Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE

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A change of career

Gate to The Constructive Teaching Centre, London

One of my clients said said this morning that she'd had the idea of training as a teacher of the Alexander Technique. As she has experienced many profound changes herself over the last six months of regular sessions, the idea of working professionally with the technique had suddeny come to mind. It had even surprised her.

This type of decision cannot be taken lightly as it involves a complete change to one's life and probably giving up an existing career in order to study full-time for three years. Any training school for AT teachers would expect applicants to have had quite a lot of experience first of private one-to-one sessions over long period before applying. Only then can we be sure this is something that we want to do.

There are clearly issues to be addressed in regard to a career change, with relation to money, being able to afford the training fees as well as paying for accommodation and living expenses. it can be a serious amount of money, but when people have their heart in something, there is always a way. Everyone manages in the end, even though they can't necessarily see how they will cope in their second or third year of training. Eventually, of course, they qualify and will be able to practice teaching professionally. It's an enjoyable and vocational type of occupation that provides for a wonderful way of life....helping people make the most of themselves, with their posture, abilities and performance as well as the teacher helping himself at the same time.

My client asked if I could remember the first occasion that I thought of training to be an Alexander Technique teacher myself. And I do.....clearly. But I didn't do anything about it right away. But what eventually happened is an example, of whatever is in your heart comes to you in the end. What you think is what you get.

I had my first Alexander sessions in 1972 as a twenty year old. After a number sessions over a few months, I asked my teacher, a wonderful Danish man in his 70's who looked twenty years younger, how does one get to become an Alexander teacher like him. He said that I would have to go to London and train with a man called Walter Carrington who runs a training school in Holland Park called The Constructive Teaching Centre. Walter Carrington trained with F.M. Alexander in the 1930's and moved the original course to its present location after Alexander Died. (And it's still there thriving!)

Well, I was living in Glasgow, Scotland at the time, and had a new career in retail window display for which I had just finished a two year training course, I had a new job, a girlfriend who I wanted to marry (and eventually did) and London seemed a very long way away. A move to London was just too daunting a prospect for me at that time and I shelved the idea.

Over a period of around 15 years, I progressed through management to become a senior executive for marketing of a large retail menswear chain of 480 stores. I had now relocated to London as a career move and found that I was living only 30 minutes walk from the same AT training school that my Danish teacher had described all that time ago. I decided to have some more sessions as a form of top-up to my previous AT experience and found that my interest in becoming a teacher was still there. I was earning good money, and with agreement from my wife, I decided to quit my executive job, return the company car and relinquish the big salary to become a student again for three years. It was a complete change of life. Little did I realise then, that my wife and I would separate within six months of me starting training and I found myself living in digs for a long time before our property was sold. I hit rock bottom financially as all my savings were assigned to paying the course fees. I remember my total financial allowance, over and above my bedsit rental was £17.50 per week, to cover all food, papers, travel and everything. It was a good wake-up call and humbling experience. Only towards the end f my training was our flat eventually sold (the housing market had been in serious slump) and eventually got some capital.

But on thinking back to the days in 1972 when I first asked how do I become a teacher, like my own client asked me today, I could not have possibly have imagined what actually would eventually occur. However, I do remember a night-time dream I had at that time, of entering the Constructive Teaching Centre and Walter Carrington holding out his hand to welcome me. It didn't occur to me that fifteen years later I would have moved to London, live a mile away from the training school and eventually train with the same man who had been described to me as a young man.

Since then I have never looked back. The Alexander Technique is now my profession and I happily run a successful practice in London's west end where I get to meet many wonderful and interesting people from all walks of life and from all around the world. I also get to write blogs like this that go on far too long.

What I wanted to mention is the same message I've blogged about on many occasions. 'What you think is what you get.' It may come right away, or it may take 15 years as it did in my case. But when the time is right you will get what you dreamed of. It's the law.....as much as the law of gravity. Thoughts become things.

So dream on!

:-)

Posted by Noël on July 27, 2006 7:52 AM | Permalink