You know, people come to therapy really for blessing

You know, people come to therapy really for blessing. Not so much to fix what’s broken but to get what’s broken blessed. James Hillman

What is needed to effect change maybe a level of the uncomfortable or the disorientation that we try to avoid? The weekend workshop approach to learning means that change is unlikely.

Yes discomfort we do not like it whether is the fear of the dark or pain at any level but what have we done by avoiding discomfort but kicked a can down the road? Maybe we do not want to be fixed physically or in our head because change may be the most uncomfortable of things.

Something my wife noticed as a massage therapist was that people would go so far in their healing but then seemed unwilling to go that final bit that would have either finished the job or made the change. That was also something that I found was evident in NLP as well that you had to almost burn the bridges to stop people going back into old patterns. One way of making lasting change was to make the past and present so painful that the only way to relieve it was to change.

Could this be why the great success stories often involve 'rock bottom' or bankruptcy before the riches as if the reset button needs the pain, maybe as we are so resistant to that discomfort means we are also resistant to change.  So instead we want  in James Hillman's words  what is broken to be blessed like a badge of honour.

Think of what this means for your guitar teaching? Have you noticed that many pupils will get to a certain point and then plateau out? Maybe is when things get a little bit tough, the development of the technique stops, why is that? Maybe it’s because people then carry on playing the thing that they can already do, it is easier you see. Why struggle with things that are painful when you can just do something that you can chill out and repeat? That is okay if you just want play but if you truly want to develop one needs to do things that are going to hurt.

A number of guitar teachers have commented in the past about pupils who turn up doing very little practice. Now this is a complex problem because they may just want to come and give you money and spend some time twiddling around on the guitar and that may be okay but if they really want to learn which means they really want to change then you have to enable them to confront themselves and by extension suffer for their art.

I am not saying that this is what is required for everyone it may only be required for a few and those few will go on to become very good musicians, what I flagging up here is something about human consciousness and how the avoidance of discomfort stops us developing a skill.

So for those who want to continue doing the same broken recording you can bless them as they give you the money, and for the ones who want to change and develop and become artists allow them the opportunity and the space and your knowledge to suffer for their art.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days of playing in a rock band, the transformative summer school