaking from my own experience) it can be intensely irritating to explain…

“No, AT isn’t really like Yoga. Not at all.”

…because not only is the listener nonplussed by your response, they also become slightly irritated and defensive too.

It’s like two 5 year olds on a playground: “My daddy’s better than your daddy. There!”

I was in Betty and Paul Collins’ house in Onslow Gardens, N10 in London.

It was 1977 and I was in my second year of AT training. Robert Rickover was waxing lyrical about this American teacher I had never heard of – Marjorie Barstow.

“She talks about the head moving…” I remember Rickover whispering to a few of us in the back room. I was scandalized.

That’s dreadful, I thought to myself, doesn’t this woman understand non-doing?

What did you feel when you woke up today?

How did you make sense of it?

You don’t need to make sense of your positive experiences – they are wonderful! It is the negative experiences you want to examine. When you experience a strong negative emotion, what do you do?

My guess is that you give this negative experience a name.

You call it “tired” or “worried” or “depressed” or “sad” – whatever. Words are called forth to give your experience a name.

Anyone could copy what I have done in Japan. Why doesn't anyone do that?

Because it is too dam hard. Right now, I am planning on building a new biz in Japan and I constantly go into overwhelm: How will I do it? Who do I ask for help? How do I convince people about my idea? These are all questions that seek answers, and while in the midst of asking these questions, I easily become emotionally frightened and panicked.

I am creating quite a ruckus in Japan these days - I announced that we will now call what we do BodyChance Method, not Alexander Technique.

What?!!

Students are exclaiming: we came to learn Alexander Technique!

Yes, well - of course. I do get that.

But how do you define Alexander Technique?

There are two ways to define Alexander Technique:

1.Alexander Technique is what Alexander discovered.
2.Alexander Technique is a way of teaching what Alexander discovered.

My feeling within ATSuccess this week is that we can do away with Alexander Technique thank you very much, but NOT the work. The old man said it had to evolve, but into what? There's the rub - when it stops looking like what he did, the traditionalists worry. It's right that they worry, but not helpful to them, helpful to me. Why? I know I am doing something different when the feeling all around is "No - that is wrong." Hang on - isn't that exactly a indicator of change? (But not a good one I hear them yelling!)

It was August 1988, the year of the Brighton Congress and the first time Marj had stepped on to the shores of England since (she said): "…the Germans came and went."

I'd been an Alexander Technique teacher for 8 years, now suffering a humiliating and debilitating injury: I could hardly pick up a cup of tea in my left hand. Three months earlier my father had died; and just before arriving at the Congress, I had dislocated my left shoulder while rock climbing in Sweden.

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