My Reputation is Ruined

A big hand descended down from the space above me.

That hand whacked me on the chest. 

Not once, but three times. 

Like the clapping at a Japanese temple, this was a holy moment in my life. The voice accompanying hand was wrathful:

“What about THIS?!”

As I was pounded three times on my raised chest, I deflated and experienced a different kind of me emerging…

This is the story of that journey.

The voice, of course, was that of my precious teacher – Marjorie Barstow (1899~1995). Marj was asking me why I kept my chest puffed up – which of course, I didn’t know I did. At least, not until that moment when her powerful hands first woke me up to it.

Why was I puffing up my chest?

It was the absence of that effort that led me back into my past. It’s a past that I started to document at the start of my current rebooted Daily when I shared how I almost burnt my Self to death – Feb 9th: “Where I Burnt to Death (almost)”

As I let my chest deflate over the following months – through Marj’s guidance – I experienced a wave of sweet melancholy and peace. At the workshops I gave – participants began to comment on how much more accessible I was.

On my side – I only felt passive, almost dull. 

I felt as though I was looking out on the world as a sunset as I reclined back, basking in the beauty and light that touched me. However, I felt that my workshops had lost all their pep and pizazz. I was no longer the person I had promised them to be – instead, I was placid, almost boring in my silences. And yet, in this quietude around me, participants began to share more, feel more – for the first time, tears started to appear in my classes.

And tears appeared in me too. What I was about to find out was shocking and completely unexpected. And this journey was catalyzed by a subject I had never considered before…

In the end, these discoveries would lead me to offer a workshop that effectively ended my current career.

***
Personality changes are one of the long term effects of Alexander’s Discovery. However, calling them ‘personality changes’ is misleading. In my case, the process was more about becoming who I am, rather than making all the effort to be the person I imagined I needed to be.

Emotional connections to the use of Self are not always self-evident. 

Part of my journey with Alexander’s Discovery has been researching this in my Self and others. Ed Maisel once commented to me in New York that: “Maybe you’ve cracked open the emotional part of Alexander’s work.” Of course, at the time, several other teachers were exploring this. It was the 1980s then – a different time from today. Since then, I continued to research and eventually assembled the ThinkingBody courses for my trainees in Japan.

However, it works for anyone with a lifelong commitment to Alexander’s Discovery. Read more and purchase the courses here:

https://bodychance.mykajabi.com/store/TGFBWut4/