How To Live A Wonderful Life - Part One

When you wake up in the morning – what is your first thought?

What do you usually feel – excitement, sleepiness, dread?

We are literally creatures of habit – fully 99% of our functioning runs on automatic. Neuro-scientists have yet to find a distinct part of the brain that runs our “will power” – it’s still a mystery how that works...

All our systems interact and rely on each other to know what to do: all based on the learning of our past. Our past throws us into our future, and it operates with an unerring consistency.

It’s our job to interrupt that.

Our conscious Self - that small speck of possibility amongst a vast ocean of automation - is our only hope, our future. It is how you interrupt the unexamined Self.

But you have to ask: What. Do. I. Want?

At BodyChance, as trainees make their way to class, this is a constant question. It is more mundane that the big question “What do I want in my life?” and yet, it is an echo of that question. When you come to BodyChance class, the teacher will ask you:

“What would you like to explore today?”

It’s a great question to start your day. When you wake up in the morning, why not make that your first thought? Ask:

“What could I do today which would be wonderful for me and others?”

This is the question that interrupts your habit. This is a question that leads to a deeper wondering: “Who am I? What am I doing on this planet? What is the meaning of my life?”

These are deep questions, almost impossible to answer. Your answer is in your doing. The old saying goes: “Don’t listen to what he says, just watch what he does.”

Our doing is who we are. Our being is what drives it.

At BodyChance training you start every class with the question: “What do I want to do?”

A musician may want to play her instrument – to improve the playing, to solve a problem. A Yogini may want to explore an Asana – to gain more flexibility, to discover why it hurts. An office work may want to explore communication with other workers, or the boss – to deal with stress, to improve their performance, to find more joy.

You do whatever you want: at BodyChance we explore how you co-ordinate your Self to do what you want to do.

Your job is to decide what you want to explore. And this is not only a job you have when you come to BodyChance, because this is the job of every human being who wants to live a wonderful life.

A wonderful life is a life lived in alignment with your passion, your values, your needs. Whenever you find your Self getting stiff, it will be because you are doing something you don’t want to do.

Or you have forgotten why you wanted to do it?

At a workshop the other day, a woman was saying how she got stiff while cooking for her family. “Do you want to cook?” I asked her. At that moment it was clear – she wasn’t sure. She was starting to hate it. She had forgotten why she wanted to cook.

Why does anyone cook? To nurture your family. To explore and create wonderful food. To focus and be productive. All these possibilities are available in every moment of time – and yet, when you forgot you wanted these things, you will get stiff.

You go to war against yourself: I am cooking and I don’t want to be cooking.

How can you live like that and not have tension? Trying to go in two directions at the same time is the very definition of tension.

Where in your life are you saying: “I don’t want to do this?” At that place you are at war.

Forget ISIS, forget bombs in Paris and Brussels: start with peace in your Self.

What have you forgotten you wanted? What are you doing that makes you stiff? At BodyChance you explore how you co-ordinate your Self to do what you want. Sometimes you are not even sure what you want. You are doing what you are supposed to be doing, and it has become so automatic, you are not even sure if you want it or not?

Trainees in BodyChance explore this question in every class. You start with what you want, and then you explore how you are doing that. You ask:

How am I moving my head? What is happening in my spine, and arms and legs?

This is the way you can start to know your Self: by knowing how you are moving.

At BodyChance we interrupt habits: because it leads to self-awareness and self-knowledge. And joy comes out of knowing your true Self. And the true self is you doing what you want to do.

It’s too simple really: when you want it, you’ll enjoy it and life will be wonderful.

But what do you want? THAT is the question.

This is the first way to leading a wonderful life!

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As you may have guessed, this is the first in a series of emails I am writing to my Pro list in Japan.

Over the next couple of days, I will post five messages here about each of the modules of the program. It's a snapshot into how I describe Alexander's discovery in Japan, and a model you might want to explore if you are in a generic market. This is not the kind of copy you will read on Alexander training schools in most places - in that sense it is unrecognisable. Haha. However, rest assured that the relationship of head to spine still lives at the core of everything we do!