From Perfectionism to Authentic Expression

"Movement is the direct pathway from imagination to performance. For reasons we may not be able to explain, these pathways get blocked. Becoming mBODYed will help you open these pathways, leading you to find the authentic expression of your creativity and imagination."

In this episode, Shawn Copeland and Karen Cubides discuss the concept of belonging and its role in cultivating embodied creativity. They explore how our nervous system and beliefs can create blocks in our movement and creative potential. They also emphasize the importance of celebrating our uniqueness and developing a sense of belonging within ourselves before seeking it in our relationships and communities. The conversation highlights the need to integrate mind-body connection and somatic practices to unlock our creative potential and overcome perfectionism.

Becoming mBODYed is a production of and copyrighted by mBODYed, LLC, 2024. www.mbodyed.com
Follow me at https://www.instagram.com/mbodyed/ and https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61566020594221
The intro and exit music is Dark Matter by Carlos Velez, recorded by Tosca Duo on their CD Dimensions.
A link to Carlos’s music is available at
https://composercarlosvelez.wixsite.com/carlosvelezmusic/about-me.

Transcript

The Becoming mBODYed Podcast

Episode 2: From Perfectionism to Authentic Expression

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (00:04)

Welcome to the Becoming mBODYed podcast where we explore how safety and belonging cultivate embodied creativity, curiosity, and authenticity. I am your host, Shawn Copeland, the founder and CEO of mBODYed, a program dedicated to embodied education in the performing arts. Karen Cubidis is back with us today. Karen is a saxophonist, coach, and marketing expert.

She is the founder of the Karen Cubidis Agency, a one-stop shop for musicians looking to take their careers to the next level. Karen, thank you so much for coming back today for part two of what we started in our first podcast.

Karen Cubides (00:43)

Yes, thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be back and I'm even more excited about what's to come and what an incredible resource this podcast is going to be. I feel like after our first conversation, you know, where we got to know you and you know, the values and the mission behind mBODYed, the company, I feel like it makes the most sense to transition into, I would say like one of the core pillars of your organization, which is the concept of belonging.

Before we get into all of that, because I know that's a huge question, let's just do like a check -in. Like, how are you feeling? How are things going? How is life?

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (01:22)

Life is good, life is really good. I am really enjoying sinking into developing the business, building mBODYed and building its brand.

things feel really good right now. Yeah, thanks for asking. Everything going well for you?

Karen Cubides (01:45)

Yeah, I'm excited. It's a million degrees everywhere. And I know you're experiencing that also in the West Coast. But I'm excited about you coming to Nashville, actually. I feel like we should share about that, the retreat and everything. Like, how did that come to be and what is it going to encompass?

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (02:00)

Sure. The initial impetus behind it is that I wanted to provide an opportunity for my cohorts to get together, just for all of us to be together and work together. Some of them I've never actually met in person, other than being online with each other. But it's also time in our training for people to start developing hands -on teaching skills.

And so I needed to bring everybody together to start that and to start working together in that way so that they can continue to cultivate that in their respective communities. And we can continue to cultivate that online with me knowing that they understand the basics of it. So that's how I address that in the overall training process.

And I also wanted to meet you in person, spend time with you. We only know each other through online interaction and spend some time diving into what's next for mBODYed and what I hope to debut in, I think January, I hope, a multi -tiered access.

to different kinds of programs that include not only training, but education and performance coaching as well. I'm really interested in diving into this idea of mental fitness and what that means for a musician. Leveraging neuroplasticity and our learning to become superhuman. And I know that's a bold claim, but I'm...

being exaggerated with it, obviously. But I think it's something that musicians can really benefit from, really understanding how we learn, how we work, so that we can be more efficient in the practice room.

Karen Cubides (03:56)

Yeah, for sure. I'm so excited to meet you in person to of course, participating in your retreat and see, you know, what this is all about in person. And then also the food's amazing in Nashville. So we're gonna have the best time. yes. No, we have really good hot chicken, but not like the gimmicky, gonna make you ill, but like the good kind, the biscuit energy, sausage gravy, the whole nine. It's gonna be great. yes, they have so much sweet tea here. Really good.

