Day Sixteen – Invisibility

Cool and trendy people in Tokyo read Cocoro, or at least the younger ones do. A few years back they sent a curious journalist along to BodyChance to catch the word on Alexander Technique. My introductory group – that my journalistic visitor witnessed - turned out to be especially varied: a dancer exploring a leg lift, a shopkeeper concerned about his cash register manner, a salaryman fearful of his boss and a yoga exercise on the floor; among many others over the course of 90 minutes. At the end the journalist and I were scheduled to talk. Her first question startled me: "Where is what you do?!" I asked what she meant. "I can't see it. I can't see what you do. How in heavens name can I write about this?!" It's a problem we've had for 119 years now – the invisibility of what we do. There's only ever one movement to see, but fundamentally it's comprised of two distinct elements. One of those elements is the invisible core of our work. It's what we teach. At BodyChance, in our BodyThinking course, we describe them thus: Co-ordinating Movements and Activity Movements: two parts of one whole. Understanding this distinction sits at the core of your ability to effectively market and sell the work. What you need is a comprehensive plan: a Co-ordinating movement plan that happily influences your Activity movement plan. We always have both, as each is the mirror of how the other is accomplished. Your Task – Defining Your Teaching Through Activity Plans

I've touched upon this before, but my own understanding of this way to think is constantly in evolution, so time to revisit and bring into focus a way to think about your teaching service… 1. Co-ordinating (or Organising) Movement Plan Here I am typing my blog as a mild typhoon rages outside – the movement you can see. In the midst of all this I have my co-ordination plan – how I am influencing how I do what I do – the movement you can not see without some education. It was this that the journalist couldn't see. In the introductory class she watched, I would watch the student's activity, listen to the person, suggest a way to think, use my hands to communicate how they could readjust their activity plan, then let them do the activity again. The journalist was befuddled because she couldn't see any formula there, no form. Every suggestion I made appeared to be different. She saw the changes – that was obvious: the dancer's leg went higher, the shopkeeper transformed his manner, the yoga person added three inches to their stretch – but how had that happened? Each lesson appeared to be so entirely different from the last, she simply could not grasp what I was actually doing. I was changing that person's co-ordination plan. What I call a co-ordination plan is what Alexander liked to term primary control:

…a certain use of the head in relation to the neck, and of the head and neck in relation to the torso and the other parts of the organism, … (UCL, Chapter 1)

This is the invisible thing. 2. And Activity Movement Plans This is the visible thing. The world only sees the activity movements: the skipping, the running, the playing a piano, standing, singing, talking, exercises, the telling a joke. All activity movements. In trying to explain our work, you will do better to explain it through activity movement plans. It's limiting, which is why you want a niche. Every niche is defined by it's own activity movement plan – that's how Alexander Technique teachers need to define what they do. In Alexander's paradigm (have you read my two essays?) we focus purely on the co-ordination plan. Change the co-ordination plan, the activity plan fixes itself. That's fine if all you are doing is getting in and out of chairs. However, what happens when you start teaching multiple activity plans aka activity teaching? How about we go about designing activity movements as a way to reverse engineer the co-ordination plan? As a teaching strategy, will this work? This is the gestation place of Alexander Exercises, which I will write about tomorrow. Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to define your niche/teaching by finding examples of how changing an activity plan influences and changes the co-ordination plan. We're talking deep, decade long discoveries I am sharing now – all of it on the back of what Marj taught me. If you are feeling a bit lost, I understand it, so then your mission is to read my two essays by downloading them at this link. Or consider coming to Golden Week next May and study with me to really get this!