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This blog is written and created for the Whole Musician: in mind, body and spirit. The possibilities for practice, playing and performing are infinite...In this blog I share Practice Ideas for the Whole Musician as inspiration, information and as a portal into your musical imagination.

Happy Practicing!

Heartfully,
Jennifer

Monday, May 9, 2011

Letting Go...?

There is the preparation and practice for a performance and then there is the letting go, trusting... enjoying the freedom of a performance...


How do we do this? By practicing letting go in our Practice! 
This is available to us anywhere in our life to practice... and in practice itself...
It is rare that people manage to stop and quiet themselves enough and get into a situation of non-doing. It is a choice to leave everything alone and see what happens. If you do this then you have to exercise control over your thinking process as well. You must really wish to do nothing and let go of any doing. It is not being rigid, frozen or holding as this can create all sorts of tension... It is a matter of leaving your self alone and letting everything just happen... 


During practice we spend a lot of time focusing on what we are DOING... So, if you are going to do something don't you want to ensure that what your doing is is what you truly intend? How can we measure doing vs. non - doing , letting go?
We cultivate AWARENSS... and at the very least you may become aware of how your BREATH changes... This alone is worth it... To find an ease to your breathing ...This letting go engages the cultivation of awareness. It is best entered into and built up over periods of time in practice...


Explore what it is like to let go and trust yourself ? What else opens in your practice? In your Listening? In your breath and body, when you let go? Are you hanging on to things, ways, ideas, perspectives, energy, habits that you no longer need any more? Let one go and see what changes. What are the possibilities that you did not see, hear, know, observe before that are now open to you? Just by letting go you may experience something fresh, new, and wonderfully different in your practice and in your life? 


Take the risk to trust yourself and let go ... it is worth it...


This letting go, reminds me of the Alexander Technique idea of Non Doing...? Inhibiting your habits then not doing anything,  non doing. I believe this letting go, non-doing (that is itself active on another kind of level) is the return to our natural state, Alexander called it (Primary Control)...This is the peace and freedom...
I love this book Thinking Aloud - talks on teaching the Alexander Technique - by Walter Carrington.


Let's Design a daily practice that includes letting go, the cultivation of awareness, peace and freedom... in the of our whole life, as artists, musicians, flutists...


Ahhh, sounds like a worthy practice to me....


Letting go...
~ Jennifer


Here is a poem I like about this....

“Do everything with a mind that lets go.
Do not expect any praise or reward.
If you let go a little you will have a little peace.
If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.
If you let go completely, you will know complete peace and freedom.
Your struggle with the world will have come to an end. “
 - Ajahn Chah

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