FBSMC 14, Companion post for video 1, "How Does Your Garden Grow?"

Hopefully you enjoyed and received some valuable information and insights from Video 1 “How Does Your Garden Grow?” This blog post will highlight certain points that were brought up in about the first half of video 1 by making things clearer with examples and approaching them through different angles. It is quite comprehensive so take your time to be in a process with it. It is not about being in a typical school setting as this opening section talks about. At 1 minute into the video, the current educational system is mentioned. Let’s use the words spoken on the video to easily look at the basic form of school learning: 1. study 2. gather information 3. take test It would have been more accurate to change the order to: 1. receive information 2. study 3. take test For a musician it could be understood as: 1.take lessons (receive information) 2.practice (study) 3.take an audition, play a concert, taking a lesson (test) FBSMC is about organic learning. Thus the ongoing phrase, music s a living thing. FBSMC education is building a relationship with nature, life and your art as a living integrated part of life. Thus the Living Overlay System: 1.Robotic Automatic System (body-complex) 2.Skill and Choice (ability and discerning mind) 3.Integration and Art (purpose and connection to essence) At a more beginning level it would be: 1.Vehicle 2.Driver 3.Destination At 5:30-5:49 in the video, there is a question asked: “Why would Nature grow a vine like bittersweet?” To be clear, not all bittersweet is an invasive species. Some were brought here from Asia and others are native to central and eastern North America. Everything in Nature has its place. We might not want certain things in our garden even if it’s native to our land because it will get in the way of the kind of garden we want to grow. It is important to remember that Nature doesn't do anything arbitrarily. There is a reason and purpose behind each living thing whether we can see it or not. Nature’s laws are intelligent and always work towards balancing life. Also in the video, it says that Honeysuckle is not an “invasive” species. The kind in our yard might be a Japanese Honeysuckle which IS an invasive species but there is also a native Honeysuckle that thrives east of the Mississippi river. The flowers on our Honeysuckle plants are yellow, but there are other Honeysuckles that have white and sometimes pink flowers. (The fragrance is amazing! So tender and sweet). Not all things that are taken out of a garden or yard are “invasive” meaning from outside the local geography. However, they are removed because other things want or need to be planted in that space. Like people, not all local plants get along with each other! :-) The Moving Center The moving center, which was not mentioned in the video, is located in the stomach and it is an enforcer of habits. It has an incredilbly strong influence on our lives and it is up to us, our will and deliberate conscious intentions, to have control over it as much as possible by understanidng it and building a relationship with it. Humans are influenced in enumerable ways; family, friends, schooling, the work place, genetics, neighborhood, country, and even our time of birth and so much more. *These influences can unconsciously mold our thinking, habitual actions, moods, likes and dislikes, attitudes, values and on and on. All of which can condition the moving center which is a member of our first overlay, the automatic robotic systems. Our moving center is itself a robotic automatic system which creates and enforces habits which are formed through constant repetition of actions whether they be mental, emotional or physical. For example, we can have a repetitive thought pattern that if repeated on a regular basis will turn into a habit via our moving center but at the mental level. The same process happens when and wherever repetition is taking place i.e. the way we walk, eat, brush our teeth, play our instruments and so forth. Now, there is a reason we have a moving center and thank heavens that we do! However it is up to us to manage what we want to grow in our habit life garden, for certain habits like over-eating when we are under stress, will drain our energy and cause ill health. This is what is meant by the phrase 'life style change." Change in order to be healthier mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Also the phrase, "take control of your life" is about you driving the ship of yourself instead of unconsciously being led by acquired habits without any awareness and thought. Depending on how long you have been doing something, it can take a long time to "rewrite" those habits and move beyond them. SO! Just like bittersweet can strangle our plants, certain habit "plants" can strangle our intentions and slow its progress. But other habits can move our art in a forward direction by forming good attitudes and playing foundations IF, we are aware of them by ongoing critical thinking, meaning in this instance, having “observant-awareness” which can increase our command over the moving center directing our habits in a more productive and deliberate direction. At 8:55-9:04 in the video, maintenance practice is mentioned. Yards and gardens take a TON of constant maintenance and this is directly related to Mother Nature. The Earth itself is dependent on the laws of Mother Nature to keep things in order and good maintenance. Everything has a purpose doesn't it? Ask yourself this question; "Does everything I do in my playing have purpose?" This is a great question because it will highlight the areas of your practice that do not have purposeful intention behind them. If it is not purposeful intention, most likely it will turn into a an unconscious habit that may or may not be useful.** We ongoingly create "habit plants" as referred to in the section starting at 7:19-7:50 in the video. This process of creating habits falls under the saying "you become what you think about." Which for a musician can be said as "you become what you practice." Some of the most important words ever said in understanding human and artistic development. At 11:56 in the video, the influence of environment is brought up and how it affects us unconsciously. It's very much like a bird flying by distributing its droppings that land in our garden. When we look at our garden and notice something we didn’t plant, we can pretty easily figure out the different ways in which it was planted. Being in an environment surrounded by lots of people, it can be more difficult to know what get's into at first. When we are using observant awareness, we can notice things that we haven’t come to deliberately that are expressing themselves through our thoughts and actions. Parents are certainly in for a shock when they see their children come home from school and wonder what is coming out of their mouths! They think, “They didn’t get that from me! You weren’t raised that way!” That doesn’t mean all the outside the famly influences were bad but it is noticable to the parent that it is "foreign." If a person is more serious about their life and art, they start to question what is in them and take out the “droppings” they do not want growing in their garden to make room for other thoughts to sprout and grow. As a great life mentor of mine said, “It does depend on what you know; how my friend does your garden grow?” *The Robotic Automatic System which is our whole human body-complex has (among the many other systems housed in our body-complex) a voluntary system and an involuntary system. Thank heavens we don’t have to remember to beat our hearts or consciously think and control all the parts of our digestive processes! It is automatically done for us. Try to understand that because we are gifted with choice, the ability to have awareness and discernment by deliberate voluntary thinking, our created habits (whether conscious, semi conscious or unconscious) informs our involuntary systems. Notice when we are preoccupied with more stressful, negative or coarser thoughts, it affects our health. This says that all the systems in the involuntary automatic system i.e.nervous, circulatory, respiratory, digestive and excretory systems to name a few, are affected and react all in their own way. Hence you literally become what you think about and practice. Thus the importance of having an actual healthy attitude informing our involuntary systems. Ponder: will - w = ill. **pedagogical note: This is where playing can move into sounding robotic as opposed to being alive! The teacher can have a very important role in balancing healthy mechanics and fundamentals based on the actual needs of the student. Following a rule book or "orthadoxy" of a certain "school" of playing and/or teaching does not work for all students. Everyone of us are custom made! Depending on the approach of teaching, one can relate to the student by being robotic and blind to the actual needs of the student, or be an uplifting and engaging process of discovery!