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (04:06)

I was gonna say we're gonna have some, we gotta have some southern food, right? We're gonna have some fried chicken, I hope, you know.

some sweet tea I hope.

Karen Cubides (04:25)

pastries and it's just freaking delightful. I'm so excited to have you here.

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (04:29)

Yeah, you're taking me back to my roots. I love it.

Karen Cubides (04:33)

So let's dive into today's topic. So for anybody listening, I think we're gonna try and address just maybe on a not so intense level, but just a basic understanding of belonging and how this is a value and pillar of your work and why that is the case. I personally have so many questions around this, because we hear of love and belonging through Brene Brown, we hear through the modalities such as the Enneagram.

But I think when we're talking about performers, when we're talking about movement and the modalities you utilize, I feel like that word and that definition might feel convoluted or perhaps confusing. I think one of my favorite quotes on your website is, movement is the direct pathway from imagination to performance. For reasons we may not be able to explain, these pathways get blocked. Becoming embodied will help you open these pathways, leading you to find the authentic expression of your creativity and imagination.

Tell us like what are these blocks and how does belonging play a role in that?

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (05:33)

Sure.

Our blocks can come from many different sources. These are interferences in the way that we move and in the way that we think that we move. These can be in the form of maps that we learn throughout life.

you know, it's important to understand just a little bit to unpack what is a map? You know, in the literal sense, a map is a representation of something in a different medium. So we're taking the streets of a city and we're representing that on a piece of paper.

Our brains learn in maps. Everything that we store, every experience we have, it becomes a map within our nervous system. Language is a map. And if those maps are unclear or outdated, for instance, you go to Manhattan and you try to navigate Manhattan today with a map from 1920, it will tell you something.

But it needs to be updated. It's not necessarily wrong. It's just outdated and it's time for an update. The phrase that I like to use when I'm teaching this is, you know, my iPhone worked really great last night and somehow or another there was an update to it and it works great today too, although somehow slightly better. Do I notice that it's better? Maybe not, but...

Apple tells me it's better. But it worked just fine yesterday. It sent text messages. And we're exactly the same way. We're working just fine with the maps that we have. But those maps may be hindering us from achieving our true creative potential.

You know, these maps could also come from beliefs that we have from learned experiences that we've had from things that we've learned from teachers that may have helped us in the moment, but may no longer be serving us well. Again, maybe that information needs to be updated. So those create roadblocks for us and our movement. And it's important to understand that all communication

is movement. We can't communicate in any way at all without movement. Even gesture, facial expressions, that's movement. Of course sound is movement. But really it's hard, you'd be hard pressed to find a form of communication that ultimately doesn't.

come down to movement. We need that movement to exchange information with one another. So if there's blocks in our potential for movement, then that's going to create blocks in our creative potential as well.

Karen Cubides (08:51)

Okay, that was so good.

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (08:51)

You know, let's unpack one other thing for that, and that is one of the most basic tenets of body mapping is that all sound comes from movement. The quality of my thinking is what determines the quality of my movement. And the quality of my movement is what determines the quality of my sound.

So if we put all that together, it becomes the quality of my thinking through movement is what determines the quality of my sound. If we understand that music, making music is all about movement and we then go, well, there may be some blocks in there. There may be some fuzziness. There may be some things that need to be updated about how I move. It's pretty easy to see like, I'm, I may be.

not reaching my potential and what my creative possibilities are.

Karen Cubides (09:57)

I love that. That's super helpful. I want to go back to the update metaphor and how do you know the belonging piece though in the body? Like, you know, you're getting all these updates and as you know, performers, conservatory trained people, all of that, like it's very easy to compartmentalize and to, you know, we have this little box with my practice and my technique and the thing my teacher said and this person that hurt my feelings. And then also this really great thing that happened.

you know, updating, upgrading, getting, you know, that to that next level in some of these areas, how does that the belonging piece like not either hold you back or it becomes something that distracts perhaps like just the pursuit of that.

