Here are notes I made, while improvising with zils (May 14 practice session):

"Letting the zils 'talk' is training my neurology--it inspires movement I remember from childhood that improves balance."

What do I mean by letting the zils "talk"?

I bought the cheapest possible pair of zils in order to practice with them in those little bits and bobs of time that crop up in a normal day. Usually, unless I'm in the car, I don't have the privacy. Sometimes I practice specific rhythms: "Doum doum BEK BEK doum BEK-BEK, BEK, BEK-BEK" is my most common one. Sometimes I start a series of straight quarternotes on one hand and then insert a third note between them using the other hand, at increasing frequencies until it sounds like ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling. Or any regular rhythmic pattern I want to try to stick to. It's very difficult not to speed up once I get a rhythm going, and go faster and faster. Or I get bored and start improvising, clattering the zils around any old way with all the precision of a child finger-painting, just for the love of the noise. My zils are nice and loud in the closed car. My theory is, in real-world dancing with zils, the zils had better be automatic. I can currently keep track of only one movement at a time, whether I'm walking to the car with my keys in my hand, pulling weeds, or doing the dishes. Dancing involves layers of interrelated movements. If I think about my movement, I mess up. If I think about the music, I can move rhythmically, but not expertly. So, I want every type of movement, however simple or complex, to be automatic. I want to think about the music and have the movement take over. I want it to move from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic nervous system. What I'm doing, really, is training my neurology. I'm taking advantage of neuroplasticity to install a brain upgrade, using music and motion--linked together so deeply as to be unconscious--as the program or operating system.

So there I am, dinging away. It takes a lot of discipline to practice the zils. It takes no discipline to play with the zils.

Sometimes, for fun, I just play with the zils without thinking about it. At this particular practice, I was focusing on stretches, and I let the zils play around while I focused on balance. I call this letting the zils "talk". It feels like the zils are communicating with me, maybe praising God or just chirping like birds or blowing off their own steam, not mine. I noticed that if I switched from concentrating on my movement to listening passively to the zils, my movement changed.

I have a very strong will. My will is so strong, it has transcended my body during athletic performance or even during routine workouts. My will is so strong, I have injured myself.

So I hung up my will and just listened, a passive observer of the dialog my body and my zils developed.

The motions I was making felt familiar. They reminded me of yoga, except I was constantly moving, and they reminded me of tai chi, except that the moves were a bit faster than tai chi. I wasn't deliberately raising and moving my chi around. I wasn't deliberately lining up asanas and settling into them. I was just along for the ride.

The motions were the leadups to cartwheels and handstands.

The zils were calling forth from my body, swinging repetitive movements that recapitulated my favorite vigorous exercise from early childhood.

I used to do handstands all the time. I used to do cartwheels and roundoffs. Before I got too heavy and stiff I was basically upside down as often as I could arrange it, unless I was in school or reading a book. These motions required upperbody strength, balance, and an inner springiness htat connected all of my long bones and connective tissue into a lengthening process, like snapping tent poles together. The impact on my hands and then my feet and then my hands again strengthened all my joints and bounced my internal organs into perfect alignment. I haven't done these moves since puberty, but when I moved with my brain off the hook, and moved, and moved and moved, the movements resurfaced. I didn't decide to do them. They reemerged. They reasserted themselves.

Everything about my body that I believe in as heavy, clumsy, bulky, unweildy, pain-wracked, etc, took about fifteen minutes to slough off. All the illness, moral or physical, is to my vigorous self as fallen leaves are to a rock. A gentle wind blew it away.

It's not a great metaphor, because here I am sitting on my butt typing as a rest from doing the dishes. But it gave me hope. Even my bones have bones that determine their strength and structure, and those bone-bones are neurological. They are still in there, and they are still sound.