Fewer than one percent of the world’s Alexander Technique teachers teach the Technique full-time (more than 25 hours a week). Almost all Alexander teachers have fewer pupils than they’d like.
Alexander pupils are scarce and therefore particularly precious to the teacher. So it hurts when you lose one.
So why do Alexander teachers lose students?
I suspect the primary reason is that we make the student feel wrong.
It’s easy as a teacher to start pointing out to the pupil things he’s doing badly. Let’s say he holds his breath when he gets in and out of a chair, tips his head back, tightens his neck, compresses the torso, locks his knees and generally acts like a right wally in this daily task.
Telling the student, “G-day mate, you looked like a right wally there” generally does not create a lasting student-teacher bond.
The teachers who make a go of it with Alexander Technique make their students feel amazing. Julia Caulder and Michael Frederick are a couple of masters of this in Los Angeles. I want to be more like them.
I come from a background that gloried in pointing out to people where they were wrong. I’ve always enjoyed taking the mickey out of folks. It kept them at arm’s length.
As I head into my dotage, I’m trying to let go of my scathing ways. I want to help people, not hurt them.
As a teacher of the Alexander Technique, I assist people in noticing how they respond to stimuli and I show them various ways of letting go of responses that don’t serve them. Instead of telling them where they’re going wrong, I try to activate their thinking so that they can see themselves more accurately and not need a guru to point things out.
A familiar and painful emotion I feel frequently is shame.
It got instilled in me early in life that I was bad. That I didn’t measure up. That I was a real rotter. I was letting everyone down. I was selfish and slovenly.
I learned to talk to myself in this harsh way and to others.
Surprisingly, that didn’t make me popular. It seemed that most people did not enjoy it when I turned my scathing sensibility on their weak points.
After a lot of age, a lot of failure, a lot of psycho-therapy and Alexander Technique, I’m starting to talk to myself in a more gentle way.
I notice that some of my students beat themselves up continuously. It’s a stuck pattern of self-abuse. They don’t lack for good advice but all the imperatives they’re hearing aren’t enabling them to live on a higher plane.
Jennifer Mackerras, an Alexander Technique teacher in Bristol, England, writes:
In my teaching room, I have a cupboard. It has two main uses. Firstly, it stows my computer away out of sight. This is its practical use. But it has a far more important function than that.
It stores all of my students’ sticks.
Sticks? I hear you ask.
Yes, sticks. The sticks they beat themselves up with.
Mental sticks
Obviously I don’t mean actual physical sticks. I’m talking about something far more insidious, though just as damaging. I am talking about the things that people believe about themselves and say to me during their lessons.
“I have such terrible posture.”
“I sit really badly.”
“My right leg is okay. But my left leg is really bad.”
“I know that my walking isn’t good, but there’s nothing I can do to make it better.”
“If my furniture at work was better, I wouldn’t have this neck pain.”
I was talking to a group of psycho-therapists the other day.
I said every emotion requires a particular alignment of the body. Lose that alignment and you’ll lose the emotion.
For instance, when you take up your full space in the world, your full height and width, it’s hard to be overcome by the disabling emotions of depression, contempt, anger, disgust and the like. Instead, you’ll likely feel tranquil.
If you want to feel anger, you’ll have to tighten and compress your neck and pull down and in to that emotion.
There’s nothing wrong with feeling anger when it serves you, but we’re better off not getting stuck there.
“So we’ll feel better if we sit up straight?” asked one bloke, who pulled himself up.
“Not necessarily,” I said. “If we pull ourselves up straight, we’re likely to increase our body tension, and that does us more harm than good. It would be more effective to sit or stand like you’d just received good news. If you were feeling happy, how would you sit? Go with that emotion and lit it ripple through your body.”
Before I studied Alexander Technique, I always had bad posture and my dad would always get on me to sit up straight. That advice does no good. You can’t sustain it. It feels terrible. And when you do hold on to it, you’re increasing your muscle tension and doing yourself more harm than good.
If you want to go up, there are more effective ways than pushing up. One thing you can do is to listen to every sound around you. As your ears perk up, the rest of your kinaesthesia will likely perk up too.
If you’re a visual person, you might move up more effectively by seeing everything in front of you by paying attention to what you see to your sides and then taking note of everything in between.