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (10:49)

pursuit of belonging or the pursuit of, okay, mm -hmm. I think it's first important to understand that our brains and our nervous system have one job, and that is to keep us safe.

Karen Cubides (10:51)

Belonging in your upgrades, yeah.

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (11:08)

on that that's happening in two different places in our brain. It's happening in the deep mammalian part of our brain. And it's happening on the upper level at the cortex level in the mammalian brain. That question of am I safe? Am I safe? Am I safe? Is happening at light speed.

Of course, it's not light speed, but we're just going to say it's light speed. It's really, really fast. And we're processing something like 11 million bits per second of information. And so our deeper nervous system is making decisions based on that question happening over and over and over and over really, really fast. We can't consciously keep up with that.

But our brains can, and our nervous system can. And our nervous system modulates in terms of our sympathetic response to the environment that we're in. And I'm talking about our panic responses, if we're going to start elevating up towards fight, flight, freeze, or dissociative responses. Now, our cortex is also asking the same question, the part of our brain that we consciously think with. I often say, this is the place where we talk to ourselves from.

that part of our brain is, is doing the same thing, but it's doing, doing it at a much slower rate. And it has the ability to reason. It has the ability to go, Hmm, that's a rattlesnake. That's dangerous for me, but there's a piece of glass between me and that rattlesnake. So I don't need to panic right now. And I can control my, my responses in that way through reasoning.

When we come into an environment for the first time, and I think the first time I told this story, I did it from the perspective of us as young musicians. We come into our first music class, be that choir, band, orchestra, or even dance class or drama. We are all misfits in the world, us artists, folk.

And we find our communities, this first time in like sixth, seventh grade when we go to middle school and we get to go to art class and we get to discover, these people are like me. I finally find a place where I belong.

that isn't my family, that isn't my church, that isn't my extended family or scouts or my social group or something like that. We're connected through something that we love that feels very close to our identity. And shortly thereafter, we discover that there are conditions of membership to these groups. These come in the forms of behaviors that we have to adopt, such as I have to practice.

several minutes per day, several hours per day. I have to sit a certain way. I have to stand a certain way. I have to produce a sound in a certain way. I have to be a certain way on stage. I have to shape my body. If I'm a dancer, I have to shape my body in a particular way. And our...

continued relationship to these groups, our belonging to these groups is contingent upon us adopting these behaviors and these beliefs and these postures. Otherwise we lose that membership. Now we will do this on a subconscious level to some extent.

to some, there are bits and pieces of it that we do consciously. A dancer who goes to ballet for the first time is gonna tuck and shift and shape quite consciously. But for a musician, we just adopt these behaviors. And this really comes down to the definition between fitting in and belonging.

we actually sacrifice our belonging in these groups so that we can fit in. We assimilate to the behaviors and the beliefs of these groups to preserve our safety. As opposed to belonging, which is a celebration of the ways in which we're different and the differences that we bring to the group that we're in. So these types of

of changes over time contribute to these groups or to these blocks that you were asking about before. I, you know, we have made subtle changes to our structure, to our thinking, to our behaviors that served a purpose in that beginning. It kept us safe because we continued to belong to the tribe.

But it may come time for those beliefs, those behaviors, to be updated. They only get us so far. And I choose the word update because we don't want to say that they're wrong. We don't want to exist in a binary understanding of this.

You chose to do this because your survival depended upon it. It worked. You're here. You survived. You got to the next point where we're now able to make a decision about whether or not we want to continue that belief, that behavior, that movement, or if progressing forward requires that we update, we change those beliefs, we change those behaviors, we change those movements so that we can then grow.

beyond that. Does it make sense?

Karen Cubides (17:25)

Yeah, that makes sense. Let's go back to the difference between fitting in and belonging. Can you maybe share either a definition or just your version of belonging as part of this conversation? What does it actually mean?

