Creepy Hands

If you want a bizarre sexual experience, one place to find it is on a Tokyo peak hour train.

I know, because I have had occasional unsolicited experiences. This phenomenon led to the creation of “woman only” carriages during peak periods of travel. It involves people steadfastly avoiding eye contact, while trying to read books or smart phones in impossibly tight circumstances.

What happens?

The first time it happened to me, I was squashed up against several people in a crowded train in Tokyo – then I was introduced into the subterranean mysteries of an illicit, non-personal sexual encounter. I won’t detail my experience, but you can guess. There are ‘feeling hands’ moving about the lower levels of your person, and it’s creepy to say the least!

You are packed so tight together, that no-one can see down there. In London, you don’t get on the train. In Tokyo you do, because the next train will be the same. And the next.

Full body press with strangers happens every peak hour on Tokyo’s subway trains.

Within this cluster of tightness are hands: “feeling” for what’s there, looking to touch something, wanting to get feedback. Hungry, illicit hands intent of sensing what is going on with you.

Grin and bear it, it will be over soon. This is Japan, not America.

Considering this, why would an Alexander Discovery teacher set out to use their touch to “feel” what’s going on and how you’ll respond? Isn’t this also bordering on creepy?

Personally, I don’t want someone touching me in a lesson to “feel” me up, to sense what is going on with me, to slither all over my person to know how I am reacting.

Yuk!

Maybe this is shocking to you.

Perhaps your idea is that you use your hands in teaching to “sense”?

I don’t think you do, and it’s time to update your thinking. Sensing is a by-product, not an intention. You are communicating, not feeling. You are inviting a person, not checking them out. I first learnt how this works as a youngster, although I didn’t know it at the time.

I was spending three glorious weeks with my family at Avoca Beach. Our house was literally a 2-minute walk to the beach. (I was 4th in a family of 6 children.)

One overcast day, with nothing to do, my sister and I starting laughing together.

I don’t even remember why.

It was just two of us at first – we started to giggle, then we kept setting each other off. Because of the rain, the rest of the family was also at home.

Soon, my two elder sisters authoritatively entered the room to ascertain what this hilarity was all about. Before long, they were feeding into our merriment, and now it was 4 of us in this state of hysterical laughter. Then it was 5, then 6 – as the two littlies rushed in to join the fun.

Now all 6 siblings were laughing together like maniacs, basically over nothing.

Finally, a stern and irritated parent entered the room:

“What is all this wretched noise about?!”

Which of course set us off into a new paroxysm of laughter.

Dad succumbed quite quickly and soon my mother bustled into the room. It wasn’t long until she too surrendered to our madness. Now all 8 members of the Chance family, were in a room together laughing till it hurt.

It was a moment that etched itself into my memory forever.

And a neuro-scientist would label it as a fine example of emotional contagion at work. We influence each other emotionally; we don’t need a scientist to tell us that.

Emotional contagion is a recognised concept in neurology, psychology and the social sciences.

Many studies have documented how a certain emotional condition in one person will “rub off” on another person put into contact with it. I am sure you have entered a room and instantly felt that something special is happening, because you felt it.

This is emotional contagion in action. Alexander discovered another kind of contagion: sensory-motor contagion. He discovered that he could communicate his own conditions of co-ordination to another person simply by using his hands. And sensory-motor contagion also works without touch.

However, touch is an extremely powerful way of initiating sensory-motor contagion.

You use our hands – to consciously invite a person into a coordination plan that is hard-wired into their movement system. This is based on FM's fundamental discovery that head movements govern vertebral co-ordination.

Touch is active, it is inviting. It is not passive and seeking information, because sensory information happens by itself. It’s a report, not an intention.

You can’t turn sensing into a motor act – it doesn’t work that way. First you need a motor act.

When you use your hands it is an act of sensory-motor contagion: my touch is inviting you to move in the way I am inviting myself to move. This invitation needs to be accompanied with a cognitively clear intention – i.e. giving directions – that is the responsibility of the student. Once it happens, you sense it and so do they.

Sensing comes last, not first.

Rather than creepy hands, you want your touch to build their confidence in their own thinking. Your touch will reinforce and affirm the thinking process of your student.

I think this is true in any field of touch, not just Alexander Discovery teachers.

At ATSuccess we are not about sales and marketing, we are about communicating. At any level, clarity will attract students. Attracting students involves generating a clear message of communication – with words, with actions and with touch. Keep evolving your ideas. Through 12 steps, ATSuccess offers you stimulating ways of thinking about Alexander's discovery.

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