Alexander Technique Career Success

"Even the teachers are running" That's how the Japanese describe their Xmas season - of course it is not Xmas here, much as the big department stores would love it to be so. But it is bonus time - all the corporates pay out, and everyone's running around planning what they will do from next April, including BodyChance. People are leaving jobs, planning moves, deciding what they will study in the New Year. It is a busy time for BodyChance also. Take this weekend for instance. It started organising things around the Body Thinking One Day Human Body Users Guide workshop - this is the workshop that graduates of the two year BodyThinking course will be certified to teach. The graduation is coming up in April, so the next three months of the BodyThinking unit will be orientated to the content and pedagogical methodology of teaching to groups. The course concept will be presented to about 70 Bellydance teachers and students who are coming to BodyChance's "Bellydanci...

I am a cowboy at heart, not an intellectual. I try to make it look right, but it's not really me. It's a constant struggle, as many of my goals depend on an enlightened mind that understands and can navigate so many different worlds: business (me?!), neuroscience (me?!), anatomist (me?!), language (hopeless at Japanese still), writing/communication (this), Buddhism and of course Alexander discoveries, with all the pedagogical issues that howl around the propagation of his work. These last two are most treasured and important to me - the study of human consciousness itself, primarily my own, hence by extension everyone else's. In 1996, when I was on the small Working Group that organised His Holiness the Dalai Lama's visit to Sydney to offer the 11 day Kalacharka ceremony, my nickname was "Minister for Everything". It was meant as a derogatory remark to accentuate my maddening tendency to want to know everything about anything. And this has always been central...

Just caught up on all the emails and info about UK regulation - my goodness, what a tiring issue to be worrying about. My sense is to re-invent AT and sell that. Who needs to be an "Alexander Technique teacher" anyway? It's not like it's a fabulously well known brand folks - don't kid yourselves. There's some gravitas to be sure, but you wouldn't lose that anyway: "Based on F. M. Alexander's discoveries but the Alexander Technique NOT." Except for Japan - God bless them. We don't have to worry about all this here. I once went to a lawyer asking him about regulation and how we might handle that? He asked me how many members were involved - it was under three digits at the time. When he got up off the floor from laughing, he told me to come back when we had a million or more were involved. Until then, the Japanese Government couldn't care less. Personally I think AT is situated wrongly anyway - human potentiality is more relevant than h...

Our friends all suffer from our personality disorders, yet we rarely see or understand them ourselves - although these days I am coming to notice my own more clearly. To me it is perplexing - why is that a problem for other people? How can I possibly change this aspect of myself? Is it my problem or theirs? Finding answers only comes when the information about the disorder is clear. And there's the rub - the flip side of our disorder is often the very thing that creates our success. In my own case, I have a talent to plan, to imagine, to create an endless cascade of ideas and possibilities that mostly overwhelms and discourages people closest around me. When I go into flight, people either feel that it is too fast and noisy and they simply can't (and don't want to) catch up, or that I fill the space around me so thoroughly with myself, that there is no space left for them to simply be. To those who know me - I am aware of it. And it costs me, in small and significant ways. ...

Alexander was adamant - you must first think one thing, then while continuing to think of this, you think a second thing, then while continuing to think those things, you think another and so on: this whole process Dewey called Thinking in Activity and “anyone who does it will have what a new experience in what they call thinking” (FM in UOS Ch 1). However, FM was only adamant about that in his discovery story that he recorded into writing during his first training in 1929~33. He was not adamant about this all his life - in fact he came to the point, which he never recorded in his writing, where he believed we must stop this process of “giving directions” as quoted by Walter Carrington in his diary: “At tea FM said that he had, at last, decided that we must cut out in future teaching all instructions to order the neck to relax or to be free because such orders only lead to other forms of doing. If a person is stiffening the neck, the remedy is to get them to stop projecting the message...

