The Sense of Feeling - Part 2
The Sense of Feeling - Part 2
AKA 20,000 Leagues Under the Skin
Last night I was listening to Chega de Saudade by Gary Burton on his album The Time Machine (1966). I’ve heard the song played countless times at jam sessions and never really liked the tune, but ya know…when Gary Burton plays the shit out of something it’s another story.
So I got my tenor saxophone out (the alto is 90% leaks) and started to learn the melody and realised it’s impossible to learn without knowing the lyrics; the song form is long, winding, and nearly repetitive. I decided to put the horn down and buy the original Gilberto album Chega de Saudade to learn the real deal. On voice. No sax. In Portuguese (I don’t speak Portuguese).
(This is not the exact version I’m learning).
As I was singing the lyrics I had a great and growing sense of the depth of my neck. I could feel the entire vocal instrument freeing up under my skull and it felt great. Yet I was not directly attempting to force this sensation upon myself.
There’s a lot to unpack in this experience of mine as to why and how this super happy fun time helped me find more sprung weight. It’s a critical thing to unpack for students. In the coming weeks, I’ll attempt to do just that while mixing in some observations on walking and squatting.
Afterall, it’s all YOU.
But for today, I’d like to expand on my article on The Sense of Feeling.
The Hunt Is On
When I last wrote about the Sense of Feeling, I gave you a simple exercise. If you haven’t spent time with it, you should read my article again and try it!
Our sense of feeling is a funny little thing. It’s always sending information to the brain but we’ve got so many things going on in our lives that we can easily tune it out. What makes things worse is that if we have pain, we will only notice the pain and really tune out all of the other information coming our way.
When this happens, we become habituated to feeling a very limited amount of ourselves. We need to stop this pattern of feeling and the Lie Downs coupled with the Sense of Feeling exercise are a mighty powerful one-two combo to start that process.
When you go to practice that sense of feeling. All you need to do is persistently think {‘neck’} for about 30 seconds. You don’t need to say the word ‘neck’ in your head and you don’t need to concentrate on the idea. It’s a wordless sensation just like the color blue is an indescribable thing; you cannot tell yourself words that mean blue you simply direct your eyes to see and the color will be in front of you if you notice it.
This patience and acceptance of sensation is a critical part of ear training, color training, and kinaesthetic training. If you commit the dreaded Alexandre sin of End-Gaining, you will stop the flow of information to the brain and lose your ability to make informed decisions. You will revert to habit.
Good habits are good. Bad habits are bad.
So let’s keep all of this in mind as we perform our Feeling exercise again. Only now, as we think {‘neck’} we will allow our sense of feeling to permeate the full volume of the neck and see if we can feel stuff and things in the full volume of the neck. We’re not going to simply notice the tight muscles, the pain, or exclusively that little region that we happen to be noticing. If you have patience and a relatively empty mind, depth will come.
You need to feel this sensation of depth to have full access to your coordination.
A Notation For Thoughts
If you noticed, I used the notation {‘neck’} above rather than ‘neck’ or neck. I’m borrowing this notation from set theory in mathematics because I want to make it clear that I am thinking a concept rather than conducting an internal monologue. There are quite a lot of self-help things out there that ask people to say things to themselves like ‘Everyday I’m getting stronger’. This might make someone who is severely depressed feel better for a bit, but it will never train your sense or build real coordination. I suggest that if you are practicing coordination, you throw these thoughts in the bin, and then burn the bin.
The sense of feeling requires the following concepts:
{‘neck’, ‘head’, ‘upper torso’, ‘middle torso’, ‘lower torso’, ‘hip’, ‘shoulder’, ‘upper arm’, ‘elbow’, ‘lower arm’, ‘wrist’, ‘hand’, ‘finger’, ‘thumb’, ‘upper leg’, ‘knee’, ‘lower leg’, ‘ankle’, ‘heel’, ‘foot’, ‘toes’, ‘jaw’}
Each of these concepts can be felt with depth and in combination with every anatomical subcomponent. (Nerdy enough for you?)
When considering the feeling of {‘neck’}, you may begin to feel the empty space of the windpipe or the musculature of the vocal mechanism. You can feel the whole vocal mechanism and it will feel like this strangely living thing within you if you have not trained as a vocalist. Enjoy it! Explore it!
When considering the feeling of {‘torso’}, there’s a ton of depth that can be sensed. You have the depth of the chest and back muscles as a start. Then there’s all of the internal space for the organs. You can have a sense of that space and it can have sprung weight.
If you take your time, you can build a sense of depth of your whole being. This full depth is what we need to function at our best and have true mastery of ourselves.
So during your next lie down, walk, or sing-a-long, give yourself the time to feel that depth. You’ll find it’s easier to {‘STOP’, ‘DISSOLVE’, ‘EXPAND’} and just be.