By Dave Monette
"Calculus is simply the study of constant change... and life is constant change! The Calculus of life is my method for navigating life's changes in ways that bring us into more of who we are at our highest potential."
For the last 40 years, Monette musical instruments and mouthpieces have helped musicians the world over make more music with less work. They offer an immediate improvement in form, function, and resonance over conventional equipment.
The revolutionary, holistic design of Monette musical equipment is an apt metaphor for improving the form, function and resonance of the real instrument in performance—the humans who create the music.
The Calculus of Life: A Practical Guide to Transcendence takes readers -- musicians and non-musicians alike -- through the same progression in enhanced resonance that Monette equipment provides.
Much like fine-tuning mouthpiece and instrument designs, the book starts by fine-tuning our physical body with cutting-edge therapeutic practices for structural renewal and rehabilitation. This begins with full-body Craniosacral Therapy and neuromuscular re-education to effortlessly relieve chronic aches and pains many of us hold from injuries and the stress of life.
When working with musicians, a common part of every session is helping them release repetitive stress injuries from body-use compensations they unconsciously learn in their efforts to simply play in--tune.
These injuries are often similar to repetitive stress injuries my non-musician clients also experience. For example, most every client I see has a rotated and out-of-level pelvis, which contributes to jammed hips and locked SI joints. Full-body Craniosacral work that sets up neuromuscular release allows most anyone's curved and compressed spine to straighten and decompress. With this foundational work, misalignments and resulting chronic pain in the head, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, knees and ankles can usually be quickly cleared.
This approach to structural renewal, when used in conjunction with elevations into the Biodynamic Cranial fluid field, starts the reset of the autonomic nervous system from "fight or flight" into "peace and release." The resulting realignment, freedom of movement, and ease in breathing, as described in chapters 3 and 4 of the book, allows higher layers of cognition, function, and awareness to come into synch with the client's physical presence. This is the gateway for exploring the higher esoteric practices described later in this post and throughout my book.
Successive chapters of the book -- starting with Chapter 5 -- cover how to identify, refine, and integrate the somatic source of our intellectual, emotional, and intuitive selves. This integration often produces life-changing awakenings. (See Chapter 17, The Calculus of Life Meditation, for step-by-step instruction in this work).
The profile silhouettes on the right were taken from client photos, and are used with their permission. They show how the client naturally stood immediately before and after a session of guided Raja yoga integrations. The session was a guided somatic meditation... with no hands-on touch. The dramatic long-axis decompression in the clients spine as he stands beautifully columnar in the "after" view demonstrates the inherent connection between renewal in our higher layers of cognition, function, and awareness, and our physical presence.
The next layers of differentiation and reintegration entail refining our awareness to more esoteric layers of being -- layers that animate us in every facet of life, such as the biodynamic cranial tides and our primary and second-order centers of function and awareness. Experiencing these extraordinary layers of being reminds us of who we have always been at our highest potential -- including, for some clients, their merger into Unity with all of creation.
SO WHAT IS CALCULUS
In mathematics, calculus is the study of constant change. In the larger scheme of the human condition, the Calculus of Life is a way to assess and navigate the ever changing dynamics that define our existence.
The two main processes of calculus are differentiation and integration. Differentiation is the process of separating something into its component parts. Integration is the process of refining and reconnecting more parts of something in order to realize an enhanced, more unified whole. This calculus permeates the 8 branches of yoga pictured in the graphic on the right. It is also foundational to the teachings of Moshe Feldenkrais, and biomechanical and biodynamic Craniosacral practices. Identifying and refining layers of being to allow for a more functional integration is a recurring theme in every chapter of my book.
According to Gustav Fechner, the brilliant 19th century physicist/psychologist who invented the field of psychophysics, differentiating the parts of something helps us focus our field of attention. A reduction in stimulus allows us to enhance and refine our sensitivity and awareness. This too is fundamental to the practice of yoga, as illustrated in the progression of thought forms from concentration to meditation to Samadhi, as shown in the above yoga graphic and explained in the Yoga Sutras. In psychology, reducing stimulus in order to enhance sensitivity and awareness is known as the Weber/Fechner law.
Once the parts of something are identified, refined, and reintegrated, we're able to experience how these parts recombine into higher states of function and awareness. When this occurs in art and musical performance, the enhanced sensitivity and awareness immediately allows an artist to access higher degrees of nuanced intellectual, emotional, and intuitive content in their creative expression. When working with musicians, this can immediately be heard in the first notes played after a table session. The results are dramatic. These seemingly magical elevations in awareness can produce states of creative access that can be difficult to believe until they are witnessed in person. These experiences may become the moments that those who enjoy the arts still remember later in life when their other memories have started to fade away.
Differentiating the parts of a given life experience helps us to more easily grasp and engage the full value of that experience in the larger context of life. Building on this, the more parts of life we identify, refine and more fully engage, the more the resulting integrations can contribute to higher degrees of global function and awareness. This is the bridge to affecting worldwide change through reaching the masses that Moshe Feldenkrais references in the last pages of his final book, The Elusive Obvious. More on this is described in the previous blog post on Feldenkrais, and in Appendices B and C of my book.
