Where Are Your Shoes?

Before Japanese Golden Week and my series of 11 emails on “How To Teach Online” (all on my blog link below), I wrote this about my precious teacher Marjorie Barstow (1899~1995): 

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That wasn’t the last time I got pierced by those penetrating eyes.

It happened 7 years later in one of the terrifying moments of my life…

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Those “penetrating eyes” were Marj’s of course, and before I get to the story about her final parting shot, I am going to tell a story against my Self, and for those “penetrating eyes”.

Before I knew it was happening, Marj watched me like a hawk.

If I hadn’t been spending so much time hiding in my cloud of wonder, I would have noticed. There were several occasions where Marj sought to “wake me up.”

That was her avowed aim with all of us. At the opening session of her first workshop in Australia – with 30 teachers staring back at her – she declared:

“All I want to do is wake you people up! I don’t mean from bed in the morning. I mean during the day: to see your Self; to know what you are doing.”

Sheesh! She sounded more like a Zen Master than a teacher of Alexander’s discovery.

But she was true to her word, which I was soon to find out.

I hate shoes – who wants their foot to spend most of its life in a dark, damp, smelly room with no windows or air? That’s what shoes are to me—claustrophobic cubicles. Therefore, whenever I arrived at someone’s house, my first task is to lose my shoes.

Often, I did lose them – and Marj took great delight in catching me out.

As we were leaving the Rich residence in Bellvue Hill in Sydney in 1987, I realised I needed my shoes. Marj looked me – eyes twinkling – and asked:

“Do you know where they are?”

Of course I didn’t, and at that moment I hated her for it. 

Because she knew - she watched me taking them off. Such a simple action, and she was more “awake” to it than I was.

“There”, and she pointed to a corner in the room: two shoes, waiting for their half-asleep owner.

This is how I learnt from Marj – long before “mindfulness” became the rage - she kept cueing me on how I was asleep. The funniest lesson was yet to come – because Marj decided I ate too fast, and she soon set about waking me up….

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Alexander’s discovery might not at first seem like mindfulness training, yet it easily lends itself to this practice. When I forgot my shoes – was I paying attention to my actions? Marj knew I wasn’t, and she knew that if I paid attention, my life would get easier.

I have a lot more stories like this – and how they apply to teaching – in my two online courses described at the link below:

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