Anything you can do to wake up your senses and to come in to the present moment will likely result in your torso untangling and your head moving to a poised position on top of your lengthened spine.
* Is the Jewish soul different from the non-Jewish soul? If so, is a Jewish life more valuable?
* I walked a few blocks with a friend the other day and the blocks passed by so much more quickly than when I walk them by myself. It made me sad to think about how much of life I’ve walked on my own.
* When you pray next to people you like, davening goes by much quicker. Church and religious services at Reform temples are much more solemn than going to an Orthodox shul. Much of what goes on at a purported “religious service” or “prayers” at an Orthodox shul is socializing. Because Orthodox Jews frequently pray at shul every day, it is much more informal than services at a church, where people typically gather for “religious services” just once a week.
I think converts to Judaism take varying amounts of time adjusting to peoplehood. They might be like those “strivers” at work who don’t take time to talk to people and to make friends. They’re just working. Sometimes you’ll find converts and penitents (baalei teshuva) primarily using prayer time for prayer rather than catching up.
It’s not uncommon for “prayer” time at an Orthodox shul be used to make a business deal, to get a job, to find a match for marriage, to find a new apartment, and the like. These mundane matters of life are just as holy and just as important as “prayer”.
My lack of social skills has caused me at least as much trouble in Orthodox Judaism as my lack of morals and holiness and knowledge of Torah. If you’re socially skilled but religiously lazy, you’re likely to have much more success in Orthodox Judaism or Jewish life generally than if you have the opposite tendencies (religiously skilled but socially inept).
Much of the conversion program is simply about weeding out those who are not socially skilled.
* Is it wrong to download movies illegally on places such as ThePirateBay.net if you were never going to buy them or rent them in the first place? Or if you don’t reduce your buying/renting movie habits but only supplement those habits with illegally downloaded entertainment? If nobody is hurt, what’s the big deal?
* I got asked on Shabbos if I was married, and if not, was I looking? I am looking. It made me happy to be asked and to be sought after. You’re not really part of a community unless people try to set you up for marriage. You’re not really part of a community unless people talk about you behind your back. What are other signs of belonging?
* I don’t like bar mitzvahs where certain tables are reserved for family. We should all be family. It’s like those parties where there are two tiers. The elites stay behind the ropes in their own section.
* I had a friend in shul say to me on Shabbos, “I never see you pray.”
We’ve been davening together for years but yeah, I do prefer to study Torah than to pray.
* In this week’s parasha, you have the Urim V’tumim (breast plate). Do you think most people face a greater challenge in detecting right from wrong or doing right from wrong? Converting to Judaism has helped me clarify right from wrong but my biggest trouble is doing right from wrong, not knowing right from wrong.
* I just did my taxes. Complicated tax codes with lots of deductions and high marginal rates just encourage cheating, just as the movie industry’s lack of easy ways to watch movies online encourages piracy. I’m not happy with any of the tax plans of the Republican candidates for president. None of these plans are bold calls for a flat rate with no deductions.
* Rick Santorum is tired of the press always asking him about birth control. So what does a politician do when he doesn’t like the questions he gets?
* Rabbi Wein writes: “The light of Torah is dependent upon the moral purity of its source. Just as dregs and pulp contaminate the oil and prevent a steady light from emerging, so, too, grave imperfections of character and behavior weaken the teachings of Torah to students and to the masses of Israel.”
When I know that a rabbi has had some scandal, particularly a sexual scandal, it’s hard for me to take seriously any of his Torah teaching, even if he’s brilliant.
If you’re a rabbi and you’ve been caught with bad stuff on your computer or you’ve plooked a sibling or a congregant or somebody’s wife, you should sell insurance or do some other job. You’re sunk as far as teaching Torah in my eyes.
I guess I advocate a zero tolerance standard for rabbis for sexual sins and anything else that gets people talking. Sexual sins may not be worse than other sins, but they cause people to talk more than other sins usually do.
Dennis Prager said he did not become a rabbi because people expect rabbis to say certain things and he wanted the freedom to say what he wanted. That’s the same reason I did not become a rabbi. I’d rather write about my sins than urge people to righteousness.
