Understanding Performance


Ian Dyball's PhD research in the field of 'performance consciousness' combined with his extensive teaching and performance expertise led him to the thesis statement that 'ultimate performance requires a complete absence of self'.
Practise is an activity that is both time-consuming and exhausting. It is expensive in mental expenditure because of the sheer amount of explicit control that is necessarily undertaken. However, in similar terms, performance should be completely free. Advanced players can therefore apply themselves purely as observers to their own action and, in doing so, a completely new state of awareness is achieved. It may even be aptly cited as an 'out of body experience' simply because, for most people, it becomes a new way of experiencing the nature of self. It is a profound realisation that the way we naturally assume our actions are under our conscious control, is mis-guided.
Ian Dyball 2013
Image of Ian Dyball