Chairwork

Greg Holdaway is in Japan teaching for BodyChance, and yesterday morning we had a wonderful conversation about chairwork verses activity work. He told me about an extraordinary 10 minutes of being whisked in and out of a chair by Patrick Macdonald, just a few years before Patrick passed away. Watching others being worked on by Macdonald, he was at first apprehensive. Greg was a dancer at the time, considering a way forward into training. He had been led there partly by an aggravated knee injury that bothered him 7/24 – it always hurt. Watching Mr Macdonald's rhythmic chairwork, the thought came: my knee can't manage that, I will pay dearly if I make those movements. However, he realised this was a moment that would never come again, so he volunteered and … His knee did not hurt again for three days. This was a truly remarkable outcome from just 10 minutes, and Greg had no idea what had happened. He certainly was a recipient rather than a participant: his only task was to give consent. To let. To say "Yes" to the commands of Mr MacDonald's hands. After the lesson, for a brief few moments, he could not even tie up his shoe laces – it was as though his system had totally forgotten any habituated movement. So there we are – Greg and I – sitting in my Meguro apartment while considering reactions to my recent comments on chair and table work in the Facebook Alexander Technique Worldwide group and asking that question: what was Alexander doing? What was Macdonald doing? Chairwork and Activities People talk about chairwork as just another activity, and that is partly true. However, in the way that Macdonald taught Greg that day, it is not just another activity – it is a polar opposite of a continuum putting activity work on the other side. Both of us agreed on that point. Greg, a recent graduate from Sydney University, gained much knowledge about the latest science of postural mechanisms: he started sharing with me some mind-boggling stuff (that was new to me) which he one day hopes to make a central thesis of a PhD about Alexander's Discovery. Join me in in an online workshop next month about all this. I invite you to an Alexander Technique workshop with Jeremy! My workshop will be about the deeper aspects of your teaching, and how you can calibrate it to your students in a way that attracts them, deeply educates them, maintains them and gives you an income. I think a largely unappreciated aspect of BodyChance's business model is how heavily it relies on Marjorie Barstow's teaching innovations for financial success. Marj cared passionately to find effective ways to communicate the work and any expert marketer tries to do the same. In my workshop with you next month, I will relate how you can develop your teaching abilities to integrate with your marketing strategies: to realise how one is actually a reflection of the other. Keep a look out for more information about this, and how you can participate. I am open to any questions or thoughts you'd like to share as a way to help me prepare your workshop.