I’d love to think Alexander helped my student Peter win the Arvon Poetry Foundation prize this year with Shoreditch Orchid, but again, think that was all his own doing. The Daily Telegraph have it on line and there’s a link to it from www.arvonfoundation.org or google the title and there are loads of sites with it on. Congratulations Peter I love it! This is a picture of a bee or spider orchid I took last April in a field above Patitiri  in Alonnisos. Maybe it will be an orchid like this that one day will grow in Shoreditch….

  Yes! High Five!       

 I will be starting my next course of lessons in London from September 15th. Book now, either for a course of individual lessons (£45 a session)  or for my 6 week group course for 4 people starting Wednesday 17th September at the Bunhill Meeting House EC1, 8pm, (£90 the course.)

Pictures are of some beautiful backs on a boat in Alonnisos; my recent group in EC1, lying down in Balanced Resting State; and teachers sitting well and looking after their backs in Lugano…

The first picture is of two master teachers working with each other…….Rivka Cohen in black in her 70’s who works all over the world, based in Haifa, Israel, and Elizabeth Walker, in her 90’s,  from Oxford, the last remaining teacher on the planet who was trained by Alexander himself.

The next picture is of Shmuel Nelken taking a master class. Shmuel, another master teacher, is based in Jerusalem and had two lessons with Alexander in 1955 just before he died. All of these teachers have certainly got that Life Force working for them .

If you would like to experience something of this Life Force with me, come over to Alonnisos, or book some lessons with me in London. I’ll be back after 14th September .

I have been having a wonderful week swapping work with Pippa Bondy, a teaching colleague from my days when we trained in the Alexander Technique in North London. We walk down to a special bay nearby every morning for some swimming and Chi Kung and then walk back up the steep path. I find again that place of non-doing, where letting the legs go as I clamber up the hill moves me gently easily lightly…..in the water I let the arms go and as they automatically sink into the water beneath me, I find myself propelled forward effortlessly, no pushing, connected, conscious…..
Pippa has develpoed a shamanic healing practice and I recommend you visit her site www.ancienthealingways.co.uk - a very practised and sensitive guide.

"So this pausing and waiting feels very close to inhibition as described by members of this lst. And there’s a sense that the difficulty in movement dissolves. Instead of grappling with or analyzing difficulties, I pause and wait for a fundamental shift to a new state where the difficulty simply doesn’t exist. And this can transfer to other actions and responses to things like emotions or anxious thought."

This is a similar discussion to the one I am having presently with a student here in Alonnisos. As i tap this under the pine trees outside a taverna (thank you for wi-fi guys!) overlooking the sea, wondering what to write next, I pause and wait and notice Niko-Costas affectionately pulling fur from the Alsatian dog who is moulting, Greek voices and laughter floating down from the souvlaki bar above the little shop where a family are enjoying a late lunch, a tourist in a red tee shirt looking out at the sea as he carreses his partner who has a red bag sitting o the bench……and I find it is written.