Out of the Way, It's a Busy Day

For much of the time I have played musical instruments, I have struggled with technique.  For whatever reason, I never seemed to have quite the dexterity I wanted to move my fingers fast enough to play highly technical (i.e., fast passages with lots of notes) pieces.  Now, I'm still not the world's greatest technician, but I have dramatically improved recently.  More importantly though, I know now that I have the capacity to be very strong technically.  It started with the realization that there weren't any physical limitations impeding my abilities.  I mean we're just talking about nerves firing, muscles contracting, tendons pulling.  I can do all those things.

So once I figured out that there wasn't any physical reason to keep me from flying my fingers up and down the neck of the guitar, I had to ponder the question of why they weren't.  It became pretty apparent to me that the impediment was mental.  I realized that I was just thinking too much about what I was trying to do.  I needed to stop thinking, and just do it.

I began to practice with the goal of not thinking about what I was doing and I found myself slipping into that state.  Unfortunately, when I would become aware of this nonthinking state I started thinking about it. Being able to let yourself go in this way is just another thing that must be practiced and learned.  I've adopted a little mantra to help myself let go.  When a little too much concentration starts to seep in, I just tell myself, "Stay out of your own way."

So I had lunch with another mediator today.  At one point in the discussion we were talking about the uncertainty that arises during mediations and how the mediator needs to make decisions in the face of a lot of unknowns.  When talking about making those decisions, she said, "Just trust the process."  To me she was saying that she has to rely on knowing that if she keeps going through the steps she knows to take in mediation that the process will unfold appropriately.

It occurred to me that the process of letting go while playing an instrument was really just trusting the process involved in your musical technique.  The mediator who is truly trusting the mediation process, is staying out of their own way.

Today's post title is taken from the lyrics, of the Pink Floyd classic, Us and Them off the Dark Side of the Moon album.