About fifteen years ago I started a fairly radical experiment. It was an experiment inspired by reading the writings of a Japanese farmer called Masanobu Fukuoka, studying the methods of an Italian educator called Dr Maria Montessori, and experiencing the work of an Australian teacher called FM Alexander. 

The experiment was very simple. I asked myself the question: what would happen if I just stopped practicing? 

What did I mean? I meant no more planning, no more projecting goals, no more disciplined study, keeping to the programme, preparation, and isolating technical elements to build a greater facility in the things I really wanted to do. 

This experiment took two forms. It was an experiment in my guitar playing, but it was also an experiment in my life. It is ongoing. 

What had I been practicing up until now? 

In guitar there had been various methods of practice: slow practice, metronome practice, practicing particular pieces until they were ready to perform, preparing set concert programmes, and practicing techniques which would be used in music later. 

In life there had been many techniques of meditation, yoga postures, breathing techniques, ideas about how to proceed in day to day life based on mindfulness, mental perspectives, and overarching ideas which coloured the present. 

What would happen if I stopped doing these things? My friend Redmond gave me an answer. He said "you'll be fine for a while as you continue to benefit from your previous practice, but slowly things will fall apart." 

It's fifteen years later and things have fallen by the wayside, but they have not fallen apart. Sometimes I do still practice, in practice's many forms, but I always find that the real magic of learning and creativity happens when I'm not doing those things that could be called practice. 

Imagine a world where people played, they follow their interests, became absorbed in what caught their attention and become engaged only with what catches their deepest passions. This, says Maria Montessori, is the life of the child. And it can, says I, be the life of the adult too. 

The problem with planned practice, schedules, formulas and curriculums, is that we can never really know what would be best to "practice." Fukuoka found this in his fields in his farm in Japan. He realised that even his extensive knowledge of what was "good" and "bad" for his rice fields, could never really piece together the complexity of what it took to grow perfect rice. One year an infestation of spiders, the next year an infestation of frogs, but leaving this balance of "weeds" and "pests" and rice to interact without disturbing them, resulted in yields resulting from a complex web of processes that he could never  understand. 

It is these yields, on the guitar, that most interest me. And while some plan of study may result in me finishing a large body of work, I am far more interested in the work that could emerge without this plan. What is my body really wanting to say with this guitar? That is more interesting to me than following a programme and coming out at the end having succeeded, being able to play this or that piece or improvise in this or that style? 

Plans and practice, in the sense that I am talking about them here, are what FM Alexander called "end gaining." Working towards an end, in a straight line, regardless of the consequences. Alexander discovered that we caused ourselves immense harm when we proceeded towards our goals in this way. He realised that the path to our goals is often a lot more crooked and winding and interesting that the straight highway to the end. And he found that the beginning of this winding journey was a simple decision to say no. 

Fukuoka said no to centuries of agricultural practice. Montessori said no to centuries of ideas about what a child actually was, and Alexander said no to our cultural habits of movement and process. They all said no to the same thing: they said no to received knowledge, and instead created space for the emergence of possibilities that they could never have planned, invented, or imagined. 

Fukuoka called this no "natural or do-nothing farming," Montessori called this no "the life of the child" and Alexander called this no "inhibition."

And it is in response to their work that I present this material, on playing a particular style of guitar, in the way that I do. As a conversation class that you can dip in an out of according to your interest. A resource that you can experience in any order, in any manner, just to be interested in what may happen. 

You have a guide to tell you every day which of these resources you should use and in which order. This guide is your interest. When something grabs you play it until it doesn't. When something is too hard, leave it, when something is pleasurable repeat it. 

When you can only play a part of a lesson, play that part, the rest has no benefit to you. You don't need it, don't need to work towards it and don't need to concern yourself with it. If I'm playing sixteen notes to the beat and you're playing two, those other fourteen and my trip and are no concern of yours. Enjoy your notes and become interested in what will emerge from your notes. My notes are my notes. Leave me to work out what will come of those notes for myself. They are no concern of yours. Be amused that I need sixteen notes where you can enjoy yourself with only two. 

We know we struggle with idea of following our interest, don't we? We think that if we only do what is pleasurable, how will we ever learn? When you think this perfectly natural thought, go and watch a small child for an afternoon, and ask yourself who is learning more, you or them?

Let the music build itself, through interest, which is also called love. This is a far more powerful process than any plan, any regime, or any map to any destination.