Alexander Technique Career Success

Been busy, as you can imagine, reliving again in Japan. Many messages have gone out - not all posted here. However I am posting tomorrow's message to those on our list in Japan. I slowly evolving my own understanding of the work, and how it can be used to support people undoing the stress they give themselves over the events of the last few weeks... *** Once upon a time a lone lady in a kimono waited by the edge of a river. She needed to cross the river, but could not get her self wet. Not long after, two monks came along, so she pleaded to be carried across the river. The tall monk agreed, and carried her across the river on his back. The shorter monk was shocked by his companion's action, and silently fumed for one hour after the woman had left. Finally, he could contain himself no longer: "You were wrong" he blurted out to the taller monk "It is forbidden to touch a woman, but you did even more! You carried her across the river!!" The taller monk smiled c...

Continuing to post to my blog the messages I am sending out in Japan to the 3,000 on our list. Since yesterday, it has been posted on several blogs, shared in Mixi (Japan's FaceBook) or retweeded more widely. We are getting a positive response - it is good to feel these ideas are supporting people in this crisis. *** This is Jeremy, BodyChance Education Director. My guess is that you are thinking about your life deeply at the moment? I know I am. So many questions come to my mind. So many unanswerable questions… What will happen in Tokyo? Will I still be able to live here? Should I leave Tokyo? Should I leave Japan? Do I carry on as normal? Do I stay at home and wait? What is the best thing for me to do? Who can I talk to about this? There are all questions I have thought about. I am guessing you must be thinking about the same. Soon you realize there are no answers to be found. You don't know what to do… This is what feels so frustrating, yes? You want to know what will happen...

I will start posting messages I am sending out to our Japanese list and visitors to our website... *** Hi, I am Jeremy from BodyChance, and I am writing to you from the Gold Coast in Australia. I sometimes wonder why I left Japan the day before the earthquake hit - is there any meaning in that for me? And the only meaning I can take right now is my determination to come back. It has tested my will, as a foreigner, to know if Japan is really a home for me. I discovered that it is. I plan to return on March 24th and do what I can to support you through this terrible crisis. I don't mind if my life is shortened as a result – I am only afraid to waste my life. I am afraid to go to my grave without being able to say "I did what I could." I've just come off a conference call with the members of BodyChance's full-time staff, and I ended our conversation with tears in my eyes. I had not felt nor understood till that moment what a crisis of confidence is happening for you ...

This is a short description of a workshop I will present on March 4th in Tokyo to 300 members of the Dance Federation. In Japan they are known as Social dancers and BodyChance has been developing a relationship with their community. In 2009 I wrote a series of 6 articles describing the Seven BodyChance Movement Principles. There - betcha didn't know that? Oh there's a lot going on in Japan that you don't know about. I kind of like it that way actually. But Brendan recently cajoled me on FaceBook to start using my blog to post things I am writing. I am prolific these days - in the last week I think I have written about 15,000 words in the form of Sales Letters, articles, emails to my students - it's all blah, blah, blah from Jeremy these days. Anyway, enough of that for now. For my Japanese friends who love to read my English blog, this is a advance preview of the talk. Of course it is being translated into Japanese now, and will be published in that form eventually. So ...

It's wise to have fear when driving through blistering snow on a twisted mountain road in the dark, don't you agree? Or to run east, when surrounded by fire north, west and south? The young often lack this kind of fear, to their own demise. They drive with abandon and the statistics reflect it. Yet I do admire those without fear, I aspire to become like them. So is fear is a useless thing? Should I attempt to abandon it altogether. Some think so. Others do not... Tsong Karpa, a Tibetan sage from the 10th century, once commented: "Those who fear death, when death comes will have no fear; yet those who have no fear of death, when death comes, will be very afraid." I have often mediated on this concept—imagining my own death, or the premature death of my children. Some call me morbid for it, I say I am realistic because it counters sloth and redundancy. Who knows when anyone will die? My brother-in-law was told by doctors he had only 6 months to live. That was over 5 yea...

Sydney's gone. I have closed my school, put my dreams to bed and turned instead to face the mounting challenges of Japan. (Another blog for that.) Me, the eternal optimist, experiences defeat. There is no rosy face to it - I lost. My learning is in the admission - don't try to cheer me up. I had been ice skating on positivity, but there lurked death-freezing danger as reality created cracks across my veil of thin ice. Can you see me, joyously skating across the lake of my hallucinations? There I am, laughing and shouting then suddenly: GONE. Where is he? Oh, I think he fell into a hole… It was my wake up call. I still imagined I was 26, but without a million dollars to back me up. BodyChance in Sydney needed money, resources and most of all - teachers. Who was going to staff my studio? In my own article of DIRECTION, I pointed out that a school can not thrive in the absence of a thriving practise. Actually, it was that article for DIRECTION that first triggered my doubt: I was ...

If you're a turkey on November 24th in the USA, just before the inevitable is about to happen, life is a wonderful thing. You are fed, cared for by your owner, who may occasionally have a longing look, so that generally - based on past experiences - why wouldn't the next day be the same as the last? Such is the danger of habit, for this poor turkey (unawares) is about to be devoured… My thoughts were provoked by a headline in the New Yorker this morning "Gobbled" with a trio of active turkeys pictured in the glorious morning light of a country setting… A quote from Susan Orlean's piece: "Unlike megafarm turkeys, which have been engineered to have breasts so disproportionately huge that the birds can’t stand up when they’re full-grown, Royal Palms are athletic and lively and curious." Read more here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/susanorlean/2010/11/gobbled.html#ixzz16L2PlyWu In the Turkey World, something close to genocide has just occurred, and ...