Are You Looking for Money?

Tell me – how many times have you found money on the footpath?

Not much I'd wager, but - unless I am mistaken - it seems that human beings spend most of their walking time looking down at the footpath. 

What is so fascinating about a concrete footpath? 

I mean, if it was a rainforest it could be cool, but then the rain forest itself would be cooler! In the city, rather than money, you are more likely to see vomit, dog shit, abandoned rubbish, cigarette buts and – if you are lucky – the occasional weed.

Is that worth all that looking down time?!

I did an impromptu survey this morning as I ran along the Meguro river at 7 am in the rain. Admittedly there weren't as many fools as Chancer braving this useless Saturday morning, - but of the 21 people I did see, only 3 – THREE – were actually looking up.

One was a young lady about to enter the holy 4-story Starbucks cathedral to coffee – she was salivating through the big window to see who was there. The second was another young lady with an umbrella, primly passing by a cluster of beefy boxing boys who have accommodations near me. The third "looker upper" was one of those beefy boxing boys who was – Surprise! Surprise! – looking at the lady with the umbrella.

All the others? 18 people all looking for money on the footpath.

Of course, Chancer knows – and so do you – that they were not looking for money.

They were, sadly, ignorant of Alexander's Discovery so - instead of improving their mental and physical condition - they were walking themselves down into old age.

I started to conjecture why heads and necks should be habituated to bend down all the time? Then I noticed around Starbucks a flood of people bending their heads down to enter the rabbit hole of their computer screen.

Today, we have fewer and fewer experiences of being upright. 

Instead, your time is spent crunching down, making your Self smaller: because you are at the computer screen; because you are nervous; because you are sad or depressed; because you just don't feel motived by much anymore. 

Emotional conditions that power your physical Self.

As I wrote yesterday, this is not your choice – this is driven by unconscious habits that are now the master of you. And this downward-looking, downward-pressing is relentless. Unless you consciously do something about it.

You can try to keep yourself upright, but that won't work. Not only is it impossibly boring to think about trying to be up all the time – it just won't work. You must seek out the unconscious habits that perpetuate this condition. 

And they are beliefs and emotions, as much as they are physical conditions.

That's what I explore in BodyThinking Online.

Connecting emotions, existential conditions and depression is not a common thing in the Alexander world. It happens implicitly – we all know that – but more and more of our students are conversant with sophisticated ideas of mental and physical being.

They want – even expect – that you can relate their ontological Self to the physicality of your lessons. Can you do that?

Use ThinkingBody Online to enrich those practices. I explore this – and not from some obscure perspective - but by doubling down on FM's "Evolution of a Technique" with the Compass as a guide. Showing you how to draw out the nuggets of emotional and spiritual truth from the old man's stiff way of putting things in writing.

And for this month I am offering it at 40% off, plus direct access to me through an exclusive Facebook group. After you click Purchase, enter this coupon code to get your discount:

TBO40OFF

https://bodychance.mykajabi.com/store/TGFBWut4