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Annie Gottlieb's avatar

Your "left/right" differential brought back a striking experience in a David Kaetz workshop. This was on Zoom.

We were instructed to cover one eye and then toss and catch a soft ball, a pair of rolled-up socks. (I can't remember how handedness came into it, if at all.)

Looking through my left eye, therefore right brain, I found I was curious and unafraid, with no fear of failure or need to succeed. Therefore, paradoxically much better at catching the "ball."

Right eye, the opposite. I am right-handed. So I discovered that my left brain had appointed itself my "guardian," rigidly, vigilantly determined to protect me from any possibility of failure, awkwardness, or humiliation (and fun, risk, or creativity).

Wow! Shades of "The Master and His Emissary"!

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Seth Dellinger's avatar

Very interesting. It seems to me that something is always lost between the moment of wordless somatic insight and the word-ful interpretation we create afterwards - although there is a way that these words "just come to us" and it certainly seems like the words have something to do with how we carry the thing forward.

For myself, I am adopting increasing caution around the words that come. It seems best to hold them lightly, then go into the body again to check when things feel unclear.

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Annie Gottlieb's avatar

In other words—“shut up!” 😄

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Seth Dellinger's avatar

I mean . . . I try not to let my inner critic get in there and manage the process 😜, but yes, I'm personally aiming for a more radical departure from words.

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Annie Gottlieb's avatar

A paradoxical thing to be writing about!

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Annie Gottlieb's avatar

Hold the words lightly, and also, wait for them (if any) to be as precise as possible (which isn't very; Moshé disliked words for their ill-fitting clumsiness). Sometimes, the "rightest" word will be rationally nonsensical, more poetic.

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Seth Dellinger's avatar

Indeed it is!

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