This July will be the 20th anniversary of my graduation from the Brighton Alexander Training Centre. Twenty years is a long time to be teaching the Alexander Technique and I can happily say that I enjoy what I do and that I‘m good at what I do. But the question is; what is it that I do?
Before I learned to teach the Alexander Technique, I learned a form of energy healing from a small, grey haired lady, who had some pretty crazy ideas, but was extraordinarily full of love. She was totally convinced that this was my destiny…..I was very young at the time and thought very little of destiny or life paths or of the unknown future rolling out ahead of me.
So I learned how to harness energy, to hold it, channel it and release it. I learned how to meditate, the language of the Tarot, of colour and symbols. I looked at my stuff, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual and then learned how to hold the space so that someone (or indeed a group of people) could feel safe enough to look into their stuff. I practiced yoga, Tai chi, chakra dancing and chanting, and I loved it. The more I learned, the more a happier version of myself I became.
All in all a jolly happy story; but now, here I am trying to work out how to describe myself and what I do. For our fast moving marketing obsessed society I need to find a Unique Selling Point, something catchy, to grab my audience within a millisecond , before they move on to look at fluffy kittens. And everything about it makes my skin creep and crawl. The anarchist inside me wants to rebel against this world where we have to present a perfect self. I’m not perfect. I’m very, very flawed. I drink caffeinated tea, along with chocolate biscuits. I rarely get up before 9am. I like listening to music too loud for my ears. I say negative words – mostly about myself, berating myself for another late night. Successful people go to bed early (I read it somewhere, must be true). So if I was to present to the world a perfect version of me – it would be a lie – a really big one. I’m an average person, living an average life, with average flaws and just in knowing that I feel a huge sense of relief.
So what do I do? I stay present to each moment and hold the space to facilitate a clients healing/transformation of their situation. In amongst that I teach them what I can, of what I know and hope that they find it useful. I‘m not sure that there’s a name for this. Not one that really describes the sum of all the parts and certainly not a snappy one to market myself with. Well being is a growth industry, becoming increasingly multi faceted as time goes on. I know that I’m not alone in this dilemma. There are many people in the arena who don’t have a handy job title, mostly because they’ve made their job up, through no other reason than because the world needs people to be present, compassionate and nurturing – they are beautiful, simple skills, which can be learned by anyone and celebrated by everyone.