THE CALCULUS FROM MATH CLASS IS THE CALCULUS OF MUSIC
The calculus taught in school uses complex curves to express mathematical functions. A real-life example of this -- the effects of which we have all heard in music performance many thousands of times -- is how the design of the inside shapes of musical wind instruments impact resonance and one's creative potential. Let's briefly explore one small aspect of this by looking at the inside shape of a trumpet mouthpiece. (Note: differentiating the other parts of a mouthpiece beyond those shown here -- not to mention the 150 or so parts of a trumpet -- offers a much more expansive musical palette of expression than the limited mouthpiece graphic below represents.)
In the graphic on the left, the complex shape of the trumpet mouthpiece cup is made up of many arcs that define areas created along a complex curve. The aggregate effect of these geometric functions, when applied in precision computer--controlled machining, produces predictable, specialized acoustic/musical results. These musical effects are defined by the shape and size of the arcs that channel vibrating air generated by the musician through the mouthpiece and into an instrument. In physics, this is known as "fluid dynamics."
Specific areas defined by the complex curve of a mouthpiece design contribute to corresponding elements in musical performance, including but not limited to:
1. The physical interface with the musician's lips as they play.
2. The clarity and shape of articulation (note connection and the degree of percussive effect at the start of each note).
3. The shape of the sound (narrow to wide).
4. The color of sound (bright to dark).
5. The density (concentration) of the sound.
6. The presence of harmonically related overtones that provide depth, presence and brilliance in the sound (independent of tone colour, shape, or density).
7. The proportion of the body-of-sound produced to other elements in the overall shape of the sound.
8. The amount of definition/dispersion at the edges of the sound shape.
9. The size of the slots and "sweet spots" on each note.
10. The distance off center notes can be "bent" before cracking to the next higher or lower overtone of the instrument.
11. The stability of each overtone (independent of the size of the sweet spots).
Due to the proprietary knowledge involved in the interaction between specific areas of function and the fluid dynamics defined by the complex curve of mouthpiece designs, the exact areas of the 11 musical functions listed above are not identified in the graphic. The results of this knowledge, however, can be heard in the musical performances of artists my co-workers and I work with as they tour the world (or practice in their living rooms) playing Monette equipment.
THE CALCULUS FROM MATH CLASS IS ALSO THE CALCULUS OF LIFE
In the graphs below, the differentiated parts of the human experience—our layers of cognition, function, and awareness—are depicted as rectangles under a complex curve. In the calculus of mathematics, these graphs are known as "Riemann Sums." The more parts that are identified and differentiated, the closer the parts come to occupying the totality of the space "under the curve" --- hence the greater the sum. In the graphics below, the totality of space under the curves is an abstract representation of the totality of the human experience. Among other things, the percentage of Riemann sum engaged (depicted in red text in the graphics below) illustrate how "turning off" specific areas of cognition and functional awareness can dramatically limit one's potential to engage with others in more complex and integrative ways.
The functions in the earlier mouthpiece graphic that define the shapes directing airflow and vibration (resonance) control the musical palette of expression. In life, the more abstract functions that define our conscious awareness (personal and sympathetic resonance) define how we perceive and interact with others in all dimensions of life.
Because life is constant, complex change, the functions that define the physics of musical expression --- and the functions that define our conscious awareness --- are constantly changing. My term for navigating life’s changes is the Calculus of Life. This navigation, as depicted in the graphs above, helps elevate us into more of who we’ve always been at our highest potential.
The higher integrations represented in the most complex Riemann sum above can produce glimpses — and for some even sustained experiences ---- of transcendence. This is the ultimate goal of all forms of yoga. A real--life example of how a world-class improvisational jazz musician experienced the progression from his normal awareness expanding into unity with all of creation is described in step-by-step detail in the client's own words the final session account of Chapter 11 of the book.
IN CONCLUSION
The highest branch of the 8 branches of yoga is a transcendental state of awareness called SAMADHI. An important mechanism for realizing Samadhi is the practice of Raja yoga. My book is a practical manual on Raja yoga. The last 9 chapters are a progression of step-by-step guided Raja yoga meditations I use with clients to help them experience various degrees of transcendence in their Calculus of Life sessions. This is described in session accounts throughout the book, and in the opening testimonials from leading educators and practitioners.
Taking a few minutes to read the short, one-paragraph chapter summaries linked below will provide an overview on the method of my book. They briefly describe a comprehensive approach to systemic enhanced resonance in all manner of human function and awareness. This is The Calculus of Life summarized in a 10-minute relatively easy read.
Click the link below for more information, including the chapter summaries and ordering information. The full eBook of the Calculus of Life is available for $9.99 on Amazon.
Comments are welcome and appreciated... as are ratings and reviews on Amazon.
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