Alexander Technique Career Success

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 ...