A Boy Scout Becomes a Liar

In 1999 - as I was negotiating the start of ATA|BodyChance in Japan - I was accused of being “a boy scout”. It was meant as an insult - that I was naïve, with no sense of the real world.

But actually, I was quite proud of that insult.

More recently, I was told: “You leave a room to justify your self for the lies you told and bads you have done.”

That one, I am not so proud of. Hmm, I guess something changed in the intervening decades? And the question that comes out of that is: are broken promises lies? I made promises I didn’t keep, and I was given promises which weren’t kept. Is breaking a promise equivalent to telling a lie?

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The founding of my school in 1999 in Japan was a tumultuous time. I had no map to consult other than how courses were constructed in London, where I did my training in the 70s. For want of a better model, I decided to adopt the 1,600-hour ‘standard’ of STAT and craft it for Japan. For that, I needed to adapt three rules:

1. I spread my training over 4 years (not 3 years as was precedent)
2. I ran 2 x 3-hour sessions in one day (no more than 3 hours in a day was the rule then)
3. I worked with a 7-1 ratio of students-teachers (whereas 5-1 ratio is STAT’s rule)

I set up my school based on feedback from 12 individuals who were willing to sign on full-time. Several were salary workers with no free time during the day. However - being the good boy scout I was back then - I tried to satisfy the weekly 15 hours rule by working Thursday/Friday evenings, all day Saturday and Sunday morning. It seemed a reasonable compromise. I started the school without any approval from STAT: with a child on the way - and no savings at all - I did not have the time to wait for that.

As much as I had tried to comply, I had given up the idea of applying for STAT’s approval until I arrived at the International Alexander Congress in Freiburg later that year. There I was encouraged to make an application to STAT.

“It’s too late isn’t it?” I asked, “I already started it.”

Back channelling during the Congress indicated that STAT’s training course committee - whose members must have been having ad hoc meetings on the fly - were open to considering my application. I was so naïve at the time, I was thrilled by their offer…

But there was one big problem, as I said to a committee member at the ‘99 Congress:

“There’s no point in starting this if you won’t accept a student-to-teacher ratio of 7-to-1.”

When I started in March 1999, there was only one other resident teacher in Japan - Imre Thorman of Switzerland. My school would not benefit from teachers dropping in - as often happened in Walter’s course at Lansdown Road for example - because there were no other teachers. Just Imre and me. And when I did the math - a ratio of 5-1 was financially unviable. Even 7-1 was a push. However, at the time the Israeli society - which was affiliated with STAT - had the same 7-1 ratio for their schools accepted.

“That’s ok,” I was told, “Go ahead and apply.”

So I did.

I soon discovered that another requirement was that I teach some ‘demonstration lessons’ to members of the committee and turn up in person to explain my training. Back then, the internet was barely a decade old - you could buy shares of Amazon for $5.51 each - so that meant an international flight from Sydney where I was on summer holidays.

I did it. Flying Australia / UK return for a 3-day visit to STAT’s committee in London.

Two months later they replied: my application failed because they would not accept a 7-1 student-to-teacher ratio. In my letter of resignation, I commended them for having the courage to forgo any influence on the development of the work in Japan.

My dream of being “recognised” was shattered.

Was that when the boy scout gave up?

This is the eleventh in a series of daily emails exploring my challenges in communicating Alexander’s Discovery.