The Minor Miracle in My Japanese Training - PART I

I left off promising to explain the minor miracle in my Japanese training. Two stories had a significant impact on the appearance of this miracle…

In the 1980s - while I was in London teaching at Don Burton's ATA training - I became friends with trainee Sam Wilson. Last I heard, Sam was teaching in Hong Kong, but he could be dead now. I don't know! Neither does Chat GPT.

Sam told me his story about lessons with FM in 1953. At that time, Sam was a Mathematics teacher and suffered from wretched back pain. As often happened to the 'desperates' of that era, Sam found his way to FM's door. In his interview, FM told Sam he could only start lessons after he had read all four of FM's books.

With a twinkle in his Irish eye, Sam mischievously told me:

"So I waited three weeks, then booked my lessons." 

Sam told me he never did read FM's books - and during his lessons:

"I was as lost as a ball in tall grass."

BUT Sam got his back fixed and happily returned to his busy life.

Fast forward to the 1980s when Sam had retired from teaching and began to wonder…

"What in God's name is Alexander Technique all about?"

He said he was amazed when he first started coming to ATA:

"I had no idea. It is so interesting, sure."

Sam's story had a significant impact on my thinking. First hand, it confirmed how FM had come to rely on his astonishing abilities to 'condition' pupils through touch communication - as he first wrote about in his last book. He had not abrogated the responsibility of relating the cognitive aspect of his work. Still, I guess FM felt he had put all his effort into his four books and wanted students to read them - avoiding having to explain it all over again. 

I totally understand that.

We know from Goddard Binkley's book "The Expanding Self: The Four Pillars of Alexander Technique" that Alexander was willing to communicate cognitively about his work during lessons. However - he failed in that with Sam. Sly Sam got his back fixed - which, at the time, was all Sam cared about. He had a busy life…

Fast forward to Melbourne 1988 - about - when Walter & Dilys Carrington visited the MATTS training school that Duncan Woodcock and I had set up for John and Lynn Nicholls. I was a pariah in that training room - being a Barstow advocate in a Carrington lineage school was not a great plan. I only lasted a term before meekly heading back to Sydney to leave John, Lynn & Duncan to carry on in their preferred manner. Many outstanding teachers graduated from that school; I'm proud to have been part of it.

Anyways, one day Walter was teaching in MATTS - using his Milton Erickson-type metaphoric stories - when suddenly he started talking about Marj. As I best recollect, Walter - prompted by a cheeky question from me which I now forget - said:

"Well of course Jeremy, Marjorie comes from mid-Western America. There, if you had a problem, a neighbour would teach you how to fix it yourself. But in Europe, people don't have time for that. They have busy lives, and they want experts who can sort their problems for them so they can get back to their life."

It was Sam's story!

Was this Walter's mea culpa for FM's ways? 

With my Barstow bias - that is how I heard it. And it made perfect sense to me. Many of Alexander's earliest students were heading towards their graves when they stumbled upon FM. He was their last hope. They definitely needed 'conditioning' -  a lesson every day for 4 weeks, then twice a week for another 5 weeks. This was the plan that Sam told me he signed on to in 1953.

But Marj worked with healthy young undergraduates at Universities; she worked with singers and dancers, and performers of all kinds. They didn't need 30 lessons to change. A few little touches from Marj's FM-like hands - coupled with an explanation of how to continue - would last most of them for months. (Notice that touch is still critical!)

That's the context of my discovery of 'conditioning' in FM's last book. 

It confirmed both Sam's and Walter's stories. It explained why my trainees were not changing in the way I'd expected from my STAT-based London training. And it was the reason that I finally smashed to pieces my STAT model - based on 'conditioning' trainees - and with the help of others, designed a model for training based on Marj's 'touch & talk' style of teaching.

It was out of this re-structure that the miracle appeared, coming in Part II.

This is the seventeenth in a series of daily emails exploring my challenges in communicating Alexander’s Discovery.