| Free Play and Improvisation |
From: Ruth Cox (10/12/1999 19:15:00)
Yes! Lots of reactions [to Nobuyuki and Hillel's song!]. Here are some thoughts from a workshop I gave on Free Play and Improvisation.
There is a Sanskrit word, "lila" which means play. Richer than the English word, it means divine play, the play of creation,destruction and re-creation, the folding and unfoldings of the cosmos. Lila, free and deep is both the delight and enjoyment of the moment. It also means love. It may be the simplest thing there is -- spontaneous, childish, disarming. Creativity is a harmony of opposite tensions -- if we let go of play, our work becomes ponderous and stiff.
This adventure is about Us, about the deep self, the composer in all of us, about originality, meaning not that which is all new, but that which is fully and originally ourselves.
Looking into the moment of improvisation we find clues to living a life that is self-creating, self-organizing and authentic.The master key to creativity.
What we reach through improvisation is the feel of the journey itself. It is inherently a mystery, concerning the deep preverbal levels of spirit. Playfulness, love, concentration, practice, skill, using the power of limits and of mistakes, risk, surrender, patience courage and trust.
Through movement, the creation of art, writing and other means, we might taste the unitive experience that is the essence of the creative mystery. The Free Play of consciousness as it draws, writes, paints, and plays the raw material emerging from the unconscious.
Such play entails risk. =================
In my work, it's often important to address what keeps people from the free dance of playfulness. So I often talk about some of the obstacles to freeplay. Freeing the Playful Spirit takes risk, and for some,enough trust to "unlearn" old ways of being.
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