It’s Never Too Late To Change the Past

I was in Betty and Paul Collins’ house in Onslow Gardens, N10 in London.

It was 1977 and I was in my second year of AT training. Robert Rickover was waxing lyrical about this American teacher I had never heard of – Marjorie Barstow.

“She talks about the head moving…” I remember Rickover whispering to a few of us in the back room. I was scandalized.

That’s dreadful, I thought to myself, doesn’t this woman understand non-doing?

In those days I was an usher at the National Theatre – the new white elephant by the Thames that had just opened. I had only recently been scolded by Megan, my Front-Of-House supervisor, for facing the wall, bending at my hips, knees and ankles while spending 5 minutes with my “hands-on-back-of-wall.”

I was situated in a short corridor, protecting the doors that led into a performance in the Oliver Theatre, where Paul Scofield was brilliantly performing in Shaw’s Madras House.

“You can’t do that – it looks weird. Please sit in the chair.” Megan declared and walked briskly away.

I continued with it anyway – when no-one was looking – as I had a mission, a purpose and I wasn’t going to be distracted by rules that made no sense to me at the time.

I was barely 21, and a rebel with a cause.

Of course, as it turned out, in 10 years Marj was to become my most cherished teacher. The narrative I carried around about those days in London was rewritten. We all have narratives from the past, and one that I struggled with for years was “the correct way” to teach the Alexander Technique.

My concept was basically this:

“If I am not using my hands to give my student a new experience, I am not teaching the Alexander Technique.”

This narrative was deeply embedded into my behaviour. I obsessed about touch, energy, delicacy, procedures, experiences, positive feedback – this was the world my belief engendered. I wanted to get “strong direction”, almost as though this was a commodity in need. I was competitive with the “direction” of other teachers, and often compared notes with my fellow trainees about it.

Then one day in 1986 I walk into a room with 36 other Australian teachers, and there I saw an 86 year old lady with ONE male assistant.

This is different, I thought at the time.

I was ready for it.

For almost 10 years previously, I had been a good boy scout – dutifully taking people in and out of chairs, and giving table turns that I hoped inspired gratitude. However, I began to feel used energetically. I felt was bartering my touch for money, and the relationship between us was unequal. I was the giver, they were the receiver, and I took their money for this service. It wasn’t me.

I did not enjoy the uneasy feelings that this monetary exchange produced in me.

As I walked into the room that morning, and saw Marj sitting there quietly with a sparkle in her eye, I sensed immediately that this was not an “Alexander Technique process” I knew anything about.

How’s this old lady gonna teach 36 people all at the same time?

It’s not possible I thought.

But she did. Magnificently. She barely touched me, yet never had her attention off me. She kept injecting into my consciousness startling ideas that challenged sacred precepts I had been carrying around since my days in Onslow Gardens. These injections morphed my narratives with shocking and unexpected awakenings. I began to see what had really been going on in my past.

When Marj did touch me, offering a tiny particle of sensory information – as she did with every teacher there - her touch was like throwing a spark into a tank of gas…

I exploded into new possibilities: producing many new experiences, generating radical ideas (yes, my head really did move, it was true). I began exploring new ways to teach and learn. My narrative about the work was being forever altered. It continues today…

If you read my previous blog “How FM Changed Everything and Nothing” then you understand why I continue to question the originality of the process we collectively call Alexander Technique. It is not ours to call our own. It is not our intellectual property.

Our process of change is as universal as change is itself.

The process Alexander evolved – involving wish, recognition, experimentation, direction, inhibition, faulty sensory appreciation, non-doing and psycho-physical unity – has been repeated countless times in other avenues of thoughtful human endeavour. The emphasis is different, with an alternative language and yet: the process is similar, if not identical. What causes originality is the object to which this process is applied…

Originality is a function of the insight we seek to implement by this universal process.

You are “unique” in your ability to show a student how the relationship between their head/spine is a universally constant influence within all that they do. “Primary Control” and “Use Affects Functioning” are two subtly different, but essentially alternative ways of expressing FM’s insight.

It is interesting that Dr. Barlow chose to emphasise the latter in his book on the work. It makes perfect sense to me. This is what the world has little understanding and knowledge of. This is the gift FM passed to us, and it is our responsibility to continue to update the process of communicating FM's insight.

How your change process evolves is dependent upon your students, not you.

When you listen, when you care passionately about them, you adapt towards the effective. Your narrative about “the proper way” melts into a narrative about “an effective way” – even if this involves challenging the habitual narrative of an entire profession.

Innovating our teaching process is a diagnostic discipline.

It requires that you systematically observe how change is being effected, and select from the changes results that offer increased opportunities to spread the work: both in the mind of the person you are teaching, and in the minds of others who are candidates for the same.

What I saw in 1986 up in the Snowy Mountains of Victoria, was that Marj did not teach one person, she taught the entire group through this one person. This was one of many remarkable process innovations she pioneered, indeed probably the most controversial. Even today there are pockets of teachers who insist: “You cannot teach this work by groups” contrary to all the evidence that you can.

They are like our own version of the climate deniers.

Over the decades, this narrative has been modified by reasonable teachers on abundant evidence, and sound educational insights, to become: “You can teach in groups, but you still need individual lessons to reinforce it.”

As our narrative evolves, so will our understanding of our past.

What Is The Mission of ATSuccess?

ATSuccess – the community that I founded to support teachers spreading the work – holds that it is your responsibility to innovate an implementation process of FM's insight that meets the needs of you, your students, the market and the world as it exists today.

That’s a big call, you need support, and ATSuccess offers you just that. However, it is not a charity – just as you did in your training, you must pay for that support.

And why not invest in a growing online community of 76 teachers?

Together, these teachers are pooling a rich, diverse compendium of ideas that you can draw upon to fuel your own growth.

During the Symposium that ATSuccess held in London earlier this year, I was struck by a remark made by our Keynote speaker Lee Warren: “People can’t afford a spare room to teach these days.”

Oh wow, I thought, isn’t that the truth!?

This cuts down a time-honoured model of teaching that has held true for decades in London. For young teachers today it’s almost a relic of the past. How many of them can afford to rent an extra room in the economic reality of London today?

Maybe you wonder how this relevant to teaching Alexander's discovery?

It is relevant when you don’t segregate your understanding of the work into different compartments. How about we acknowledge the impact of one compartment upon another?

How can you teach without a place to teach in?

I struggle to comprehend how anyone could divorce this reality from the practical needs of teaching?

My mission is to spread FM's wonderful discovery, and I acknowledge any factor that would prove an obstacle to that. At ATSuccess we don’t divide your life into different compartments – we acknowledge that building a successful practice is a holistic enterprise, with many different moving parts…

What you believe, where you live, what you know, how much capital you have, whether you are motivated and your evolving emotional condition – these all have an impact on your ongoing ability to be an effective teacher for others.

Come along this month and listen to a series of 3 x FREE webinars that articulate an alternative narrative on how you can go about evolving an effective process as a teacher of Alexander's discovery.

It’s never too late to change your past.

Click here to register.

(If you cannot attend, you can still get access to the recorded version when you register.)