The AS does not consist of a rigid pedagogical protocol.  AS teachers are encouraged to explore ways of sharing information and encouraging exchange among students with a wide range of skills and backgrounds involving a wide open spectrum of cultural or aesthetic influences.  For example, one can teach a capoeira or tap class with a basis in the Axis Syllabus by investigating movements from an architectural or biomechanical perspective and analyzing the effects of different movement choices.  Ideally, it is not emphasized in the AS study that one learn the proper ways of doing things, but rather that one comes to recognize experiences of cause and effect and take more responsibility for one’s self rather than be held as victim to unconscious habits or patterns held in the body’s visceral consciousness.

Having written this, I would like to personalize my description of the AS by adding that for me, although I have held this ideal of avoiding value judgment on movement patterns, I have found myself modeling choices after my teacher, AS founder Frey Faust, and personally value and enjoy the particular aesthetic which has come to be associated with the Axis Syllabus.  I have been convinced by the anatomical explanations for movement pathways and find them preferable to other movement pathways because I feel better and have more fun when I make these choices.  They also help reveal to me places in my body where breath is not yet flowing or where energy is not yet moving, and over time, through repetition, change has occurred.  Although we try to educate people that the AS is not an aesthetic, it has been unavoidable that it has developed in the world as a recognizable aesthetic, as it is variously adapted to each individual who has studied in an effort to “master” this “technique.”  I have also tried for quite a while to find ways to separate the form from the thing itself when describing the AS to people, but I keep finding that people who have not studied the AS in depth tend to refer to it as a style or something that one can perform or not perform.  I find it to be a very complicated question what is the Axis Syllabus.  Regardless of our continuing efforts to clarify what it is, even entertaining the idea that the principles themselves are more valuable as they are passed on and understood by more people than the collection of the principles and the name of that collection, if that’s even what it is, as a teacher Frey Faust has greatly influenced the way that I move and experience my body.  I find this extremely valuable.