Mindful Musical Life

The Mindful Musical Life Blog

Why do you perform?

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Last weekend I finished up a wonderful performance experience with the Reno Modern Brass. There were many enjoyable moments, but there were also moments when I felt anxiousness and even trepidation at the upcoming concert. Generally I was very excited to share the new music we had prepared with our growing audience. There are things that can inspire us to perform: opportunities for professional growth, money, or an unexpected day off. While these are all rational reasons to share one’s music, a recent book I’ve been reading has me thinking about how our inspirations might influence the quality of our eventual performance. 

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Flow explores his extensive research into high levels of performance in everything from housekeeping to olympic swimming. Flow can be described as the perfect balance between challenge and capability that encourages intense, sustained engagement in an activity, usually resulting in a heightened sense of enjoyment and satisfaction. One of the key elements of establishing flow (or being in “the zone” as many call it) is having a strong sense of intrinsic motivation. 

Csikszentmihalyi argues that what drives us to keep growing as musicians and our reasons for performing cannot be based on external factors, if our goal is to achieve flow on a regular basis. Simply put, if you are pushing yourself to get better solely to earn accolades from your listeners or strictly for professional gain, you will rarely achieve a flow state. 

It is a valuable exercise to think about what truly motivates you as a musician. Find a few minutes each day for the next week to write down your thoughts on this subject. Often the best times for journalling and reflection are first thing in the morning, or before going to bed at night. Another good option is to take some time before your practice session to get some thoughts down. This can help start your practicing off on a positive trend, and remind you why you are spending your time studying and practice music. 

I will be diligently recording my ideas this week about my inspirations for practice, and will share some more thoughts on this subject next week. I wish you an inspirational week of music making! 

Works cited

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.

Stop Fighting Your Stress

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I am writing this in Bloomington, IN after an amazing week at the Mindfulness-Based Wellness and Pedagogy workshop with Frank Diaz, finishing up my certification. Throughout the week we enjoyed many excellent articles and videos, but one really stood out to me. It was called, “How to make stress your friend” and was presented at TEDGlobal 2013 by Kelly McGonigal. 

The argument she makes with a myriad of data and supporting research, is simply that stress is not the issue, it is our response to stress that causes the real problems. We are programed to believe that stress is bad, but our body’s natural responses to stress are designed to help us survive intense situations. McGonigal suggests that our stress responses can actually help us in the way they were intended to, if we change the way we view them. 

I think most of us can recall a moment when we were heading toward a stress-inducing situation: a big solo in an orchestra, a difficult exam, or an important presentation at work. If you recall one of these situations, you might even start to feel some of the physiological responses that typically arise, such as increased heart rate, perspiration, and even feelings of wanting to run away. My typical response to this used to be to try and push the feelings of stress or nervousness away, forcing them into the background. But this never really helped. 

Something Frank Diaz suggested this week at the WBMP workshop was instead of trying to fight with difficult emotions, just dance with them. Let them be and examine them with curiosity, letting the feelings of fear or stress be as they are. If you can learn to dance with your stress, the sensations naturally become less intense and you can redirect attention to the task at hand. 

This approach has been extremely powerful for me in the last year. I don’t always succeed, but my overall relationship with stress has become less overwhelming and much more congenial. So next time the feelings of stress start to arise in you, take a step back to look more fully at them, and see if simply letting them be offers a more helpful outcome. 

Theory and Practice

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Man Meditating

I spent this past weekend in Austin and San Antonio performing with the Austin Baroque Orchestra. I also had the great pleasure of presenting mindfulness to an excited room full of brass students at Texas State University. This combination gave me a great chance to work on my teaching approach, and also put my personal mindfulness practice into action with a couple performing opportunities. 

Like many other musicians, I originally got interested in mindfulness for the possibility of decreasing the impact of anxiety on my musical performance. While I firmly believe that the benefits of mindfulness impact the whole person, there is no doubt that this training does help with musical performance anxiety. With my performances this weekend, I felt the usually increase of anxiousness leading up to each concert, but I was able to sustain my focus in the moment thanks to my mindfulness work. This benefit is great, but the way that I teach mindfulness is not focused directly on the musical benefits. Instead, it is important to approach mindfulness as a holistic training for the whole person, not just the musician. 

This is what I emphasize when I share mindfulness instruction with anyone. In order to apply the benefits of mindfulness to music, and to reap the benefits in performance, you have to develop mindfulness away from music. The benefits from mindful practices will reveal themselves in many places in your life, but after a while you will notices there are specific practices that will  have a direct impact on the musical parts of your life. 

I have found in my own practice that meditation exercises emphasizing the development of focus are very beneficial to musical performance. One of my favorite mindfulness teachers on focus is Sharon Salzberg. I find her guidance in breath awareness is easy to follow and her pacing in exercise is excellent. Here is a link to a 20-minute guided breath awareness meditation. Try it out! 

