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My advice to you? I don’t advise!

This week we carrying on thinking together with a new interview where Agnès de Brunhoff, author of Detached Commitment @L’engagement détaché, L’avenir d’un nouvel usage de soi (Editions DELATOUR FRANCE 2021) shares with us the experience which led the artist she is to become a coach.

Did this touch you? Interest you? Make you think?

What did you think of this testimony?

We continue to share with you the light readers have chosen to shed on Agnès de Brunhoff’s book Detached Commitment @L’engagement détaché

This week we hear from Viviane Vaissières, a hairdresser from the Paris region, what she thought of Detached Commitment.

What does her view make you think of?

Do you remember Carmen, that boldly non-conformist female figure?

This week’s guest is the mezzo-soprano Julie Robard-Gendre, renowned for the warmth of her timbre and the intensity of her stage presence, her upcoming performances including Carmen at the Rennes Opera and Gertrude (in Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet) at the Nantes Opera.

Her presentation of her long years of with Agnès de Brunhoff is as touching as her reading of her favourite passage from Detached Commitment (Editions DELATOUR FRANCE 2021)

How can we resist the downward spiral of our way of life at the moment? Are we condemned to lose our own identity in our political, social, professional or personal engagement? Or is it possible to be committed to a cause whilst blossoming and remaining true to oneself? This is the subject of Agnès de Brunhoff’s writing.

This week opera director Benjamin Prins joins in our discussion on the work and writings of committed coach Agnès de Brunhoff. Benjamin Prins’ productions are well-known for their deep humanity which combine extravagance and delicacy. Here he shares with us his definition of detached engagement in the light of his work with Agnès de Brunhoff.

How about you? What would your definition be after reading Detached Commitment? (Editions Delatour France 2021) ?

Available online and in bookshops.

Another movingly enthusiastic response to the appearance of Agnès de Brunhoff’s new book from Taiwanese violinist MingHsuan Hsieh

She writes to us from the other side of the world to tell us what she thinks detached commitment means.

She remembers the wisdom she acquired from working with Agnès de Brunhoff and tells us how she improved her thinking patterns to help her find appropriate practising methods with the violin.

To change, you need first of all to stop doing what doesn’t work. A struggle, in short, against force of habit, be it physical or emotional.

Day by day, Agnès de Brunhoff imparts the know-how she has developed around the world for thirty years to help her pupils to realise their potential by themselves, letting their own powers blossom.

MingHsuan Hsieh is now an Alexander Technique® teacher herself, sharing with her students in Taiwan all that she learned during her training at the CFT Alexander with Agnès de Brunhoff.

Can work get boring?

According to Agnès de Brunhoff, the problem is how to maintain the quality of a relationship between two people. She insists upon this: “If you try to give everything you have to someone who wants to take everything you have, it won’t work. Teaching, like music and sport, requires constant exchange. Otherwise the work is deadly dull”.

Many thanks to Perceval Gilles, founder of the Atanassov Trio, who after graduating from the Paris Conservatoire (CNSMDP) has recently been appointed Chamber Music teacher at the Montpeller Méditerranée Métropole Regional Conservatoire, for agreeing to share with us his definition of detached commitment.

For this virtuoso violinist it means “being completely engaged in each day’s work, in the journey, rather than being too focussed on a particular objective”.

What about you? What will your definition be when you have read Detached Commitment? (éditions Delatour France 2021)

Available online and at bookshops.