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (17:41)

For me, belonging means that we are celebrating the uniqueness of ourselves and that we're first celebrating that within ourselves before we celebrate that with our relationships with each other. I think of, you know, we say things...

almost cliche now, like you can only love another person as much as you love yourself. Well, you can only belong in a group or belong in a relationship with another person as much as you understand how you belong to yourself. That sense of belonging to myself comes from knowing myself, from being present with myself, from allowing

my physical and emotional sensations and feelings to be present in my thinking and in my actions. And once I celebrate that and celebrate the creation of space for that within my own sense of who I am, my sense of self,

Then I can begin to celebrate that, share that in my relationships with my groups and my communities and my tribes and my profession or just my relationship with my partner, and so on and so forth.

Karen Cubides (19:16)

Yeah, that's super helpful. Thank you. How can we use this belonging piece to, you know, be in this pursuit of the superhuman aspect? Like, how do we develop that discernment and perhaps what does that process look like?

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (19:34)

I said for many, many, many years, and this was one of those things that I couldn't get rid of, but I just kept saying it and knowing that if I say it, say it enough, that I will eventually find the information that I'm looking for. I said that Alexander technique and body mapping and somatic work in general teaches us.

to belong to ourselves. It teaches us that we belong to ourselves. And the learning process of becoming aware of and more sensitive to the ways that we move, the ways that we think, and how that thinking affects our movement, we become the creator of our own.

world in that way, when we learn that I have control over myself. I have the ability to make decisions about how I am in the spaces that I am in. I have the ability to decide how am I going to respond to any stimulus. If I just slow down and give myself

the space, which is both physical space and space and time, to become aware of what is my habit? How does my habit dictate that I respond in this moment? And can I make a different choice? The somatic work teaches us.

that we can turn stimulus reaction into stimulus and response. And the difference there is choice. I have a choice between how I respond. I don't really have a choice in reaction. And there are some things that we don't want to interrupt.

You know, I don't want to put my hand on the burner of a stove and go, I have a choice whether or not I want to take my hand off of this burner or not. No, I want my nervous system to make that decision for me instantly. I don't want to interrupt that kind of, that deep rooted survival mechanism. But with some things, we have choice in the matter.

These somatic practices teach us that the ways in which we move, we have autonomy over, we have agency over, which then help us become more our true selves, which then increases our potential to belong in a community.

Now of course, I'm not talking about belonging from a social justice perspective. This assumes that you are welcome in the community that you are in. That's a completely different conversation. I'm talking about...

ways in which we can be empathic with each other and understanding of each other and acknowledge that we each bring unique pieces of the puzzle together to create the relationship that exists between you and I.

Karen Cubides (23:12)

That makes sense. You know, for anybody listening, who's just like this belonging piece sounds great. Love that for you. we also of course have just infrastructural things in our society and our culture and our field that, you know, inhibit this type of thinking, or perhaps this isn't the first thing you're taught in school. how do you start? Like for somebody who wants to be like, okay, yes, I would love to pursue this, this belonging piece where I feel

safe and confident and calm and the element of choice feels like a reality again. What would be a good place to start?

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (23:49)

Two simple questions. What do I notice about myself? And that could be, the answer could be a physical sensation and an emotional sensation or both. And the second question is, how do I know?

how do I know that that's my experience?

We're steering away from why. Why do I feel nervous? Why do I feel scared? It's more about how do I know that I feel nervous? Well, my heart rate is up, my breathing is shallow, there's butterflies in my stomach, my...

arms and legs feel cold, the tips of my fingers and the tips of my toes feel cold, clammy. Those are all the nervous system responses to anxiety or excitement. There's no difference in the nervous system. The difference between those two experiences is at the level of our perception.

and what is the stimulus for that response within us. But asking the question, how do I know this, sinks us further into the tissues of our body.

