Interview with Frank Ottiwell: Inspiring the Profession (Page 4)

Interview with Frank Ottiwell: Inspiring the Profession
By Pamela Blanc

Published in AmSAT News , Issue No. 68, Fall 2005

Some of the university students were playing baseball in the field outside this ground-floor apartment and I had an over whelming impulse to get up and go out and play baseball! It’s amazing that I remember that but I felt suddenly so capable. As I tell you about this now, it is just occurring to me that I was moved to go into the kind of movement – moving around in space – that was previously my only idea of movement. And, I was propelled into the possibility of unusually capable and coordinated spatial movement, by the kind of delicate movement Marj had been talking about: the “true and primary” movement Alexander was espousing. And I had never felt so free in my life.

PB: How do you think your teaching started changing as a result of that?

FO: I remember one pupil in particular who was a fairly long-term pupil. I kept telling her, with enthusiasm, how much I had learned from Marj and how different this was. One day she stopped me and said, “You know, Frank, I know that what you are doing seems very different to you. But, these are all the same things you’ve always been teaching me.” That was confusing!

PB: Well, there we have the through thread of the principles being the same. So even though there was a difference in your perception or in your understanding, the principles were still the same.

FO: That’s right.

PB: You students had been learning the principles.

FO: Yes, I suppose they had been. Hooray! My experience with Marj made me think: “I have to simplify and do less.” I think when my teaching goes “bad” it is because I’m trying to teach too much. I start teaching instead of helping the person to have the experience. It is exhausting, too.

PB: Well, don’t you think there’s a fine line? I mean yes, they’re learning from the experience and at the same time, one does teach the principles within that. At least that’s my experience. It’s identifying the principle as they are having the experience.

FO: Yes, and I felt Marj never strayed from principle. One could ask her the most complex question and, after a brief moment of inhibition, she would either give a very short, simple and practical response or, more often, bright her hands up and say, “Why don’t you just let your head lead forward and up and let your body follow.” That always seemed to give me the answer I was looking for.

PB: I have always been grateful to you for your continual curiosity and willingness to embrace many different “styles” of teaching this work. You seem to have an uncanny knack for finding the similarities rather than the differences in this work. Thank you for talking with me, and thank you for being my teacher.