What do psychotherapy and flute playing have in common? The opportunity to let go of all thoughts and reboot, return to the moment “here and now”, restore the harmony of the body and spirit, says psychotherapist and TV presenter Vladimir Dashevsky.
About twenty-five years ago, my mother gave me an impressionist painting for my birthday: a teenage boy playing the flute in blue-violet strokes. Mom is gone, and the portrait is with me, hanging in my office. For a long time I did not understand if the picture had anything to do with me. And it looks like I found the answer.
For a long time I had an Indian bansuri flute lying idle, carved, heavy — it was given to me by a friend who was fond of oriental practices. While I, like many others, was sitting in isolation, I was sorely lacking freedom. What could give it? Somehow my eyes fell on the flute: it would be cool to learn how to play it!
I found bansuri lessons on the Internet, and I even managed to extract sounds from it. But this was not enough, and I remembered the teacher who helped my friend master the flute. I wrote to him and we agreed. He gave his first lessons via Skype, and when the pandemic ended, he began to come to my office once a week in the middle of the day, we study for about an hour. But even in short intervals between clients, I often take the flute and play.
A trance-like state: I become the melody I sing
It’s like a reboot — I renew myself, exhale the accumulated tension and can approach a new client from scratch. When extracting a melody from an instrument, one cannot be anywhere but «here and now». After all, you need to keep in mind the motive that you heard from the teacher, at the same time listen to yourself, not lose contact with your fingers and anticipate what will happen next.
The game brings together all the systems of the performer: body, intellect, sensory perception. By playing, I connect with the ancient energy. Traditional melodies have been heard for several thousand years in squares and temples; Sufis and dervishes swirled in ecstasy to these zikrs in Bukhara and Konya. The state is akin to a trance: I become the melody that I sing.
The Assam reed flute gave me the ability to better hear different parts of my personality.
As a child, I studied violin at a music school and often felt fear: did I prepare well for the lesson, do I hold the bow correctly, do I play the piece accurately? Traditional music implies great freedom, the melody does not belong to a specific author — everyone creates it anew, bringing something of their own, as if doing a prayer. And that’s why it’s not scary. It’s a creative process, just like psychotherapy.
The Assam reed flute brought new voices into my life and enabled me to better hear different parts of my personality, balancing them. The ability to get in touch with yourself and harmony is what I want to convey to clients as a psychotherapist. When I pick up a bansuri, I feel attuned to the child in the painting in my office and have direct access to the happiness that is always within me.