Day Twenty-Three – Jeremy

On September 26th, 2012 I decided to start blogging. I didn't decide then to do it every day, but in my enthusiasm to communicate, that's what happened. It took up time, a lot of time, but I loved doing it. I also realized, that I was carrying around in my mind a vast amount of information that was unique: how to power a business that was solely based on Alexander's Discovery. That's what I have been doing all my life: figuring out a business model for Alexander Technique teaching. I started with SATA in Sydney, back in 1981. I was finished with being educated by Paul and Betty in London, so I started teaching in 1979 until I finally got my STAT certificate the next year. I hung around London for another two years, then headed home to Sydney to start my new adventure… Those were heady days: long time teacher Alan Murray had passed away, Terry Fitzgerald had arrived a year before – already with a waiting list thanks to Dr David Garlick's symposium that brought Wilfred and Marjory Barlow to Australia - so Alexander Technique was primed to succeed. Inspired by Don Burton's ATA London experiment, I opened a centre in Milson's Point with Roz Chislette. We were lucky – our building was slotted for demolition, so we took a monthly lease on a huge space with spectacular Sydney Harbour views for $60 a month. We were told we could be kicked out with only a month's notice. We ended up being there for five years. With the cheap rent, the stella location and my residential program, I stumbled upon a winning formula to build a thriving centre: supporting a school, five teachers and spreading the Alexander message all over Sydney. But then greed brought the whole edifice down. I hated regular private lessons, and gave them up as soon as I could, instead focusing on a residential workshop program that provided me with leads to travel around Australia and give intensive lessons. I'd be in and out in a few days with enough money to take the rest of the week off. This suited my personality way better than a regular practise. Meanwhile, I had a deal with the centre in Milson's Point – they would administer all the enquiries, bookings and money for my residentials, I in turn would continue advertising in national magazines about Alexander Technique. Some of the teachers began wondering: why did they have to pay the secretary to administer my residential courses? I in turn said: why do you think your phone keeps ringing? (there was no email or internet in those days). They answered: oh people will ring us anyway, we don't need your advertising. And they demanded I pay money for the service. I declined, shut down my residentials and within the 6 months the centre had collapsed. The school spluttered on for another few years, finally closing down for lack of students. I had moved on. I was a drunk in those days – these days I still am, but now I am a sober one. However, I realised I needed to confront this behaviour, and I didn't know how. Marj gave me great advice which I completely ignored, then finally I stupidly decided that going to University was my answer. I reasoned: I can not drink like I do now and pass all my exams. Since my ego won't let me fail so publically, I will be forced to stop my drinking. It was hell for a year, but it worked. I even fell in love with a cute, young student who – like me – had to go back to school first to matriculate into university. They were simple days: I studied maths, biology and science while dreaming of a nice home in the suburbs with my fantasy girlfriend, 3 kids, a dog and a happy life hereafter. It was never to be. Marj ruined all that. She (delicately) stormed into my life in 1986, and that was the beginning of my international teaching life. With my sister Rosemary, we planned Marj's annual Sydney visits, and then I took to the idea of bringing her back to Europe before it was too late. AT the age of 88 she took her first trip, including the Brighton Congress, and we did a huge London workshop at the Steiner school, and then a quick swing through Europe. That was the time Marj turned to me on the plane to Paris and remarked: "Oh, I haven't been there since the Germans came and went." After that, I returned many times to Europe, surviving as the chair and table teacher who had the light come on and was now evangelizing Marj's way, plus a few other things I had picked up along the way. I went too far for them, so next year Cathy Madden took over that gig – being the real thing and not a convert like me - and she has been doing that ever since. I'd also got back to drinking, but this time took a more sophisticated way out of that by attending "wake up" courses by Werner Erhart, deep emotional retrospectives based on Alice Miller's work, coming out sexually in all kinds of ways and generally turning myself in one of those "feeling/thinky" people I had despised in the past. Then Marj died, and a light went off in my life. I stopped travelling and for two years lived like a hamster running in a wheel – re-building my teaching life in Sydney, by feeling empty of meaning and purpose. Finally, broke and unable to attend my rich seminars, I looked around for some