The Quintessentials
” The Quintessentials”
A small study group for cellists.
Five cellists in total (including myself) spent yesterday morning with our primary instruments.
Our good selves.
It was a revealing expedition into familiar territory.
Familiar in that we have lived with ourselves for a lifetime.
We know ourselves don’t we?
Or do we?
Just as there didn’t seem to be a consistent map to guide us into life…. parenting/career/creativity/relationship/our place in society,
maybe the map that we have of ourselves is based on rather flimsy evidence. Evidence that on the surface does not necessarily reflect the vital structures that go more than skin deep.
As seen from the outside, we have heads and hands and legs and backs, organs and skin, a nervous system, the ability to feel the softest breeze etc, but how are we actually put together?
Does it matter?
Often it only begins to matter when something that we have taken for granted…. pain-free days, weeks and years….. tiptoes into disrepair and pain.
Using the analogy of a map, if our body-mind map was acquired from little pieces of vague information, put together from our childhood and on into adult life, the current routes through our inner landscape can land us into the thicket instead of along a clear path.
Or like Pooh and Piglet, getting rather lost in the woods and going round in circles with little sense of direction.
Our wonderful nervous system will do its very best to adhere to our wonky maps, by organising our movements in accordance with our ideas even if it means a serious gap between concept and fact.
What we tell ourselves about how we are put together and the reality of our innate design are often poles apart.
This ALWAYS leads to tension and excessive effort.
When some of those fundamental differences are resolved, the change in experience is not far short of magical.
Almost too simple to be credible.
Heaviness, tightness, fatigue, concern about how to play an instrument without causing injury or pain ….. these were some of the issues that came in from the rain.
By the end of the morning, a sense of lightness, and release from tension …… of peace and optimism stepped out with our cellos.
We’re going to meet again.