| February 17, 2024 |
How Do We Translate?I just took an online class from a teacher I love from NYC. It was a pre recorded class. I had never taken this person’s class online prior to this. It was a very different experience than when I used to take it in person. In the classes I’ve taken with this teacher they didn’t practice while they were teaching. They would walk around and guide us. It’s a very different style of teaching when you’re practicing versus just teaching. I’ll speak from my own experience. When I’m just teaching and not doing, it’s easier for me to anchor the theme. I can focus on offering the theme in different ways every time we’re at the end of a wave/sequence. While practicing, it’s easier to drop into the bhavana as it’s embodied, in my body. So I don’t offer as much variation of the theme but instead just emanate it from being in it with the students. This teacher is really good a cultivating bhavana through their words and music choice. With neither of those being offered in this pre recorded class, it had a very different bhanvana. It felt like a different teacher’s class. It was interesting to experience the same teacher in a very different way. It left me thinking about how we translate – in some circumstances our actions make sense, but take them into a different context and they may change. How do we know if we’re translating properly? This brings up a story I loved reading. When Haruki Murakami wrote his first short story, he reread it and found it terrible. He didn’t know what to do. As an experiment, he decided to translate the first chapter into english. His english was limited so he had to choose his words carefully. It taught him to pare down. He writes in Japanese but still chooses to use simple language – and I would say that’s one of my favorite things about him. It’s simple but very profound. He figured out his writing style by literally translating his work. Translate – convert something or be converted into (another form or medium). Ponder – What’s translating right now for you from one medium to another. As always, I love hearing from you. Tell me some things. Clara If you enjoyed this, find my most recent musings HERE. |
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