About Us
Welcome to the web page of Mike & Chie Cross, teachers of the FM Alexander Technique.
We moved to Aylesbury in 1995 in order to train as Alexander teachers at the training course led by the late Ray Evans, assisted by Ron Colyer.
Mike completed the 3-year STAT training course in 1998; Chie qualified in 2001.
We have two teenage sons, Gen & Dan, currently studying at Aylesbury Grammar School.
About Mike
I was born in Birmingham in 1959, and graduated from the economics department of Sheffield University in 1981. Interest in Zen & the martial arts took me to Japan in 1982, where I met Chie in 1989. My first experience of Alexander work, in Tokyo in 1994, was a revelation -- the Alexander teacher guided me into a sitting posture that seemed incredibly easy and effortless. It felt very unfamiliar but at the same time like coming home. I decided almost at once to come back to England to train as an Alexander teacher. Since qualifying in 1998 I have continued to have lessons with two very experienced Alexander teachers: the late Marjory Barlow (FM Alexander's niece), and the concert pianist Nelly Ben-Or. Also I have followed the lead of Ray Evans in training as a neuro-developmental therapist, so as to gain a better understanding of immature primitive reflexes and the problem of unreliable feeling.
About Chie
I was born in Tokyo in 1961, and began competitive long-distance swimming while a student at Tokyo Women's College of Physical Education, where I completed a bachelor of education degree in 1984. I then taught swimming first as a PE teacher at a Japanese high school and later as an instructor at a private sports club.
A full teaching member of the Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique since 2001, I am a regular visiting teacher at STAT teacher training schools in Maidenhead and Oxford.
I became aware of the Shaw Method of swimming through Mike's brother Ian. While working for Ian's business, Swimming Without Stress, I have been gradually developing my own approach to applying the principles of the Alexander Technique in the water.
My other great interest is in how Alexander work can help women through pregnancy and childbirth, and I have recently trained as a doula.
For both of us, the thread that has run through all of our work for the past 30 years is the fundamental importance of the sense of balance and direction. We see every day, in Alexander work on land and in water, in working with children with immature reflexes, and in working on our own development, how the sense of balance tends to be hindered by fear. We are confident that there is potential in everybody for the sense of balance and direction to be re-awakened. Our teachers have given us this confidence. Maybe it is one of the greatest gifts that human beings can give each other.
THE MIDDLE WAY RE-EDUCATION CENTRE
--> re-awakening the sense of balance & direction
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