Hey Friend,

Have you noticed over the last few email that I’ve been asking you to think about how you physically play with your picking hand?

I’ve also mentioned that you must figure out the best techniques for YOU. It doesn’t matter how Kirk Hammett hold his pick or strums. It matters how you pick and strum to effectively make the guitar do what you want it to do.

Being aware of your physical movements is a perfect way to begin to identify specific actions you can practice and improve.

There are so many physical things we do each day that no mental energy goes towards. We don’t have to think about them. We just do them.

Breathing. Chewing. Walking. 

But what happens if you find out you’ve only been doing a half-assed job at one of these automatic actions?

What if you hear about another way you could be doing it that improves your overall results?

You’d want to know about it, wouldn’t you? You’d also want to try it for yourself.

Well, maybe. 

Think about chewing. 

We don’t usually put a whole lot of thought into how to chew our food. We just stick it in our mouth, break it down to pieces that will fit down our throats (again, usually) as quickly as possible, and swallow.

Then we spend the next few hours trying to digest the lump in our stomachs, feeling sluggish and uncomfortable.

The better approach to eating is to take smaller bites, chewing each bite completely (10 or more times) before swallowing. This provides for better digestion and absorption of nutrients, and we’d feel better after eating.

But are you going to change how you chew? Depends on you...

Awareness is only the gateway. You can’t begin to make changes in actions until you’re aware there are other ways to do something. 

Then you have to decide if you want to step through.

Yes, we each need to find the techniques that work best for us individually, but knowing there are other options gives us opportunities to try them out and see if they work better than our current technique.

Ugh… gotta go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

Peace~

Dave