Chiu On This

Renew your Motivation

by Frederic Chiu

 

The precise exercises and methods that I present in the DPS workshops are useful as long as they remain fresh. The key here, as in all things, is to recognize when something has become a reflex. There can be physical reflexes (walking), mental reflexes ("2+2= ? " - did you think "4"?), and emotional reflexes ("a cat was crushed by a car today" - did you feel a twinge of disgust, or sadness?). Reflexes are essential to our survival, but we can become aware of them and be able to interrupt them and change our course if we desire.

 

The exercises we put ourselves through are designed to shake our reflexes, by making us do something we are accustomed to doing in a certain way, but forcing ourselves to do it another way. We can then see where we resist, where we flow, where we get stuck. All of these give us a better sense of what reflexes are in place.

 

If an exercise that used to bring up resistance becomes so commonplace that it has become "easy", then it is no longer a good reflection of our reflexes; it has BECOME our reflex! We can still learn from it, but we must be aware that we are REINFORCING a reflex, rather than investigating what reflexes are in place.

 

By evolving our exercises, by bringing back an old exercise that we haven't used in a while, by inventing a totally new exercise, we can revive our energy, recharge the process with new motivation and insight.

 

A concrete example - if you have been consistently doing rote copying of scores in an attempt to hone your observation skills, you may find that the process has become very quick and that you are quickly and efficiently noticing details that you used to overlook. Try changing the exercise once to copying the score backwards, or upsidedown. You'll suddenly notice new things!

 

I wish you good work!

Frederic

01/20/04