Day One - I Think, Therefore I Feel

A feeling is a report from your past. It is about what just happened, even if you are imagining the future. You see an image, you react to it. We dream, we imagine, we create - then we have feelings about these constructions. Our hormones are triggered; we feel multiple emotions coursing through our system. As an Alexander Technique teacher, I used to think it was my job to supply a new feeling to my student. I was very good at it - people marvelled after my lessons how different they felt, how amazing the Alexander Technique was… "You barely touch me, and I change so much!" Elisabeth Walker, after her first lesson with Alexander, told me that all she could think about as she left F.M.'s lesson was: "How can I get this back?!" And there's the rub of group teaching. To deliver an experience like that to everyone in your group is impossible. Very few have the skills to do that. So group teaching seems like an impossible dream, and indeed until the early 1970's, it was considered anathema to all associated with Alexander's Discovery. Except the market wanted something else. Humans are mammals, and the break-through evolution of mammals is that they are tribal: mammals function best in groups, in relationships with each other. Therefore, it is natural for us to learn in groups: universities wanted teachers to work in large classes; people love to go on AT retreats together; workshops appeal to more people than do individual lessons - what to do? In the 1970's people like Don Burton in England, and Marjorie Barstow in America, started an epic journey to answer a basic question: how do you teach Alexander's Discovery in a group setting? The First And Most Critical Decision You Need Make To Teach Groups [NOTE: This second half of my blog is a paid area describing ideas and exercises (to design and market groups) which are explored together in a closed Facebook group with 37 other teachers and students. Join now for less than the cost of one lesson - and get 30 lessons in return this month!]

Which do you prioritize - thinking (talking) or experience (touching)? When you look at Alexander's lesson filmed in his final years, what you see is 100% touching, and talking intermittently. Clearly Alexander prioritized experience - this is the legacy all of us have inherited. This won't work for groups - plain and simple. You need to get that now, or ask me for a refund. You may baulk at being given an either/or question and respond by saying: "It depends on the conditions." Fair enough. Then answer this question: based on your past choices, which do you favour? Which choice have you most often made? Do it like this: assign time to touching and talking. In a typical 10 minute segment of your teaching, how much of that would be touching time, how much of that talking time? I define talking time as hands off, while together wondering, reflecting and considering what did and could happen. This is what I also call "thinking" time. Here's another way to consider my question: in Alexander's own discovery process, his method was 100% thinking. That's how he learnt. According to Ed Maisel, this thinking/talking continued in his early years of teaching. Then, in frustration at not being understood, he started to use touch as a communication tool… Those of you who have not read my paper "Teaching Technology" would do well to read that if you are not sure why I am asking you this question. You can download a free copy here. My Decision To Teach In Groups Guilt. That was my primary emotion as I started to teach by putting thinking first. "All this talking" I would say internally to my Self: "This is not enough. I need to get my hands on them, I need them to experience something!" I was right, but I was also wrong. My guilt, I finally realized, came out of a fundamental misunderstanding of what I thought I was doing. The decision (for me) in teaching groups was this: it is about their thinking. It is not about giving them an experience. If I give them an experience, it is only to give them confidence in their thinking, that's it. However, many students believe you are teaching them how to move in a better way, and they want to feel that better way. Actually, I think a good many teachers are thinking the same thing. Of course, it makes for a simpler marketing message: Learn how to move properly! However, this work is not about that, as Alexander once exclaimed…

But no one will see it that way. They will see it as getting in and out of a chair the right way. It is nothing of the kind.

This may be my personal cross, but it took me years and years to undo that guilt of teaching without touching all the time. Whenever I was not using my hands as a teaching tool, there was a little voice in me saying "You are not teaching Alexander Technique! Get your hands on!" Anyone out there who has no problem with this - congratulations. You need give this no further thought. However, if you are used to teaching 121 (one-to-one) and using your hands predominantly to do this, you need to decide, that when you teach groups, that you will value the understanding of a student over the experiences you facilitated through touch. Please share your own reflections about this to the group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ATCSProMembers/