Scaling Up Alexander…

It’s one thing to run a school of around 24 trainees - which in our community is usually considered a “big” school. It is an entirely different proposition to run a school with 140 trainees - which BodyChance has done and will do again in Japan.

What is the difference?

Quality control.

And I am very aware that those words have a definite “corporate” feel to them - quality control, I mean - are we selling butter?

When one trainee declared to me that - “BodyChance is a fascist organisation” - I slowly became aware that something was very wrong. Lines of communication were broken, people’s individual struggles had no outlet, and our standard of training was unknowable. As a school, we had grown from 30 trainees to 140 trainees in the space of just a few years. I was not ready for that - and all kinds of problems emerged for which I had no clear strategies.

Over time I began to understand how to handle this scale - then COVID struck, the school shrank back down to 65 trainees, and I lost the motivation to continue. So I never got to implement my solutions…

Until now. 

(Update: I sold the school to Zen Place, a Pilates/Yoga corporation with 100+ studios spread all over Japan.)

The CEO of Zen Place talks about a school for “a thousand trainees”. I don’t know about that. I approach that concept with a mixture of awe, horror and trepidation - I’d prefer 10 schools with a 100 each. But anyway, aside from that, how do you scale up an Alexander school to embrace even 100 trainees?

The biggest danger is the objectification of people.

The second biggest danger is chaotic teaching methodology.

My challenge is to build a network of understanding, communication and collegiality to navigate these perilous waters, and it all starts with teachers. Then the simplicity of it all hit me:

I must create a second school.

And this school is small, back at a scale of 24. However, this isn’t a school for neophytes - this is the school for the experts. It’s an Alexander teach-the-teacher school. A school that endeavours to get under the hood and into the engine of teaching methodology.

The purpose of this school is to explore how you can effectively communicate Alexander’s Discovery in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of effort?

Life is strange.

Just after the Berlin Congress, a group of teachers involved in training invited me to Dortmund in Germany this April to run a workshop for 30 teachers. It’s like a purpose-built opportunity for my new challenge. At this workshop, I plan to present the entire curriculum of BodyChance crystallised into five different seminars over three days - with lots of touching I might add! It’s quite a splendid and rigorous undertaking for me. I’m told there are still 5 spots left - so if you want to join me in making a little bit of history together, then please join us! 

More details are available here:

https://www.alexander-technik-deutschland.org/fortbildung-the-art-of-teaching-2/