Day Seventeen – AhoAlexander

I just pitched for a new book in Japan, which will not mention Alexander Technique on the cover, and will instead be "60 Exercises To Improve Your Life". The idea came from two cheerful lady Editors who love the work, but need to convince their company bosses back in their 24 story building to back a book about it. Their marketing department is telling them that people want to buy "How To" books, so they came to BodyChance's Meguro studio determined to find a successful formula for a new book. This is a powerful, national publisher of considerable market strength. It was fascinating for me: positioning BodyChance through careful listening, I kept offering multiple versions of a book about Alexander Technique that might appeal to their perceived market. Slowly we gravitated to the "exercises" formula. Their eyes lit up at that suggestion. When I suggested that we start the book with "General Instructions on Your Exercises" they demurred, looked at each other while falling silent. I then carefully suggested we could put that at the back of the book? (It's the real essence of the book of course.) Inwardly I had to laugh, as they wholeheartedly nodded with my suggestion and started bartering with me again. The Japanese are so elegant in their communication – they never appear to say no, when actually no is abundantly there for the finding. Delicious. Word is not back from the Editorial board yet, and I am half hoping it gets knocked back. I am not thrilled with the process of writing a book like this, but I am thrilled with the idea of reaching Main Street Japan. Some of the ideological purists out there will worry I am selling out – and they would be right. But who exactly am I selling out to? An innocent person. People who seek exercises as a simple remedy for hardship do so because they don't know how else to escape. Do I want to help these people? Yes I do, and I know that skill numero uno is to listen. And out of that listening, to adopt a vocabulary, syntax and content that seamlessly initiates an enquiry into their innocently held beliefs. It's common sense not to speak English in France if you can speak French, just as it is plain common sense speak to the market in the way it is accustomed to listening. あほ = Aho, which is a Japanese word that means stupid, dumb, simple. It's meant as a message for us, not them. Alexander Technique teachers sometimes try to be too smart. In fact, Alexander already published his very own AhoAlexander exercise, although it was not so simple. Can anyone guess where you would find that? Your Task – Learn to Speak AhoAlexander

AhoAlexander is the language of the market – your very own "How To" that delivers on it's promise. It is a way we are evolving at BodyChance to present the work which render it unrecognisable to most Alexander Technique teachers, but very accessible to the market. It follows in the tradition of "Alexander Technique for Dummies." I don't want to encourage people to insult their own intelligence, but I also love the fun of sending up our seriousness and tenacity to "stick to principle" when often, what comes out of that, is just plain boring. The truth is, you need genius to deliver on AhoAlexander. You have all done it through bodymapping exercises. Don't you remember the ohs and ahs people give when you tell them the fingers begin at the wrist, or that the finger joint is not situated at the end of the web of their fingers. This is an example of AhoAlexander. You use AhoAlexander to describe the activity plan, not the co-ordination plan (you caught up with yesterday's blog right?). AhoAlexander works best when you have a niche, with an activity movement. People who love an activity plan (golf, swimming, dating, public speaking, martial arts, musical instrument etc.) are already pre-sensitised to detect subtle changes in the quality of their specific activity plan. Again, another power of niche-focused teaching. This enhanced sensitivity to the activity plan offers you an opportunity to use yesterdays' task as to-day's AhoAlexander exercise. You teach a new activity plan, knowing full well that if they follow your instructions clearly, their co-ordination plan will be improved, and they will experience a significant change. When you think about that – that's incredible. You are delivering an experience through the mail. Yes, this can be communicated remotely – through a magazine article, a white paper delivered through a CTA on your website, an information product that you sell, part of an online membership service, or a DVD in the shops: this way you can leverage your extraordinary knowledge into products that supplement your income. Indeed, it is easily possible that your products will eventually exceed any income you can earn through your manual labour. This is BodyChance's longer term financial plan. You think things are rough in America now, wait and see what happens when BodyChance launches an online learning program! It's a few years away yet, so the dust can settle first. This is leading edge stuff, and Basil and I are now in the planning stages of launching an online information service in the work for Musicians in Japan. They are ideal as a target niche, as they hit all the checkboxes that define a great niche for Alexander's discoveries. There are infinite numbers of AhoAlexander exercises possible – it is an inexhaustible commodity: human movement matched with a creative mind. AhoAlexander is simply choreographed activity plans, with an inner knowledge of co-ordination plans. One of the things I will be offering in Golden Week is a workshop on how to create AhoAlexander exercises. You may not know it yet, but you are already well on the way to being able to produce these. Your mission (should you wish to accept it) is to create a white paper offering an AhoAlexander exercise as a CTA deliverable white paper from your website. I suggest you create it as a word file, and use the Files tab in our ATCS group to upload it for others to view and comment upon. I will start by uploading one that I am working on now – this as a series of "posture exercises" still to be completed.