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This makes me very happy to read! Here are a few thoughts about why this works. 1) The expansive awareness while playing music make it possible for you to notice what's going on in the wider space: what other musicians are doing, how the audience are responding https://t.co/TCbp5K6oRN
2) By giving yourself less attention, you release muscle tension and a sense of 'grasping'/'trying' that actually improve your ability to play. Being worried about getting it right will collapse your awareness, you'll disconnect from others and will probably sound more forced.
3) The expanded awareness not only lets you notice what the other players and audience are up to, it lets you 'merge' your awareness with them. You enter the same space, so to speak. This is what can make live performances so special. https://t.co/zVlHSlVFy9
1/ I've become fascinated by the experience of what I call "shared attention spaces". This is where people all have their attention on the same thing and it feels like they're having a shared experience. We can explore what they feel like when their spell gets broken.
4) The process of continually noticing collapse and gently reasserting expansion of awareness is dynamic and represents a choice you are making not to go inwards and disconnected, but to stay outward and connected. You can choose to dance in that unforced flow state.
5) By zooming out in this way and releasing your need to control what and how you're doing it, you allow for something else to come up, something that is your true artistry and not your thinking mind. This can lead to a authentic, surprising creativity that happens of itself.
6) By the way if you're interested in this stuff then check out my thread of threads! And I have a newsletter and online course if you want to go deeper (link in next tweet) https://t.co/pppidMHSzH
Meta] Also, if you want to dive much deeper into this stuff, I have built what I believe is the only asynchronous online course that explores Alexander Technique from a first principles perspective. You can find out more and stay up to date by going here: https://t.co/GHzsyr4ILq