ACCEPTing
Notice how you are. Slouching? Stiff neck? Lopsided? Don’t adjust before you do the exercise! (Too late?) How are you now? Thats now, not after-you’ve-got-ready-for-the-exercise. Try and accept it. Exactly as it is.
Don’t adjust to a pre-assumed ideal, or the image
you want to give to others, or how much you know
about posture or bodywork or yoga or Alexander...
Just be it. If there is any pain, just acknowledge it,
feel it. Don’t try and make it go away.
If you don’t get it, don’t know what I’m talking about,
can’t feel anything or have an urge to leave the room,
don’t act on them either, just feel it.
Focus on one thing that catches your attention - a part
of the body, a pain, a stiffness. Just accept it how it is.
Don’t adjust. When you feel you have accepted it as
it is, do you notice anything happening? Something
that has the flavour of one of the movements that do us. Make a note for yourself. The thing that happens - different for different people - is the body doing what it needs to do. Trust it. Follow it. It is not you adjusting to be more comfortable, it is your body adjusting itself, without preconceptions. It might be something in the body part you were concentrating on, it might be a movement elsewhere. It might be something in your breathing. It might be a relaxation. It might easily be an increase in tension somewhere (I often find this myself). Trust it. Follow it.
Caring and not caring
Thinking how important this performance is does not seem to help our performance. We play better if we are not over-worried. But it is important - to our well being, our career, the audience. How can you “hold” these two things? We are at a zen point, seeming to have to choose between two mutually exclusive things.
The useful way to intellectualise this is to say that we are better off when our thinking mind does not care about the outcome. We rely, though, on something underneath - our heart, our soul, our unconscious, caring very much.
Making a bad sound?
Don’t say “bad”. Describe it instead. Be more specific.
There might be something useful in there if you don’t just dismiss it as “bad”