inspiration to replace the hole Marj's death had left in my life. I decided Buddhism was cheap. I had always been interested in it, and I needed to do something to jerk myself out of the complacency I felt my life descending into. I would go every week to different Centre for a year, until I found one that I liked enough to return to. I remember at that time walking to an actors I class I was about to give, and being startled and horrified by the thought "Will you be still walking off to give this class when you are 60?" Suddenly, it seemed from nowhere, this thought appeared in my head "You have to get to Japan." To Japan? Huh? At that time I zero connection to Japan, zero. I didn't even know a Japanese. But this voice said: "The money is there." Oh. I got agitated, started thinking up plans how to get there, then finally said "Jerry, let it happen. Either it will or it won't and you have a class to give." And I didn't have that thought again. Looking back now, I am amazed by that moment. The Buddhism eventually led me to a full-time (unpaid) job on the Working Group to organise His Holiness the Dalai Lama visiting Sydney in 1996 to confer the Kalachakra initiation over 11 days. It was my instant introduction to a new community of friends – an international one, as the sponsoring organism was Lama Yeshe and Zopa Rinpoche's Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana tradition (FPMT). Buddhism was my new Marj, my mentoring source, in the form of the FPMT. I began nurturing the idea of becoming a monk (but an Alexander monk – I loved the image of me turning up to an International Congress with red robes flowing to stunned faces of my detractors). That needed a lot of purification (I was told) so I booked myself into a three month retreat in a little cabin in the Solukhumbu valley of Nepal, at the place where Lama Zopa had meditated in his previous life. (Buddhist, remember?) I loved that time. I got up at 3.30am every day, bathed my self with a bowel of water and a washer, and proceeded to meditate for four sessions of 2.5 hours each, finally retiring to bed around 9.30pm. If I stayed up late (being naughty has always been a trademark feature of my life) almost always guaranteed a terrible next day. It took me over a month before I actually realised that, but as my mind quietened I also woke up to the realization: Jerry, you are never going to be monk. It was good to know. From that retreat I headed straight to Japan. I was booked to teach by Robin Gilmore in a school she had organised with Bruce Fertman. At the airport, when the puzzled Japanese finally realised that both my passports were valid, my wife-to-be (and then no-to-be) was at the gate to meet me. I was 41 years old, a bachelor with no savings, and huge debt from my DIRECTION Journal, which continued to feel like a stone hung around my neck. I didn't know it then, but Japan had finally pulled me back into her arms. Your Task – Tell Your Alexander Story

As I wrote the last line in my story this morning, I burst into tears and cried like a baby for five minutes. I have no idea why, but it felt as though I had finally come home. I think writing your story is a great thing to do – even the short version – so that's what I am asking you all to do for me next month. After our 30 Day Challenge is over, we still have a month together before you decide if you continue to make this investment in your career or not. I think a great way to spend our next month is to put a more intensive focus on each person in turn. To do that, we need to hear from you first. My idea is that over the next week (or so), each of you write your Alexander business story. Bring us up to date, and explain the daily challenges you face to make this work for you. The successes, the failures and your lessons along the way. I want to publish these as my blog for the next month. Of course I will comment after each one – in the private, paid area of my blog – so this gives you an opportunity to have a deep reflect and re-engineer of your process so far. That can only be good for you. There are 33 of you in our group, so enough of you to fill the 31 days in October. The stories already contributed by some of you to Facebook are lovely, and easily suitable for publication with an update about your career approach. Your "readers" are other Alexander Technique teachers and students, and this is also chance for you to extend them a helping hand, and thank me for creating this opportunity for you. Just knowing there are others out there like you – which many of you discovered on entering the Facebook group – is inspiring and encouraging to others. Join me in my mission to help others learn how they can help themselves. There are still so many other Alexander Technique teachers out there looking into how they can live in this work with integrity, ethics and ease. Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to write the story of how (and why) you have, are, and will continue, to build a career around communicating Alexander's Discovery to others. Then upload it to ATCS by clicking on tab "Files" at the top of our Facebook group. Name the file by your first name. Mine is already there!