Death comes to us all, but rarely do we live with that truth on a day to day basis. This was certainly true of me - until this year. Now my eyes can not see the things I once saw with anything like the clarity I was accustomed just three months ago. There is pain in my groin from a recent operation, and a new thought is germinating in my mind: how soon will my aspirations for this life outstrip my capacity to continue reaching towards them? In a way, it has already begun: I've experienced strike one in the outing of life, and I have a strange new feeling lingering around me like a deserted mountain held in a mist - the real sense of my own mortality. Lama Tsong Karpa, a great Tibetan Saint of 600 years ago, once wrote that those who feared death - when death came, would have no fear. But those who had no fear of death, when death came, would be very afraid. So I can gain solace from that - death hangs around me now. Goodbye to my dear little children, goodbye to the dreams and aspi...

I just read a most wonderful sentence which re-engineers Alexander's contention to be careful of the printed word and how we interpret it: "Those who impose on texts the stains of their defective understanding derive only a superficial comprehension..." Lama Tsong Karpa from a 600 year old Buddhist text.

This is from a thread on the Alextech list, link is shown above... *** Years ago I was talking with Marjory Barlow about the DIRECTION issue I published on the work of Marjory and her husband Dr Wilfred Barlow (still available for purchase BTW) and Marjory confirmed how "Bill" (was it?) had put together over two hundred different "Alexander directions". What the actual number was I can't remember - but it was jaw-droppingly high. I had heard about it previously - I don't remember from who - and I was hoping that Marjory could hand over some written material on the subject to publish in DIRECTION Journal. In those days there were stories hanging around that he could sort out someone's frozen shoulder in just one session. Having suffered myself from that condition in the past, I understood how knowledge of the 200+ directions would certainly assist in pulling off such an accomplishment. Anyway, Marjory knew what I was talking about, but alas there was noth...

Finished two days of Brendan Nichols at the Vasace Hotel in Surfer's Paradise. It was his "Marketing Boot Camp" where he takes us through the ABC of marketing your business to make money. "Marketing is getting them to the door, sales is getting them to walk through it." Greg and Michael were there the first day, but both of them could not stop themselves tracking all his NLP gymnastics, probably seeing him do stuff that was subconscious for him. They spent the breaks swapping stories about how he was constantly embedding messages for people to come back, but they said in the afternoon he relaxed and did more of the authentic work, without the subconscious leading. I saw it more clearly myself the second day - he's got amazing technique. I realize that an amazing array of strategies are available to create and utilise a list of BodyChance interested folks - the sky's the limit. The limit, as I still suspect, will be the availability of teachers, not the a...

Maintaining an equal feeling towards my two daughters is the focal point of my practise of dissolving the feelings of attraction and aversion that the concepts of "friend, enemy or stranger" so easily conjure up inside my heart. Them, and some irritating correspondents I receive messages from occasionally. How to feel equal to all these? Well, for now it is impossible to class the correspondents in the same category as my daughters, and indeed there is no need - the concept does not need to be thrown away - I can still label a person an irritant - but the aggression, the inappropriate behaviour: all these things are only harms to myself, and my spiritual purpose. Many parents will tell you they feel equally to their children, but on the whole they are lying I think. Why would the tendency we have outside the family - to have favourites, people whose company we enjoy more than others - be somehow magically evaporated once you crossed the threshold of your front door? No - don...

In the morning at 2am - yes, sometimes I start the day early - I was searching my email database for something, and came across an email from a teacher about chairwork. No need to mention who here, but I was taken by how lightly the idea of working outside of chairwork was treated, almost as though one only did that if one didn't have sufficient abilities to do chairwork. All said in a nice way, but still overtones of... So, I got a little carried away and wrote a passionate and challenging response, which later the writer (gently) pointed out that I had I read more of the actual email, rather than read into the email more that he in fact said, I might have had a more balanced response, and I am sure he is right. Anyway, here's what I wrote (lightly edited): *** Early in my training school, many students - aware of what is happening in other Alexander circles - started clamouring for me to do "chairwork" and "hands on" - neither of which are part of my train...

After a posting by Franis Engel on the google AlexTech list about "Decision-making Tires Out Your Brain?" (click Heading to go to google group with full email history) - I commented that they did not make any allowance for joy, enthusiasm in their study. Which led me to reflect on the pedagogy of teaching AT which asks the students to pick the activity, rather than invite them to get in and out of the chair for the duration of the lesson (unless some tablework is thrown in of course). So I wrote this comment: *** Again I think this issue illustrates Marj's genius as a teacher - she saw that tapping into the joy of her students ("You always move better with a smile") was less "exhausting" and instead had them gleefully making new choices because of the clear and present benefits that would come to their chosen passion. Fatigue does come - of course - but there is MUCH MORE stamina available for the work. It's another convincing argument - for me - f...

