Time for Change

Because you might find it thought-provoking and a worthwhile read, I’m publishing the letter I wrote to participants enrolled in Preparing for the Return of the Habit, the online advanced training starting tomorrow.

Dear colleagues,

You know the problem.

The student receives a marvelous FI lesson or participates in an incredible ATM class and feels transformed. They can move easily in ways that were not possible less than an hour earlier. Their attitude and outlook have shifted entirely. They’re delighted.

And then, within hours or days, the difficulty returns.

You know the problem all too well.

You know the problem because you have experienced it. And you know enough to know that the problem is a consequence of a habitual pattern and the reason the difficulty - be it pain, posture, or a particular restriction - is back is because the pattern returned.

You know the problem, but you haven’t figured out what, if anything, can be done about it. I’m guessing that’s why you decided to sign up for the course.

In case you’re wondering, what you’ll learn this weekend and next isn't something that needs to be artificially appended to our work. It isn’t about what’s wrong with the method or you. Instead, it’s about the underappreciated and undeveloped aspects of Moshe’s method. And about continuing his tradition of borrowing concepts, strategies, tactics, and techniques from other, closely related approaches to developing human ability.

Speaking of tradition, I built the Preparing for the Return curriculum around the premise that learning happens experientially. I’ll certainly be presenting a conceptual framework you might be unfamiliar with, which may inspire you to reconsider some long-held assumptions and beliefs. While updating the paradigm certainly matters, the most important part of the program is gaining firsthand experience with the strategies you’ll be learning.

You won’t just hear a description or observe a demonstration of techniques. Instead, you will actively engage in new ways of working with your students, going through each step of the process. You’ll experience each practical procedure from both the student’s and the teacher's perspectives. That means you’ll walk through each one, getting familiar with it, observing how well the strategy works, and beginning to understand how it works.

Before even applying them for the first time in your practice, you’ll have discovered the common stumbling blocks and found out what it takes to move past them.

And, yes, you will be doing ATM lessons. They are an integral part of the program. You’ll not only do them, but also, hopefully, begin to see them in a new light, not only as a set of movement instructions or as something that needs to be repeated in its entirety to continue to benefit from it.

By the time the course is over, you’ll understand why it's not enough to give a great lesson and hope that a student will change forever. You’ll see that we have to start preparing the student to walk through the door and into the world from the beginning of the lesson. You’ll have test-driven proven practices for reinforcing, extending, and deepening the changes brought about during a lesson. And you’ll understand that the challenges of making learning last can become the first step toward overcoming them.

So, please get a good night’s rest so you come prepared to roll up your sleeves and get to work. See you tomorrow.