It sinks us further into our proprioception and our interoception. So the interoception is the sense of our internal world. What's our heart rate? What's our temperature? What's my level of hunger? Is there enough fluid in my body? Am I hydrated enough? Those types of things. And our proprioception is our sense of self and our sense of self in the space that we're in.

And from a neuroscience point of view, it's informed by our mechanoreceptors, which tell us about our movement and how we're moving, our baroreceptors, which tell us about the pressure of touch, how does the surface of our clothing feel on our skin, our thermoreceptors, which tell us about temperature, our chemoreceptors, which tell us about.

chemicals and fluids that are within our body, our electromagnetic receptors, which clue us into the fields that are around us. It's what helps us know what's that personal space and how close can I be to you? Yeah, we know what we're talking about. It's one of those funny things that people like, what, electromagnetic fields? Yeah, you know with certain people that you can only be this close. There's a personal space and there's a professional space. That's your electromagnetic receptors telling you that.

Karen Cubides (26:27)

Yeah.

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (26:42)

And the last one is our NOC receptors, which is what tells us about threat. And that's what informs our nervous system about our degree or level of safety that we perceive in the space. And now I'm talking about the perception of this is at the deep neural level, not the level of the cortex. So.

kind of underlying all of this, we're talking about the blending of top -down functioning and bottom -up functioning. And to explain that, top -down functioning is, I think I should go practice. OK, I'm going to go practice. I'm going to go do something. Bottom -up functioning is, is,

your body changing and responding to a stimulus that 20 or 30 minutes later you go, I'm nervous about that, or I have anxiety about that, or this person doesn't feel safe to me. I don't trust them.

That's because your nervous system has noticed that and begin to modulate and all of those things eventually trickle up to your thinking and you go, hmm,

We try to function in this world from a top -down perspective. Somatic work really helps us bring the bottom -up functioning back into play. And it creates the space for that bottom -up functioning, which informs us about how we feel about our own sense of internal belonging. It lets us know, yeah, my body's here.

my limbs, my arms, my feelings, my sensations, they're here and they're important. They inform me about who I am, what I'm about to do, where I am in space, what am I capable of? Because it's the instrument for our creative expression.

That was a long...

Karen Cubides (29:08)

So when.

It was so good though, but I'm curious, like when working with your clients, like, you know, we're all performers and we, you know, use our hands and our bodies and, you know, we all move and like you're mentioning in this conversation, like expressions, gesticulation, all of that is movement sound. If we are, this is something we do by default and you know, this human beings movement is incredibly integral. How do we then become unaware of our bodies or

Or how does that happen? Like, could you share maybe examples of how we're just living in the world without that mind -body connection and still, however, performing at a high level? Or are you? Can you?

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (29:56)

Goodness, I don't know that I'm the person who can answer that question. I can give you my opinion. This is in some way a chicken or the egg. We are a product of human evolution. We are now moving at such a fast pace.

almost faster than our nervous systems are designed to function and to process. We are living in a chronic state of overwhelm and anxiety. And that's my observation, that's my opinion. It's also what I'm hearing from cognitive psychologists and therapists.

and people, somatic educators and somatic therapists are talking about the state of human existence right now. Our level of addiction, our tendencies to numb ourselves through Netflix, through food, through chemical substances, through fitness, and just checking out and going for...

you know, a 25 mile run for the day, you know, like the number of people who have become marathon runners in the last 10 years, it's like the new, it's the new craze. So we've just been, we've been trained to disembodied ourselves. We also traditionally in the somatic teaching talk about the, the.

state of human development, if you look at children, you know, till about the age of four, we learn through trial and error and we learn through movement. We play all day. And play and curiosity are our primary vehicles for learning.

You know, it's interesting that the verb that we use for making music is we play the clarinet, we play the piano, we play the saxophone. When's the last time that you picked up your instrument and thought of it as play in the way that a child plays? You know, play is fun. It's no stakes. You know, when's the last time you picked up your instrument and went, there's no stakes here. You know.

