Why this had to exist
Why the Transformation Year had to happen
In 2015 I was teaching out of my studio in Portland and building The Woodshed at the same time. And I had a niggle I could not shake. I was under-serving my students.
The ones working through the material alone made progress, but more slowly. The same students, when I watched their hands every week, moved faster. I caught the small things early, before they hardened into habits. Left alone, those habits take hold, and then take years to undo.
I knew exactly why it mattered, because I had lived both sides of it…
For about twenty years I had a teacher or coach of my own, someone I saw every week or two. What they gave me was rarely technical. They caught things early, and they told me that what I was doing was worth doing, which reduces doubt in a way nothing else does.
And still, I carry tension in my right shoulder to this day. I practice Alexander Technique, I have a long history with yoga, and it comes and goes anyway. The habits that held me back longest were built without noticing and reinforced every day. I rebuilt my technique more than once over the years, and the rebuilding only truly worked while someone was watching.
Because… The eye cannot see itself.
The Woodshed gives a player the path and the material. What it cannot do is sit with you each week and catch what you can't. That was the one thing I could never put inside a course. So I built it as its own thing.
The Transformation Year is a year where someone is watching every week, so nothing slows you down unseen. You finish with hands that move freely, a practice you trust, and the music you have always heard in your head finally coming through your fingers.
