Wishcraft, by Barbara Sher Opens Up Talent - by Fran Engel

My dream that had come to an untimely end was to train to be a teacher of Alexander Technique at a 3-year course. I borrowed the money to start the first semester of teacher training because other students who were graduating were still in attendance and I wanted to get the benefit of their student-teaching. While training, I was working at my own business being a sign painter to support myself and pay for the ongoing costs of class, (similar to the costs of college classes.) I had changed around my sleeping schedule to sleep two hours, twelve hours apart to have enough time to both work and go to school. So nobody could say that I hadn't given this dream my best shot. Something went wrong half way through - actually quite a few things went wrong at once. All at the same time, my car broke down and turned out to be too expensive to repair, I was given notice that I had to find another place to live and thus, the shop I needed to do my sign making to make a living would be gone in short order.

Although I was a young person decades ago, there were no parents to help me, because I had become an orphan when I was a teen. I had not built any credit history, so I couldn't borrow. Plus I had already borrowed from someone I knew for that first semester of training. So I felt it was too much to ask to borrow more when I had not yet paid that sum back. So in April of that year, I had to tell my teacher trainers that I could not afford to pay for another semester of classes, and would have to owe them for the previous semester.

It was then I ran into Wishcraft. Because of the book, I learned that one of the characteristics of spotting what I loved doing was that I found myself doing it repeatedly and the joy of it seemed to sneak underneath my dislikes - which were many because I was quite rebellious back then. I knew much more often what I didn't want to do than what I wanted. Because I had just lost my big dream.

So, I used Wishcraft's exercises to explore what it was I did love to do in hopes of finding the next dream. Sort of "accidentally on purpose," I dreamed a real sleeping dream that I'm hoping I'll be able to embed in this video. (Never done this before, so results may vary!)

Some time later, it turned out that I hadn't really lost my dream to finish my teacher training to become an Alexander Technique teacher that had come undone. But at the time I had this amazing dream, I thought that I had no way of continuing my studies...or so I assumed.

Reading Wishcraft made me realize something very significant. Most people had a safety net available to help them when things went wrong. I didn't - and it wasn't really my fault because I had never really, really tried to make any dream come true that was too hard to do. I just assumed if I really committed myself to making things work that it HAD to work. I had never fallen on my face before when I'd committed myself to making something happen. Other people had credit established; they had their bosses to borrow money from; most people my age at that time even had parents to help them. I didn't have any of those things. This made me stop feeling like a worm who had borrowed money and now could not pay it back.

Barbara Sher suggested a form for the question I could use to ask others:
What is your dream?
What do you love about it?
What is in the way of having it?

I was feeling strapped.There was a June summer workshop coming up for Alexander Technique students by Marj Barstow that I did not have the money to attend, but dearly regretted to miss. Because I had read Barbara Sher's Wishcraft book, I realized since I was already broke I had nothing to lose if I asked for help to attend. Figuring that since I would not have a place to live anyway so it would cost me nothing to be gone & I could hitch-hike to the workshop, I phoned the teacher of the workshop and asked if there was something I could do for her or for the workshop participants so that I could attend. I admitted that I had been forced to stop my Alexander Technique teacher training.

Fortunately for me, the workshop leader had taught as a guest teacher at my former teacher training course. During that time, I had taken notes when I had found her reiterating many points that seemed important for the class to remember. These "aphorisms," (quotes,) I distributed to my classmates. The guest Alexander teacher had remembered me because she had also seen a copy.

After I asked her, Marj Barstow gave me the "job" of writing about the original way her work on Alexander Technique was presented in exchange for her teaching me. I called and arranged to stay with someone I had met during the last workshop who lived in the same town. Guess I did a good enough job at it so that Marj's offer became an ongoing one. We had many, many wonderful conversations about the nature of her teaching and how she expressed Alexander's work uniquely.

Her mentoring and editing eventually culminated in training my ability to write - first a short brochure and then a 100 page book that I called "Discovery In Motion." Five years later, I began to use this book as a handbook for my own Alexander Technique students, after Marj Barstow told me I had learned enough to be teaching Alexander Technique. I became published in many articles and websites since then, discussing how Marj Barstow's work on teaching more effectively (gradually adding in my own experience with about how the Technique could be taught easier.) Marj's practical attitude and coaching has continued help me to simplify many of the paradoxes of F.M. Alexander's discipline for my own students.

On a practical level, during this summer workshop, I figured out how to make some money to help get me a ride home by borrowing the use of a sewing machine and sewing juggling balls to sell to the workshop participants. When I returned home, I got a job sewing juggling balls and that funded me enough money to get a new place to live and to be back in business.

In a long-term way, wow - what a benefit I got from the experience. Marj Barstow was a ruthless editor and I kept coming back for more because I was fascinated being in the hot seat of getting to talk theory. Marj, along with other Alexander teachers, was more concerned that while speaking, I should be walking my talk on the subject that I was attempting to communicate. So until I was able to change my manner of speaking...and breathing...and poise - well, I just wasn't ready yet for her input according to her!

If it wasn't for the experience of having to learn enough to think creatively and write intelligently about a very tricky and subjective subject to describe, I probably would have never become a writer.

...And here I am now, writing - about anything I choose. How cool is that!

For those of you who don't have the ability to play videos... read on.

The timing on this was while I still assumed that I had to give up training be an Alexander Technique teacher, after I'd found another place to live and before I knew that my new Alexander teacher's offer to teach me in exchange for writing about here was more than just a one-shot thing.

It was then that Wishcraft exercises made me realize that I'd already done something right that maybe could be repeated to find new dreams.

Going back to the childhood dream had been an effective strategy that worked to help me recognize a new dream that was staring me in the face (which was wanting to be an Alexander Technique teacher.) Giving myself the old childhood dream of having a horse, (even though I didn't really want it much anymore,) seemed to wake up a sense of desire in me. I would never have realized that having a horse would show me that I was innately a very effective non-verbal trainer and communicator.

Once Wishcraft helped me realize what I had already done right, I decided to do it again to see if a new dream would happen. So I resurrected a song I wrote when I tried to unsuccessfully fish someone out of the ocean who had been hang-gliding and lost control. This song symbolized people who I 'd tried to save but couldn't - people who had made their own messes that were too big for them or me. (Turned out to be a good thing I jumped in the water to help. Gave enough time for someone else to bring a knife with them to cut the hang-glider free and save his life.)

I was recording the song at the piano when I fell asleep. This is when I dreamed the OceanO dream. The dream was a "Passion Play" set in a futuristic era after a vast world-wide "Noah's ark" geological pole shift disaster. My new friends who performed it for the May Festival titled my Ocean-O dream "The Apocalypso." I'm thinking of doing that dream again, because it seems to relate to coming events.

Also inspired from that experience, by the way my town organized our May festival every year & the micro-tonal community - (answering the challenge of writing music for instruments that have no notation available)- I invented the "Arrange Game." It's a way of outlining a form used for improvisation that shows a new way of doing performance. One AGame can be used over and over, and it could create new genres of music that could be unique to certain locations or styles. AGame can integrate "satellite" volunteers and peripheral audience-participation during performances. I would like AGame to be an alternative for the classic director/troupe/audience organization that exists now.

More about AGame exists on my website, if you're curious to learn more.
http://www.franis.org/out4improv/

Since the AGame has never been taken for the ride it deserves, this is my wish for Barbara's 24 upcoming 24 hour idea party that's happening March 24th, 2009. Help give me ideas to figure out what form this idea might take and how to make it happen.

Thanks Barbara Sher for keeping me on track at making many dreams come true since then and helping me hatch new dreams!