But then something happens when we go to school. We have to sit still. And we're told to work hard. And our bodies aren't designed for that. They're designed to move constantly and to get information constantly and interpret that information. And now you're told, sit still in that desk and work on that math problem for the next 45 minutes. And.

something happens in that moment where we have to disembodied.

Because otherwise, we're shaking, and we're jumping, and we're twitching, and we're doing all of those things. And if we can't control that, then the teacher says, you need to talk to your mom about getting medication for that. There's something wrong with you. When actually there's nothing wrong with you, that's just your nervous system saying, hey, I'm still here. Your body's still here. Wake up. Move. This isn't normal. This isn't what you're used to doing.

So we start that process at around, what, kindergarten? You know, it's the first time that we go to school and have to sit in a desk. I don't really think that it happens in pre -K at this point, but I haven't been in a pre -K classroom in a really long time. But that process is reinforced and reinforced through all of our education. It's also reinforced through our...

Awareness, sorry, my dog is barking. Hold on a second, we'll have to edit this part out. How can I mute this thing?

It's reinforced through at least American society where we don't place value on emotion. We don't place value on physical sensations and feelings. We view that as weak and it's an expression of weakness.

if we pay attention to those things, we'll say something like, yeah, you're letting your emotions take control of you in this moment. Instead of saying, thank you for honoring your fear. Thank you for bringing your fear into this space. I want to acknowledge the courage that that took for you to speak your truth.

We don't teach in that way. We hardly exist in interpersonal relationships in that way. Although I do think that there is a strong movement happening, particularly in education right now. The people who are coming into the college environment from post -COVID are hungry for an embodied experience.

They're hungry for the spaces for their physical and emotional experience to be present and included and valued in their general educational experience, but also their artistic educational experience and their artistic expression. They know that...

that their identity is an essential part of their performance experience. And they want the space to do that, to bring that into their work. Again, it's that belonging bit. We then in turn as an educator want to be able to create a safe space for our students to fully arrive, which requires us as the teacher to be empathic.

Karen Cubides (36:11)

Yeah.

Mm.

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (36:30)

to their experience, which requires us to be aware of our experience as well, which is scary. It's not something that we're trained to do.

Karen Cubides (36:43)

Yeah. Can you share some examples of, you know, your clients that, you know, when they go from not necessarily being aware or valuing that belonging portion to then being aware of it, like what kinds of shifts and changes are you observing with your clients?

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (37:07)

I'll share two experiences. A couple months ago, I was teaching in Houston, and I was doing an improvised impromptu workshop with a group of students.

We had, I don't even remember at this point what we were doing, but I was asking for feedback from a particular student who I'd worked with earlier in the day. And I knew that the student was from Honduras and that Spanish was their first language, was their primary language. And they were speaking in English to the group and I was asking for them to give a report of their physical experience that they had.

through whatever exercise we were doing. And I just got this sense. I don't even know what prompted it. But I asked him to stop, and I said, will you tell us your experience in Spanish? And he went, but you won't understand. I said, that's fine. That's quite OK. Let me have that moment.

of translating and picking up on the best words that I, you know, my rudimentary knowledge of Spanish. Let me have that awkward moment, please. You know, you're doing it all the time. You know, and so he began to talk about his experience in Spanish. And as he did, his entire...

way of being just came alive. It was like he got plugged into the wall socket and someone hit go and his face.

enlivened his body language, his movements started mimicking and gesturing what he was talking about. And I said to him, I said, I have no idea what you just said, but I think it felt really good, because your body language showed me that you felt good. And his teacher was there, and she does speak Spanish, and she was like.

Karen Cubides (39:13)

I'm going to go.

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (39:24)

That's what he said, yeah. And it was like, whoa. You know, this incredible change.

