Flamenco dance, flamenco canberra, bata de cola
THE FLAMENCO CENTRE CANBERRA
Let it go!
A very candid discussion about the damage caused by a damaged 'Ego'
Something you may find confronting is me urging you to 'let go' - to let go of shyness, self-loathing, feelings of ineptitude, surliness, your bad day at work - whatever… any kind of psychological baggage that results in one of two forms of resistence:
Neither of these is particularly attractive, but more importantly these two forms of guardedness cause you to be resistent to my teaching, either passively or actively (and the second point is particularly tedious as it causes negative energy, which repels me and everyone else in the room).
1) timidness or reservation (passive resistence); or
2) a bad mood (active resistence).
The collective thing we need to let go of is what psychologists call 'Ego' (careful, this is different to the common usage of the word 'ego' which most people understand to mean 'self-esteem' or 'self-importance', as in 'egotistical').
In psychology, Ego is the part of the mind that balances the conscious and the unconscious (fact vs. fiction), and its imbalance produces the psychological construct that is famously called anxiety. Unbalanced Ego is sometimes referred to as 'demons'.
You may wonder if it's all that serious. It is. Ask any professional who manages anxiety. I write this because I continue to come up against it, and I see how it retards students' growth and renders them impermeable to my teaching. So it's time to spell it out in advance. This psychological construct is what's to blame for poor acquisition, not the class material nor my passionate teaching. The good news is we can learn to let go. You just need to recognise when a hard-boiled Ego rears its ugly head.
If your Ego has a problem with my attention to detail, you'll have to fix it, because attention to detail is the hallmark of my transformative teaching method. Indeed, any feeling of confrontation is clear indicator - your 'baggage alert' - that emotional splinters that are still under your skin.
Get rid of those splinters! Say 'no' to baggage…
Just think about it - Flamenco dance is the definitive expression of emotional bravery; of disarming your challenges piece by piece; of recognising and becoming indifferent to your demons; of letting go - if you hold on to baggage you slam the flamenco door shut. Ask yourself, 'am I in class to shut that door, or to open it?'
Let me in, let me in!
Letting go simultaneously means letting me in. You must truly accept me and have faith in me. If you don't, my teaching becomes like water off a duck's back. My teaching will not stick. It simply won't work. It's possible that you (sorry… your demons) will feel defeated, or even blame me for a poor outcome.
Welcome my tiniest instruction - that's the detail that will transform you. Most people think, 'I feel silly; I'll do it later when I know more'. Uh uh. Bad move. That day will never come because you have succumbed to your demons - trained yourself out of letting go and out of letting me in.
"My job is not only to teach material, but also to refine how you do it.
Your job is to let me."