Years ago, somebody offered to tell me about some shanda my rabbi of the time had committed in exchange for my telling him all about the shanda of another rabbi. I told him to keep quiet. I didn’t want to know anything bad about my rabbi. This is remarkable because normally I want to know all the gossip.
When I was first plooking, I wanted to know all about the past of my partner in this respect. Has she ever been abused or raped or an adulteress or a ho or that sort of stuff. After my third partner, I realized this was a bad idea because I could not get those images out of my head, and after number three, I stopped wanting to know things in this department. As I’ve aged, I’ve realized there are many things I don’t want to know.
When I learned about Andrew Sullivan’s gay cruising and personal ad placing, it pretty much killed him for me as a commentator. I no longer was interested in his views on politics or anything.
As New York wrote wrote: “In Sullivan’s case, he was exposed for something that he discusses freely. He cruises. He’s proud of being well known in gay bars across Washington. Before you know it, when you’re with him, he’ll be talking about leather stuff. He’s written, too, about unprotected sex between HIV-positive partners — he’s in favor of it and has a strenuous point of view about its relative safety. He’s not keeping many secrets. Of course, his enemies argue that he’s intellectually dishonest — but that’s different from being actually dishonest.
Still, the in flagrante delicto Web pages, which were enterprisingly saved and reposted by his detractors, are a fleshy corpus: “killer muscle ass that loves to milk loads with my power glutes.”
* I have no expectations for the moral behavior of politicians. I don’t care much. All in all, I’d prefer to be represented by somebody who acts honorably rather than dishonorably, but it is not important to me.
* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: Clothing plays a great role in current Jewish society. Certain sectors of our society identify their closeness to God and tradition in terms of the clothing that they wear. There is no doubt that clothing makes an impression upon those who see us and upon those who wear it. Research has shown that schools that have a dress uniform have an ability to deal with problems of student discipline more easily than the free and open schools of casual, whatever you like type of dress.
But there is a responsibility that comes with wearing special clothing. And that responsibility is to be people of “honor and glory.” The Talmud states almost ironically that he who wishes to sin should travel to a place where he is unknown and to wear “black clothing” so that his behavior will not reflect on the whole of Israel.
There are differing interpretations of what “black clothing” means in this context. But it is clear that it means a type of anonymous and casual clothing that will not reflect upon the Torah community and Judaism generally. One cannot wear the garments of “honor and glory” and behave in a fashion that contradicts those values. Wearing garments is something that should never be taken lightly. For with the garments come the responsibilities and challenges as well.
* Rabbi Wein writes: …from the time of Moshe onwards, Jews attempted to dress distinctively, albeit always within the confines and influences of the surrounding general population.
“Jewish clothing” was always meant to be modest, neat and clean. It was to be an “honor and glory” to the wearer and the Jewish society. The Talmud speaks very strongly against Torah scholars who are somehow slovenly in the appearance of their clothing. Poverty was never allowed to be an excuse for stains or dirt on one’s garments.
* I notice that the way Reform and Conservative Jews dress, including their clergy, is indistinguishable from the goyim. I’ve seen LA’s most important Conservative rabbis walk around Pico-Robertson in jeans.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “…the tzitz became a statement of the Jewish dedication to the service of God and man and the pursuit of holiness in human life. But again, a tzitz worn by a person who is otherwise improperly clothed is of little value.” I guess when I go around in shorts or a mankini or sweats with my tzitzit out, what the heck am I thinking?
* Rabbi Wein writes: “Clothes that are provocative, that are vulgar and insulting to others, that are physically immodest and meant to attract anti-social response, are all frowned upon by Jewish tradition.” That’s why I didn’t want the t-shirt that read, “Stay in yeshiva and stay off the crack.”
“You should make up testimonials for your Alexander site,” said a friend over lunch.
“I have five real testimonials up there already,” I said. “Including one from you about how my Alexander lessons helped you overcome E.D. I put your name, address, phone number on it. I hope that’s ok.”
“Alexander helps with ED?” he asked.
“It helps with everything,” I said. “I praise you for your courage. Not many young men would be willing to go public with their ED problems. You’re an inspiration to us all.”
On Adam Carolla’s podcast, Dennis Prager says: “One of my most embarrassing stories which might explain why that marriage didn’t last as long as it should have.
