Pilates is Form | Alexander is Emptiness

The Heart Sutra is Shakyamuni Buddha's most renowned teaching.

One of its most famous lines goes like this:

"Emptiness is form - form is emptiness."

It neatly explains the relationship between Pilates and Alexander's Discovery.

Or between any system developed by a human, and Alexander's Discovery.

First, it's important to know that Pilates is named after the man who created a vast, connected series of movements that are designed to optimize your muscular activity. It is full of creative forms to make movements – with and without different devices - that explore alternate muscle groups, that in turn achieve different outcomes.

This is form.

Second, it's necessary to know that Alexander's work is also named after the man who discovered something, rather than creating a system. 

(yes, yes Possum – there is a 'system' I know, but Alexander didn't invent that. Today it's called the scientific method, and it was around a long time before FM used it to apply his discovery to his movement.)

The outcome of applying Alexander's Discovery to your Pilates – or Music, Yoga, daily activity - is that you end up by doing less to gain more. 

My esteemed teacher Marjorie Barstow put it this way:

"All you get is the absence of what you had."

This is emptiness. You get nothing in return for your something.

BodyThinking captures the emptiness of Alexander's Discovery: by helping you discover how you are NOT cooperating with Nature's design...

*** HOW IT WORKS ***

Have you ever been frustrated in not being able to do a skilled movement?

Or by getting a mysterious pain every time you do a specific exercise?

What is happening to you is hidden. 

When you fail to achieve what you want – particularly in the domain of skilled movements – Alexander discovered that the cause is related to doing something - along your spine and head - that you had no conscious intention of doing. And that was entirely unnecessary.

This is another kind of emptiness – the emptiness in your mind of not knowing what you are not understanding. In other words – you don't know you don't know.

How can you explore this dark, hidden Self that jeopardizes your conscious intentions?

This is a tricky problem – to discover something that we don't even know we have to find. This is how Alexander's work solves many puzzles when it comes to performing movements of any kind, including those that Pilates invented. 

Taeko (佐藤 妙子) is a well-respected Instructor-of-Instructors in the Pilates community in Japan, and she has been studying the emptiness of Pilates for six years during her training at BodyChance.

Alexander is a puzzle, and not everyone has Taeko's patience to apply it. If you can imagine how Alexander's Discovery would benefit your movements, you are already quite bright.

You need help, and Taeko is there to help you. 

Hmmm...

But Taeko's course is in Tokyo. Not so cost-effective to attend.

Instead, gather together these three things: 

1. A problem (you are unable to remedy)
2. Curiosity (to explore alternative solutions)
3. Patience (to discover what you didn't know needed finding)

The "problem" for a lot of Alexscovery teachers is how to find students.

The "curiosity" implies being open to doing something different.

The "patience" is admitting that change takes time; there's no getting around that.

If that resonates with you, consider the ATSuccess Foundations course – where BodyThinking meets the market; where the student and your duty to convince them meet. 

How do you get people to pass over their hard-earned cash for your services?

You can start ATSuccess Foundations course this month, and it includes three months coaching with Chancer. 

Read more about the course here:

https://atsuccess.com/foundations