Thanks to a comment left here by Lynn Brice Rosen, an AT instructor, I did an experiment with doing a lie down with my guitar. I had contacted David Jernigan about exploring this in our AT class tonight and I am grateful that we did.
David did a little AT work with me, inviting in length and width before putting me on the floor. I am going to jump right to the results of our work. When I rose from the floor there was an expansiveness in my upper torso, a solidity in my relationship to my feet, and a deconstruction of what it meant to have a guitar in my hands.
Arriving home, I was improvising with an idea that came to me during my commute this morning and noticed how free and in the space I was. Ironically when I began later to play a piece, the mental chatter arose. This continued, even with pauses to inhibit, until I abandoned the idea of playing a piece from this wonderful state and returned to improvising. I taped the session with David and may blog about the details at a later date. David's openness, directions, and leaps into the unknown were immense.
The work remains, as always, how to be available to the guitar and music in the present moment. Tonight offered a oblique way in, that I suspect will have repercussions for some time.
Effortlessness from experimentation with movement is echoed in the ability to go somewhere new with what you're doing. Many people can't imagine how much the ability to improvise musically is affected by improving how bodily messages get from intentions into actions using Alexander Technique principles. Most people don't realize how much that experimenting in an apparently "unrelated" area can affect thinking and creative ability - but you do a nice job pointing at how that is happening for you here!
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