“A previous wife came home one day. She looked in pain. She had severe cuts and bruises on her arm. I asked, what happened?
“She said, I was walking in a parking lot and there was a window open and I was bit by a dog. And I said, ‘Bitten.'”
The marriage didn’t last much longer. “I can’t stand bad grammar,” says Dennis. “We all have our thing.”
Carolla’s podcast starts with Adam reading an ad for Adam & Eve’s thousands of adult products.
Posted inDennis Prager|Comments Off on That Marriage Didn’t Last Long
On his radio show today, Dennis Prager said: “The greatest Jewish philosopher and legalist, Maimonides, said that a Jew should never say, pig, eww, it’s disgusting. Rather, a Jew should say a pig sounds delicious, but God says no.
“Bacon smells good but I don’t eat it.
“I’m worried about spouses who want to control the other’s thoughts. If you wish to control your thoughts because you believe God wants you to, that I respect. But I don’t want to be married to anyone who tells me what to think. I want to be married to somebody who expects certain behavior from me, as I would of her, but I don’t tell my wife what to think and I don’t want her telling me what to think.
“I fight totalitarianism in the world and I don’t want totalitarianism in my marriage. ‘Honey, I don’t like the way you are thinking about that woman.’ Holy. I don’t want to go home.
“Do I treat you lovingly? Then let my thoughts be, honey.”
“I love liberty, love, and fidelity. They can all be balanced.”
Now Coren has shoved his foot far deeper into his mouth with a personal diatribe against me.
Personal insults are the last refuge of the intellectual coward.
All Coren had to do was apologize for these nauseating insinuations and remarks. Instead, he made the matter worse by complaining that I’m short, that my office had the temerity to request kosher food from the exalted Coren and his staff, and that I refused to exit his studio when he obnoxiously demanded that I exit the very moment the cameras stopped rolling. For good measure, he made sure to gratuitously insult Oprah and Michael Jackson for their mere associations with me, as well.
For the record, there is little I can do about my height, and I apologize to Coren for offending him with my diminutive appearance. Likewise, there is nothing I can do about being kosher. I will never give it up, no matter how much he attacks me for simply asking where I might obtain kosher food since I am not familiar with Toronto. And when Coren’s show asked me to take an early morning flight to Toronto – to talk about my new book Kosher Jesus – where I was traveling for my nephew’s wedding, my office simply asked if a kosher meal could be procured since I would not be eating the whole day and, as a kosher Jew, cannot buy food in most places. Even so, they told my assistant we would have to arrange and pay for it ourselves.
As for Coren’s libel that I threatened him with disclosure of his remarks about Jews and Hollywood, the paranoid claim is laughable given that he had just made his remarks about Jews on national TV in Canada.
It is absolutely true that I refused to leave his studio after his reprehensible treatment of me and his attempt to evict me just as soon as the interview concluded, demanding to see his superiors and finally meeting a man named Matt Wolf, executive producer of Sun TV’s prime time talk shows, who turned out to be quite a gentleman.
I make no apologies for my actions. I am somewhat who fights anti-Semitism and holds those who malign my people accountable. Coren can claim from here to kingdom come that he is a friend of the Jewish community, and that may be true. But that does not excuse his odious remarks. His comments about lack of Jewish appreciation for Christians and the connection between Jews and Hollywood are the very stuff of negative Jewish stereotypes and if he was not prepared to retract them – as Marlon Brando did years ago when he too insinuated on Larry King Live that Jews control Hollywood – then I will bring the matter to his superiors. And his claim that he was only speaking about ‘liberal’ Jews matters not a toss. For the record I am a Republican who is currently seeking our party’s nomination for Congress in New Jersey’s Ninth Congressional District. But I will stand with my people, whatever their political persuasion, and will not allow them to slandered.
As for the Jewish intern of whom he speaks, how sad that some Jews appear to turn the other cheek even when their people are maligned in order to remain in the good graces of superiors.
More troubling still is Coren’s praise for Pius XII and his attempt to hold the Jews accountable for misrepresenting this most ignominious of Popes. Indeed, Sun TV cut Coren’s remarks about Pius from their online post of the broadcast. Why? And why isn’t the interview posted unedited? The public has the right to see it in its entirety.
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
