What's a bench of three?

Del

Administrator
Staff member
I first heard the term "bench of three" in Ian Clayton teachings. It took me some time to truly understand what it meant. But, after some time, I began to realize that as we bring government into the things of our lives, they tend to come in threes.

On my Healing Frequencies Music website, I have a blog post specifically geared towards this bench of three and how it works in and around us. Since I've already written about that, you can CLICK HERE to read that post. Basically, we use music, flower essences and inner healing to assist people in working through emotional and physical pain. My collaborators in that are Seneca with Freedom Flowers, and Alice with Emotional and Spiritual Healing.

For well over two years, I've been looking for things that bring together a bench of three, or a type of governmental authority in my life. This is both in the natural as well as supernatural. Why? I've realized that when you bring three things together, a three-stranded cord isn't easily broken. Those three things are meant to work together and compliment each other.

My example from this week...

While teaching lessons, I discovered that one of my students could read the notes on a page of music but didn't know the note names. When I asked her to play a "C," she didn't know what fingering to use but if I pointed to the note on a piece of music, she could play it. I had her practice the triangle exercise I post below. But, in her case, I used scales instead of a tune.

I teach a class where music students, who are going to be band directors, learn how to play all the instruments so they can be effective teachers. This week, I did an experiment by thinking of learning to read music while playing a musical instrument as a bench of three. I told the class (afterwards) what I was doing. ALL of them agreed it was much easier. The reason? It connected all parts of the learning "systems" within their bodies so the materials were remembered a bit easier.

I created a triangle...
  1. Learn the fingerings while looking at the note names
  2. Write up a bunch of note names on the board and play a tune simply by pointing to the note names
  3. Look at the sheet music of that same tune only after students can do step 2
And... another triangle...
  1. Eyes
  2. Ears
  3. Hands
What this does is connect three things: the ears, the hands, and the eyes. When you see sheet music, that's a connection between eyes and hands. When you see the note names only, that connects hearing with the hands. The student is connecting muscle memory (hands) with looking at the sheet music (eyes) as well as playing by note names only (ears). As a side note... for some strange reason, students tend to listen more when they are looking at note names only without the sheet music. Interesting...

How did my class like this? Every one of them found it much easier to learn and then understand the concept of reading music as well as hearing what the notes actually sound like. This "bench of three" created a form of government for learning to read music while internalizing fingerings and note names.

And, the private student? She was amazed that after this lesson, she found it easier to remember her note names. It made connecting the note names with the sheet music much easier. Score one for the learning process!

Do you have any examples of a bench of three? :skype-party:
 
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Jean Wiley

Member
Coach
Thanks for this reminder, Del. I have begun sharing this perspective with others. The bench of 3 also provides the 3 strand cord which is not easily broken. :skype-angel:
 
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Cheryl Olson

New Member
Love this concept Del! Since I play the flute (Not fluently though), and am teaching myself guitar (the purpose was to understand the cords better for piano) this will come in handy when I can pick it back up again!
 
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