More Scuttlebutt in Alexander America

Giora Pinkas has just sent a letter to the besieged AmSAT SoCal teachers – as I suspected in my previous blog on this topic, John Baron's first letter was just an opening shot in a sustained campaign to defame BodyChance and my own reputation. Honestly – I could ruin this guy's life if I wanted to. A smart lawyer, a defamation suit and enough money – his life would quickly unravel. In his own passionate naivety, he has no inkling of the danger he is exposing his family to. I'm a business man, not an acolyte. However, I love his passion. I admire it. I understand that his letter – although defamatory – comes from a place of love for the work. I am, Giora declares "A Threat to the Profession." You know what? Giora is right. I am a threat to the Profession. The Profession that, 119 years after Alexander's first lesson in Melbourne, still hardly registers a blink on Main street America. A profession where barely 5% of its practitioners are able to make a living from it. Is that the kind of Profession we want to continue protecting? BodyChance symbolizes the end of era and the beginning of something new. Many Alexander Technique teachers in America are praying I will fail. Not likely guys, sorry about that. My failure in Sydney was my trial, my learning experience. BCLA is where I get it right. Alexander's Discoveries are due for an update in the market, and BodyChance represents a new movement which others have also initiated. We are the most visible, that's all. However, let's not get into too much grandstanding (I have a weakness for that I admit) and go deeper into the nitty gritty of ideas. BodyChance is not the flippant, superficial "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" organisation that Giora would love you to think it was. What underpins my school is a deeply thought out position that I have articulated in two papers presented to International Congresses in Oxford (2004) and Lugano (2008). My first essay "A Tale of Two Paradigms" documents my painful journey from table-and-chair teacher to activity-teacher. That itself is a spurious, misinformed way to think – but sadly it is how the debate is being framed at the moment. This is not what the debate is about. My second, and (I think) clearer essay "Teaching Technology" lays out some of the intellectual foundation upon which the house of BodyChance is built. You can freely download both articles at this link. The baby is alive and well. Today's Mission – Learn How To Love Being Hated

Once was the day when a letter like the one Giora sent out yesterday would send me spinning into emotion turmoil – now, I am genuinely enjoying the controversy. This are my private comments to you all, not for public consumption. It's all about marketing. Part of my mission, which I why we are all together, is to support our work growing, reaching more people. One of the structural constraints of this is how dam long it takes to train one decent teacher. Alexander Technique is not a business that grows explosively. It is a tortoise, but tortoises live a very long time (known to 188 years). At the point when I woke up to the idea "OMG. BodyChance is an expandable model" I realised that in the 25~30 good years I had left, I couldn't hope to build a presence of the kind I envisaged. But wait. The world already has hundreds of Alexander Technique teachers with no work. Isn't it possible that I can harness them to BodyChance's vision to make Alexander's Discoveries accessible to every person on the planet? How do I do that? Get their attention. Hence my blog, this website. And wonderful Giora, stirring up a controversy so that many teachers will finally read about the deeper, intellectual framework that supports the BodyChance house. And maybe I will enrol a few more teachers to focus more clearly on how to bring the work to the market. That's a wonderful outcome for me, exactly what I hope for. So – that's how you learn to love the people who hate you. Understand how they benefit you – and they always to benefit you. How they benefit you is the question to keep asking.