I am working with another client right now who we were processing some pain in their left shoulder, sorry, right shoulder. And we were doing a basic exercise of sinking into the experience of their pain.

welcoming that area of their body back to their whole self, because we can ostracize, we can exile parts of our body when we experience pain. And they experienced great change. And then we ended the session, and they came back for their next session, and

In the report, they said to me, my right shoulder feels great, but now my left shoulder is acting up and I'm scared that I'm going to, if I do some work on balancing between the two, that I'm gonna lose what I got in the right shoulder. And in the process of unpacking this,

the person was a violinist and they realized and they said to me, my perfectionism manifests in my left shoulder.

Karen Cubides (41:13)

Mm.

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (41:16)

And we just went like that.

And I said, I said, say more. And they said, everything that I do with my left hand is objective. Rhythm, pitch, vibrato, getting the right notes. All of that is objective. That's what my left hand does. My right hand gets to be expressive.

It gets to do all of the free movements that create the music. But my left hand has to be perfect in order for that to happen. That's where my perfection is and manifests. my gosh. Wow. Like, yeah. Like, of course I said, you have to write this down. Like, I can't imagine the amount of string players who will go.

my gosh, me too. Or something much worse, but me too. You know, and just feel like they've unlocked a whole other level to their playing of being able to unpack that. Of course, you know, now we're dealing with what is perfectionism and, you know, perfectionism is really about having a seat at the table. It's about what other people think as opposed to what you think. And it really gets into worthiness. And again, we're back to belonging.

But this kind of approach to sinking into the tissue and listening to what the tissue tells us really starts to unlock a lot of these blocks again.

Karen Cubides (43:06)

That's such a powerful story. I have like chills. And I feel like for me, what is transformative from this conversation and what I feel like other people can relate to is just the conversation itself. I think like there's a permission granting in the work that you're doing and just this pointing and guiding of just the general awareness. Because I mean, again, all these examples go back to

the answers are within. It's just kind of unlocking and unblocking and just getting out of the freaking way, which I feel like is every musician's memoir. For anyone who's just like, okay, like, but now what, like, what can we do as we kind of hold all these big feelings and kind of feel like we have a lot of thinking and writing to do like, besides the questions you shared earlier, like, what do you feel like would be a great next step?

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (43:38)

Yeah.

Find a Somatic educator in your area. Contact me. I teach online. If you're looking for that in -person experience, there are body mapping educators and Alexander teachers all over the country. By all means, contact me and I can help you find someone if you're looking for someone in your area. There are huge amounts of resources available.

Jackie  and I just wrote a book about this for the clarinet community. There are body mapping books for many of the specific instruments, and there are hundreds of Alexander Technique books that are available. Probably one of the best to start with that we often recommend is the Michael Gelb body learning book. It's very accessible, but very concise and very clear.

But just to begin that work on yourself, begin that journey inward, begin that process of developing trust again with your body, with your tissue, there's a tremendous design in here. And what's really fascinating, and it goes back to the very beginning about that initial quote that you mentioned,

We are not designed to command our bodies to move in a particular way. We are designed to organize around our intention.

You don't need to know how to manipulate your breathing mechanism in order to speak. You were born, someone gave you a nice little slap, and you inhaled and you screamed. You sang for three years, and you didn't need a breathing lesson, and you didn't need a voice lesson, and you're not suffering from vocal damage for those initial three years of screaming. Because that...

That expression is built into the design. These types of somatic practices are designed to or intended to reacquaint yourself with the design of the body so that you can begin to get out of the way and create that direct line between.

our intention, our creativity, and the expression of that through our bodies and our performance.

Karen Cubides (46:44)

So good. I feel like that's a great place to stop for today.

Shawn Copeland (He/Him) (46:47)

there.

So I just want to thank everyone so much for joining us. Please feel free to send me a direct message on any of the socials I'm on Instagram under embodied and Facebook under Shawn L Copeland.

The website for the company is www.mBODYed .com and there you can find more information about becoming embodied, Alexander Technique and body mapping as well as our programs and workshops that we are offering throughout the year. I just want to thank you so much for joining me today, Karen, and I look forward to what comes next.

Karen Cubides (47:31)

Thank you.