But what is practice anyway?
As an organizer and creator of content for lectures, workshops, and courses, the question and need always arises: they must be practical…
As an organizer and creator of content for lectures, workshops, and courses, the question and need always arise: they must be practical, full of final and concrete tips that can be applied quickly.
Formulas, recipes, lists, rules, and models that are “practical and simple” to execute, simple laws that won’t take much work to implement.
Those secret and ancient methods full of solutions and essential keys to life, that change us in the blink of an eye, putting everything in its proper place.
If we follow the correct prescription and dosage recipe, everything will be fine, the ideal home, marriage, work, and relationships. There is no margin for error.
But in this way, there is no learning, responsibility, or co-creation -the kind that comes from dialogue and unmediated reciprocity.
From eyes wide-open with curiosity, while the heart beats in deep reverberation, from practice and experimentation without fear of making mistakes.
From the earliest childhood, we have been acculturated to avoid and fear mistakes. Stains, inconsistencies, lapses, and imperfections make us carry guilt and frustration. Tainted disappointments that the erasers take care of erasing so that we don’t have to see or deal with them.
We look for “practical tips” ready to use and implement to avoid disappointment and waste of time. However, the word practice is derived from the Greek “praktiké”; from the Latin “practices,a,um”, with the sense of laborious. The origin of the practice is a tireless effort, and indefatigable diligence. Practice can be arduous and fatiguing. Hard and heavy. It is demanding in its cadence, presence, and observation. The practice has never been light, superficial, or quick to implement; hence the expectation of absolute perfection from “practice tips” is a paradox (invisible to many). Practice implies action, realization, and accomplishment in a concrete and specific space-time.
Being the opposite pole of theory, practice demands getting one’s hands dirty, and this is always a contextual, singular, diverse, and unique movement for each one of us.
Today, contextual and unique practice is confused with the implementation of abstract and absolute models. However, no model or method refers to the personal, singular, and unmediated relationship with the contextual reality we find ourselves.
These called “practical tips” are always abstractions that do not account for the real context: place, time, stories, memories, or sensations, just to name a few. All tips that appear to be practical may not fit us or our direct experience. Unmediated direct experience is the concrete root of all practice, so hints should not be taken as final or closed dogmas.
But because we are educated to neglect the regenerative value of errors, we want final answers at all costs. We want to extract by force the juice, the essence, the marrow, and the synthesis, even if it means completely decontextualizing what we are trying to implement.
This visceral extractivist need objectifies knowledge, neglecting practice's delicate and rhythmic art. For practice as complementary to theory only operates in reality, that is, in a specific context.
Be brave enough to practice without the need for perfection or conclusions. Let’s practice, make mistakes, learn and discover!