M02.14 Activity Plans

Niches are activity plans. Say you love calligraphy, have done it for years: then you are an expert on that activity. (BTW It might behoove you to read yesterday's blog on Co-ordination Plans.) You know how to hold the calligraphy brushes, the differing opinions and techniques about this, how the hand changes depending on which style you attempt, how this impacts your arm, the situation of the entire self in relation to that – so many aspects are within your immediate knowledge. When you are personally involved a niche activity, you are knowledgeable about it's activity plan. And activity plans, as it turns out, have a strong influence on co-ordination plans. Your job in your niche is to introduce the concept of the co-ordination plan i.e. your Alexander plan. Has anyone in your niche has done that before? You could be the first. Golf, for example, is still wide open. Roy Palmer has dabbled, but he is not a golfer. The few golfers I worked with – and I know nothing about golf – quickly became rabid fans. Any real golfers out there? Talk to me. Linking their known activity plan (golf) to your unknown co-ordination plan (AT) is the source of your revolutionary influence. It is why you can, over a lifetime, catapult your Self into legendary status within your niche. And, pardon my French, make a shitload of money. Which is another reason to choose your niche carefully. You better love doing this, or your impact over a lifetime will be dissipated, along with your income. How Activity and Co-ordination Plans Work Together So where does your co-ordination plan end, and their activity plan start? You might as well ask: where is the beginning of a circle? I believe Alexander tried to express the impossibility of separating these two aspects of a movement through the expression "all together, one after the other". In CCCI in his chapter on hands-on-back-of-chair, he used the terms "primary directions" and "secondary directions" – which are interchangeable with "co-ordination plans" and "activity plans" in my mind at least. This distinction of co-ordination plan and activity plan is a device of language that belies the truth that every movement is a sum result of both. Separation only happens in our head – it is not the true nature of movement. Which is what your niche doesn't get: the mere existence of the underlying co-ordination plan. They don't even know they don't know – but they are constantly frustrated by the painful symptomatic results of their ignorance. They are blind to it's influence – it is hard to see something so transparent, because habit only finds itself. When you are at that cocktail party trying to explain it, they either think you are a zealotic simpleton (oh – so I should spend my life asking my head to stop pushing down? Is that what your saying? Excuse me hallo?!) or their eyes go glassy and they start to fidget about for an excuse to get another drink. We've all been there. But not the niche fanatic. At that cocktail party, when you instead start off talking about how golf is influenced by primary co-ordination, they won't let you go. You talk activity plans to them, and add just a small dash of co-ordination plan to the mix, they get it. They do. Without your even touching them, they can start to make it work. It's my next Alexander biz innovation (coming soon to Japan): online coaching based on niche fanaticism. Tomorrow, I will explain how you do it.