Larry Ball

EXPERIENCING, LEARNING AND UNDERSTANDING AN INTEGRATION OF THE WORKS OF F.M. ALEXANDER AND C.G.JUNG, ALONG WITH A SPLASH OF DAVID BOHM For many centuries, we humans have known that the pursuit of our wholeness is necessary for the education, healing, and strengthening of the whole person. For me, the primary purpose of my work as an educator and teacher is to help educate, heal, and strengthen the whole person in our striving for our wholeness in our lives. Alexander called this the use of the Self. Jung called this the individuation of the Self. My approach in fulfilling the purpose of my teaching is through helping students learn and experience how the Alexander Technique provides a necessary ingredient of Jung's idea and goal of individuation - of seeking our wholeness and becoming our Self. This ingredient is the gaining of a deep knowledge and experience of consciously living within in our body. Jung believed there can be no individuation unless we consciously live in our body. Jung believed that nature wants us to be simply human, a human who is conscious of who she is and what she is doing. Alexander's Technique focuses on these goals; primarily by learning how to allow consciousness to live in our body, joining our life energies, psyche, instincts, soul and spirit, all of which already live there. His work provides a long-proven means of learning how we can allow the wisdom and natural creativity of our body to reconnect us with all of these as one, all working together in the pursuit of our wholeness and Self. it is this work that is essential in our seeking these goals - the most important goals of our lifetime. Alexander and Jung believed that by allowing this unity of body, life energies, psyche, instinct, soul, and spirit we can learn how to live and function in health and healing across our lifespan, as nature wants us to My teaching includes my understanding of the physics of David Bohm where he speaks to the functioning of wholeness in thought, language, choice, action, movement and proprioception of Self. For Bohm proprioception of Self extends to everything, including our living within society, nature and the cosmos. My own growing understanding of my wholeness, my Self, includes my life energies (psyche, soul, spirit, instincts, physical, heart, earth, cosmos, Divine, and others unknown to me), heart, soul, spirit, sacred body, movement, feeling, psyche, self-knowledge, self-healing, values (e.g. morality, ethics, integrity, character), oneness with others (Thou Art That), nature, and God. (I use the word “God” because it satisfies me.) And since the concept of wholeness is all inclusive – it includes everything in relativity with everything - there is much more of my wholeness that remains unknown to me. As such, we are our own entelechy. We have all of our wholeness available to us in seeking consciousness of our wholeness and thus the ability to know, experience and practice our wholeness as best we are able. In these lessons I use my touch, words and our dialogue. I have been teaching since 1979. I graduated from the San Francisco Alexander Teacher Training School in 1979.The directors were Frank Ottiwell and Giora Pinkas. I was one of the teachers assisting Frank Ottiwell at the school from 1981 until its closure in 2004. I studied extensively with Marjorie Barstow for ten years in San Francisco and Lincoln, Nebraska. I also studied with Walter and Dilys Carrington and Patrick McDonald during their periodic workshops given at the San Francisco school. My mentors are Marjorie Barstow and Frank Ottiwell. I have certifications in Reiki I and II (2007-8) and a certification in Shamanistic Healing Practices (2014). I have been a serious student of the psychology of C.G. Jung since 1976, working on understanding and living the interplay of Jung's psychology and Alexander's technique. For 44 years I have been a track runner. This has also been a major means of my working with my wholeness and Alexander's technique. Concurrent with my Alexander teaching, from 1981 to 2014 I practiced law as a civil rights litigator in private practice in San Francisco in the field of employment discrimination and harassment, representing employees. At the time I retired from law in 2014, I had been elected a "Super Lawyer" (top 5%) in my field by my peers in San Francisco and the Bay area for 10 straight years. My Bachelor of Arts degree is from the University of California at Berkeley (1969). My Juris Doctor degree is from U.C. Berkeley's School of Law (1974). In 1974-75 I worked as a Vista Volunteer lawyer (Vista was the U.S. domestic version of the Peace Corp) in the Mission District of San Francisco for the San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation. I am married to Monica Norcia, also a teacher of Alexander's technique. We live and teach in San Rafael, California.