Free to Roam

Today I sat with an adult cello student who has been challenged with rhythmic accuracy. Most of her lesson was spent teaching her a different way to listen and respond to what she heard coming from her instrument while practicing during the days between her lessons. She has been grasping one layer at a time and today she was going into the next level of this skill, so to master the levels of complexity that lead to performing her current piece correctly, as the composer intended it.


Although I am a big advocate of personal expression when performing a piece of music, when it comes to the basic building blocks of putting the technical parts of music and cello playing together, I am pretty detailed and I hold my students to it. I know that the better command one has of ALL FACETS of their technique, the quicker they'll learn, the more independent they'll be as a player, and the more fun they'll have in the experience of their musical adventure.


Today, Kristal's challenge was in opening up her listening ability so she'd be able to identify on her own what the inaccuracies were, then identify what the appropriate correction was. Once that ability was available to her, all she needed to do was to make the correction and she could move forward more quickly. We had been moving very slowly through her current piece of music and seemed to be stuck in getting her through a certain section of the music.


Since Kristal is one who's very interested in her own personal growth as it applies to the cello, today offered a fantastic lesson for her. 2/3 of the way through her lesson, we discovered that the reason she avoided naming the specifics of why she was continually making the same mistake was because to name the specifics required her to judge herself. (At least that's how she had it wired up prior to today.)


When I realized this, I sat back, took a breath and said, "I teach all ages. The thing that holds my adult students back more than any other thing is their relentless judgment of themselves." With the cage of judgment continually binding you, how freely can you move forward?" I immediately told her a story of an 8 yr. old student I taught in Salt Lake City several years ago. Rachel had only been studying with me for a few months. In the lesson, she made a mistake that we'd talked about before as well as how to correct it. I stopped her at the place of her mistake. "Guess what just happened," said I. She already knew what it was and with laughing eyes and a cute gesture of her hand covering her smiling mouth, said "Oops!". All this was done without a sliver of judgment from either of us. She immediately corrected without the baggage of judgment and went on to pass the song off immediately.


So much of creativity is suffocated by the bounds of our heart and ego. When we can dissolve those barriers, we emerge as emancipated beings. In the wildness of our pristine and undefiled creativity, we are free to roam.


In the book, "When Things Fall Apart", Pema Chodron states:


"Getting the knack of catching ourselves, of gently and compassionately catching ourselves, is the path of the spiritual warrior...So the challenge is how to develop compassion right along with clear seeing, how to train in lightening up and cheering up rather than becoming more guilt-ridden and miserable....Honesty without kindness, good humor and good-heartedness can be just mean. From the very beginning to the very end, pointing to our own hearts to discover what is true isn't just a matter of honesty, but also of compassion and respect for what we see."


Navigating through our lives with compassion for our humanity is a different way to move forward...and it can't be done overnight. One day at a time-- one mistake and correction at a time weaves an entirely new tapestry and foundation to transform not only the person making the mistake, but everyone in their sphere of influence.