Thoughts on a seminar with Tommy Thompson

Two days ago, I had the pleasure of attending a seminar on the Alexander Technique given by Tommy Thompson. From July 2003 until we left Boston in 2007, I had been working with a student of Tommy's in Boston named Debi Adams (a very gifted healer), but had never managed to meet Tommy himself. I'm glad I made the effort to attend his seminar in Tel Aviv as it was really great and contained many gems on Healing that are applicable to all healers, no matter what your modality.

This seminar was mainly for teacher of the Alexander technique, so it was interesting to be a witness to the internal Alexander debates. Tommy mainly focused his lecture on differentiating between really connecting with the person and working with them as a piece of machinery on whom the technique is performed. He gave many demonstrations of working the "regular" way and then working when connected.

Watching Tommy switch back and forth between a connected treatment and a "regular" one was impressive. His words for connecting were "finding the person". In doing the treatment, you related to the client as a person, not as a machine or a piece of meat. Instead, you try to find their deeper movements beneath their normal "patterns of behavior". He told a story of being on a sea kayak in the ocean. He could see the waves moving, but it took him a long time to realize that there were deeper currents underneath. When he ignored the visible waves and focused on the currents, he was able to maneuver with ease, but when he tried to steer according to the waves, he always struggled.

He said that our patterns of behavior are the waves, but those may not be the person, they may just be what the person is used to doing. Underneath that is the real person and we need to connect to that person when we are doing healing.

In many ways, it is such a simple concept, yet so profound and difficult to do. Some practitioners reach this point on their own through either long experience or moments of realization. Some meet a teacher, and are helped to this realization. Some have a natural tendency to connect to the true person, and some never manage to do it at all. It strikes me that many of the best practitioners I've met all get to this same point. Much of what Tommy spoke about is very similar to how my mentor John Myerson talks.

There were several people in the crowd, several of whom were very vocal, who clearly did not get it. They kept trying to understand it within their own patterns of thought and it was clearly not their experience so they missed the point entirely. Some tried to minimize what he was saying by rationalizing it into other, more popular concepts in their work. I guess there is a fine line to know when someone is saying something that can enlighten my own understanding of my experience, and when they are experiencing something completely different that requires me to broaden my understanding.

Some other gems from the seminar:
People don't come to you for their health problem, they come to you because the energy of the universe has led them to your door. Their deeper self brought them to see you, so don't get lost in their surface problems.

He took two matches and lit one. Then pressed it to the other match which flared up as it was lit. He said that this represented our passing the knowledge onto to our clients - we are not given them something they don't already have. We are igniting something that is already there. In the moment of contact, the two matches burned brighter than either apart.

"Put your hands where they are needed." Not where you think they should go. He was clear not to get caught up in the technique, but to let the healing happen. "You can find the face in the back." No matter where you are working, you are treating the entire person.

"If you get hit a lot, you develop a pattern of behavior to prevent yourself from getting hit." Which may not really be you, but a reaction to your surroundings. Try not to focus on the pattern, focus on the person inside.

As a practitioner, always let the work to make you a better person.

When someone goes through a traumatic experience: if they experience it, they will be fine. If they react to it, it will get stuck in the tissue. Most people react to it without experiencing it and have troubles later on. Help the client to experience it without reacting to it and the can move beyond the event. (I was struck by how similar this is to the way in which I approach fear.)

Experience what you are experiencing. If we don't go looking for something in particular, then we can really experience what is going on, but if we go looking for something, then we miss what's happening.

Experience things from who you are now, not who you were. Change the story you tell to reflect who you are now, not who you were when the story originally took place. Let go of any attachment to the event as you used to understand it and then you can heal and move on.

I really enjoyed learning from Tommy, and look forward to attending another seminar tomorrow. If anyone has a chance to study with him, I strongly recommend it.

You can read about the second class here.