Maison du Calme School
Sound
The bowls, in three levels.
Bowls are set directly on the body and struck softly, so the tone arrives through the body before it reaches the ear. That is the work as it is given in the room, and it is taught in three levels. Each one is given in person, in Battersea, London, and the first comes before the others.
LEVEL ONE
The first level starts with the sound itself: what a bowl does when it is struck, and why the tone carries the way it does. Then the three bowls, each with its own size and its own place on the body: the universal, the belly and the heart. And the mallets that belong to each. How they are struck, and how they are set down.
Then the rest of a session, in the order it happens. The conversation you have with someone before anything is touched, and the record you keep of it. Where the work is set aside instead of given. How a person is settled on the table. The whole sequence on the body, face down and then turned. And the conversation at the end.
This level stands on its own. You leave able to give a whole session.
LEVEL TWO
The second level is about the person holding the mallet. It begins with attention, and with appreciation. Working from what someone has rather than from what is wrong. Doing less, on purpose. Working with the pictures a person already has in mind.
And then the hand itself: a mallet struck to one particular place, and the rhythm a bowl is held in. The first level is a sequence. This is where it stops being one.
LEVEL THREE
The third level works in the space around the body rather than on it. Sound carried from the head down, then from the feet up. A pass made with no bowl in your hands at all. Three ways of working that space: to loosen, to lift, to settle. And the small bowl that closes it.
The gongs belong to this level too. They are played with their own gestures, and they are taught on their own.
In person · Three levels