Day Fourteen - Service

I am not a guy in a coffee shop going "Blah, blah, blah" about things he doesn't really know about, because a few people are willing to listen. This business with a few rouge teachers in AmSAT – who BTW are doing AmSAT no favours – has got me thinking about BodyChance's service: how radical it must appear to some people who have yet to read my two position papers from the International Congress in Oxford (2004) and Lugano (2008) which are available here as a free download. The tablework one is "Teaching Technology." So before I say what I am going to say – which may surprise and confuse a few people – let me say that I spent 10 years (1976-1986) taking people in and out of chairs and giving lessons on a table. Please don't characterize me as one of Marjorie Barstow's acolytes, mindlessly following her teaching technology because I never knew anything different – no, I was once a true blue, totally committed chair and table guy. So remember that as I assert that not only is tablework not part of BodyChance's Education Mission, I have a philosophical position that actively opposes it. I don't harp on that normally – because I totally respect your right to teach tablework. I am not out to change your idea, but now and again (like today) I want to reassert mine. You walk past a studio, you look in the window, there's a woman lying on a table, her legs bent up with a modesty cloth over her dress, while this other person is walking around doing things with her arms, legs and head. How is that not therapy? Students know it, even if we pretend otherwise. Some teachers use tablework as a "reward" after a hard day. And you know what? That's fine. I am not against that. It's just not what I want to do. I am interested in educational efficiency, and I can't find one single thing you can do on a table, that I can't do quicker whilst actively engaging a person's neuromuscular response to the mysterious power of gravity. The day I find that is the day you will see me working with a student on a table again. It could happen – I am open to discovering it. I was once a witness in Sydney to Marj at 86 years of age working with a student on a table. She did it grudgingly – because we kept insisting on it, and Marj had a strong value to respect the wish of her students. However, our wish bumped into an even stronger value she had: she was interested in education, not therapy. After repeatedly badgering her about it, one day in Milson's Point at Bill Brenner and Rosemary Chance's Alexander school, Marj showed us how she (used to) give table turns. (Yes, years back Marj also did tablework.) I remember many things that day, but one thing stands out above all else. Marj was working at the head of the table, using her hands to suggest a movement to her student, when she blurted out in frustration: "Oh, I could get this in about 2 seconds if I had her standing." Today's Mission – To Articulate How Tablework Fits Your Education Mission

This is the step in my 12 Point Plan where I ask you to consider Service Product. Service is how you teach Alexander Technique to others. (Product is how you package it.) Now if you don't have a clear niche – which I know many of you don't – then this question is going to be muddled by all the differing needs of your students. Avatars are not niches in the true sense – they are not bound together in one community. Instead, they exist all over the place, but we have tools like Facebook and Google adds to find them with relative ease (compared to the past). Niches are much easier (and cheaper) to locate. So here's the question: how is tablework supporting your Education Mission with your niche? When you really get into that question, it's a surprise what you find. I don't want you to stop giving tablework (if that is how you are hearing me) but I do want you to get clearer on why you do. Visiting teachers are free to teach tablework at BodyChance. When Tommy Thompson comes to Japan, he has my students working on each other on the floor – and they all love it, and keep wondering "Why doesn't Jeremy like tablework?" I tell them when they ask (they mostly don't) but no-one spoon feeds you at BodyChance. You have to figure things out for you. I give my students total freedom to teach how they want to teach, and I honour you all in the same way. Your mission (should you wish to accept it) is to create a clarifying statement of how tablework is part of your education mission. What are your educational objectives? How does tablework further your objectives more effectively than anything else you could imagine doing?