So, I did make it after all. Last night I began teaching another of my slightly "out there" experiments in teaching: the Success Vision Course - using Alexander's discoveries to generate temporal awareness so that we can, moment by moment, make the choices that guide us towards the successful vision we generate of our future. This is a uniquely human capacity. I wonder if Betsy the cow begins every morning with a highly developed temporally conceived plan for the day? "Oh, first I'll go down to the bottom meadow and get some of that tall grass before bloody Alfred eats it all, then I'll head off to the creek for a chat with Phyllis (unless she's overslept again the wretched old cow) and… oh yes! Now I remember: I have an appointment with Mad Fred at the North side gate at lunch-time.." I wonder. I can't get inside a cow's mind, but I doubt this kind of "plan" is driving Betsy's choices moment to moment. Yet it is possible for us...

"I will never try to know you, I will forever try to see you." Writing now after witnessing the final workshop of Tommy Thompson in Japan, and hugely impressed by the way Tommy has given a voice to Alexander's discoveries in a way that totally accords with the Buddhist view of Self – the lack of anything inherently existing from it's own side. In my comments below, I may be misrepresenting Tommy's viewpoint, so please hold the idea that these are my impressions of Tommy's ideas. Tommy's view is that there is no "number one" as Marj often cajoled us: " 'Who is the most important person here?' The student? No. The Teacher? Yes." For Tommy, there is no number one person – there is a relationship, an interdependency between you and I which creates us from moment to moment in the "ongoing, forever moving present, which is the only place where change can happen." Tommy uses his hands to "disperse your commitment to who ...

What an exciting three weeks it has been. My whole idea of Property Investment (PI) has been turned on its head, and I am now striking out in a new direction that joins two parts of my investing/business life into a cohesive whole. For those who don't know, I run a Studio in Tokyo (and just recently Osaka) which is bringing the discoveries of one of the 1988 Bi-centenary 200 Australians that made Australia great to the attention of the world (otherwise known as Alexander Technique). Well, when you open a studio like this, we have to be very careful about location. Near the station, near your target demographic, right building, right atmosphere. Having picked a good location/situation, you don't mess with it when its working by moving to another location. Expanding might mean (here in Japan) opening another Studio at another station to add to the convenience of members. But never move your existing studio while the business is flowing in. Then it slowly dawned on me - why not us...

In 2005 Scientific American ran an article called "The Neurobiology of the Self" by Karl Zimmer which investigated how we create a sense of self at the level of the brain itself. Here are two interesting quotes from that article: 1. Several brain regions have been found to respond differently to information relating to the self than they do to information relating to others, even to very familiar others. For instance, such regions may be more active when people think about their own attributes than when they think about the characteristics of other individuals. These regions could be part of a self-network. and 2. The sight of someone being touched made her feel as if someone were touching her in the same place on her own body. She thought everyone had that experience. That last one is a real kicker - apparently our brain has to learn how to differentiate what is "self" and what is "other", and some people get it wrong! Of course, as a Buddhist, I am convi...

Monday, March 9th PERSONAL Purification and Determination - two things that usually occupy my every Monday morning. The purification part starts with cleaning my office and, while I do that, thinking about things I regret and would like to do differently. From impatience with my two little girls, to one too many days sipping wine. I'm by no means a slosh, having only 3 to 4 glasses of the red on average in a week, but still I grabbed for a bottle last Tuesday much to the disdain of my 6 year old: "Daddy - what are you doing? This isn't Daddy day or anything!" Don't you love 'em? No beating around the bush. 6 years old and full of wisdom. So that gives me pause, I wonder. Hmmm - maybe getting tooooo carried away here? Nothing to be alarmed about, but Monday's the day to catch things before they get to crisis stage. To look at my life again and ask: am I still going in the direction I want to be going? And then comes the determination - setting goals, both v...