Massive Improvement/An Essential Tool

[Mark SL]

The essential tool: A Mirror

The backstory: I happened to be gifted a huge antique mirror and was too lazy to hang it up so I just leaned it against the wall and thought it looked cool. I then realized I could set my chair up in front of it and see how I was playing. To my surprise, my fingers were leaning every which way, every way but straight into the string that is. It only took a handful of days of practice getting them straight, and it was a seriously tough workout for my hand to get them right - but it sort of was like my brain realized 'oh hey! This is way easier to do it this way'. My playing improved by leaps and bounds from this one ah ha moment. All of a sudden the heavy arm made complete sense and there is now an entirely new feel to my playing. Jamie may have recommended this straight out of the principles

Moral of the story. Use a mirror!

On another note, this deep practice has brought a whole new awareness to my general everyday life. I think from practicing in this way and doing rotating awareness I have become way more in tune with my body, leading me to discover how much tension I carry around just in the mundane tasks that a day brings.

It's astounding how much myself, and now that I have noticed and started the journey of correcting it, how much others are so entirely in their head as they move through their day.

An example brings this to light for myself. Take walking down the street, passing a stranger. Before I would be probably 100% stuck in my thoughts, utterly and exclusively concerned with only what this passing stranger would think of me, and how can I act "cool enough" so that these never to be known thoughts of this stranger could be slanted toward a good opinion of me. Noticing this, as I walk down streets I started to consciously put my awareness in my body and try to release any habitual tension that's probably been hidden most of my life. And this is when something funny happened, the more I get out of my head and into my body, the more I can see how in their head the passing stranger is. As if I can almost see their mind reeling over what I may or may not be thinking of them. Irony is, for both parties it does not matter one iota. I will think what I think of them, and they will think what they think of me. Which in all likelihood, both of us are probably farther from the truth than we know (that is if they are even out of their head enough to notice), so why concern ourselves with it - just let it all go, let the tension go. Then we can start learning how similar we all are, my insecurities are probably hauntingly similar to any given stranger's passing me by.

Soon after, Jamie's free three or two part or however long essay on Stage fright, popped into my mind as if she was talking out loud to me, so check that out for more clarification.

Guitar embodies life and vice versa. We are all a part of the same beautiful woven fabric that is our universe.

So, for everyone's listening pleasure, "Let there be songs to fill the air"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVdTQ3OPtGY

[Jamie]

Excellent report Mark thanks..........all the points well taken!