Confessions From A Teacher in Pain

After outing my Self, I asked you to write in with your secret.

I got a few, but here’s one that touched me…

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My Alexander secret is that I haven't solved my neck and back tension problem at my pharmacy work (I'm a community pharmacist as well). That makes me think that I can't be a good teacher. That also makes me doubt the whole Alexander discovery.

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Are teachers supposed to be free of pain? No-one told me that. I certainly am not.

Feeling pain is part of our perfection.

I remember being a young teacher and getting pain in my knee. Over three months it got progressively worse. I also began to doubt my Self and the work. Because of some work I was into at the time, I decided to decide…

Alexander's discovery is 100% true.

I no more think I have to “believe in it” than I need to “believe in” the sun. Alexander's discovery is a force of nature, a fact of living. true True TRUE!

Having that conviction did a wonderful thing: it stimulated my curiosity. Instead of feeling defeated, I was defiant.

I believed there a solution waiting to be discovered.

I pondered my situation and recognised that my knee difficulty had started three months previously. I started to wonder – what happened three months ago?

I couldn't discover anything significant until next morning. As I my got to drive my happy Italian two-seater to work…

WAIT.

This is car is new! 3 months new!!

I watched as I got out of the car. Because it was low, one leg was thrust out at a funny angle, so I ended up torsionally rotating my knee as I climbed out of the car.

Good lord – is it really THAT simple? It was.

And I’ll wager there’s a simple movement to discover at the pharmacy. Look for it. It’s there. How do I know? Because of the pain.

Pain is not what is wrong. Pain is what is right.

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This is one way I use to explain how the knee (doesn’t) work in the third module of BodyThinking online. Register your interest here.