Resilience

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Practicing mindfulness won’t prevent bad things from happening to you. Sorry, but dealing with bad situations is part of life. What mindfulness can offer is a way to strengthen your resilience when dealing with life’s ups and downs.

It is important to remember that we all face setbacks and failures from time to time. It is easy to feel isolated when faced with these situations, but even the most successful person you can bring to mind has dealt with problems.

As musicians we deal with rejection and failure on a consistent basis, so it is easy to imagine how important a strong sense of resilience can be. If you have ever taken a professional audition of any kind, you have an intimate understanding of the benefits of resilience. Without it, we would give up at the first rejection from an orchestra, festival, or college job. You might think building resilience is a difficult task, but mindfulness training can help. 

A common instruction in mindfulness meditation is to offer space for the sensations and emotion you feel while meditating, without labeling them as good or bad. We need room to observe an emotion before dealing with it, or as the meditation teacher George Mumford describes it, allowing space between the “stimulus and the response.” This approach is exactly what we need to be resilient in the face of life’s struggles. 

When we allows thoughts and emotions to arise during a mediation without forcing them away, we are increasing our ability for resilience. A common experience in meditation is seeing a thought or emotion arise in the mind, and if allowed to, dissipate just as quickly. This only happens if the mind state is one of spaciousness and curiosity. If you observe your reactions to a bad situation in a similar way, you can choose the most helpful response for that moment. But this ability will not be available if the skill has not been developed in “the laboratory” of mindful meditation practices. 

In her article on resilience for Mindful, Linda Graham describes the outcome when we have access to this kind of response. 

“When the self-regulating capacity of your brain is functioning well, you can inhabit or quickly recover a felt sense of centeredness, ease, and well-being after an upsetting event. You regain your equilibrium. From there you can perceive clearly what’s triggering your emotions and discern what a wise response to those triggers would be.” 

This kind of intentional, thoughtful response to life’s stresses is available to all of us. Honing the ability to allow space for our everyday emotional reactions gives us the ability to better deal with the big stuff when it comes along. 

There are lots of great guided meditations out there about dealing with difficult or intense emotions. One of my favorite teachers on this topic is Sharon Salzberg, and she has a free meditation on difficult emotions you can find here. Give this a try this week and see if you can start to change your relationship to the emotions you feel. 

Works Cited

Graham, Linda. “Train Your Brain to Build Resilience.” Mindful, September 15, 2009. https://www.mindful.org/train-your-brain-to-build-resilience/

Finding the Right Amount of Effort

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Musician’s are experts at exerting effort. It is difficult to find a more driven and passionate group of people anywhere, but sometimes we try too hard.

In his book, Advice Not Given, Dr. Mark Epstein explains his perception of Right Effort through a Buddhist story about a musician turned monk (Epstein, 123-124). In this story, Sona, an ex-lutist, is struggling in his meditation efforts despite the great amount of effort he is putting forth. When the Buddha hears about this, he uses Sona’s musical experience to help him. Through a series of questions, he compares the strings of a lute to the effort Sona was applying to his meditation, just as a string that is too tight or too loose, one’s effort must also find a balance between too much and too little. This Buddhist parable is a lovely one, and you can watch a nice animated version of the whole story here. 

Often in meditation it is easy to get caught up in trying to “do it correctly.” I have found that musicians are especially primed to adopt this approach in their mindfulness practice. It can be difficult to let go of this striving while meditating, but often when excess effort dissolves one’s meditation practice can deepen.

Applying this idea to playing an instrument or singing, a similar need arises to find a balance between too much and too little effort. As a brass player and teacher, I see this approach all too often in students and professional alike. But no matter your discipline, trying to force something only leads to frustration. In my experience, backing off the effort even by a small amount can make achieving the desired technique or sound come much easier.

It is difficult to describe the difference between too much or too little effort. It might be helpful to think of this as dancing with your instrument, instead of battle against it. When I am trying too hard, it feels like I am trudging through deep mud, but when my effort finds the perfect middle ground, making music feels easy and playing my instrument becomes much more enjoyable. 

Next time you are struggling with a difficult passage of music, a good way to help let go of excess effort is to move your awareness off of the goal itself. I have seen good results with students and myself when the object of one’s focus moves around to different parts of the body while making music. You can also rest your awareness on sensations that are present while playing, such as vibrations, tingling, the rising and falling of the breath, and others. This helps to release some of the effort that might be holding you back from achieving what you were working on. 

Works cited

Epstein, Mark. Advice Not Given: A Guide to Getting Over Yourself. New York: Penguin Press, 2018.

Learning to Drop the Second Dart

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Darts in a dart board

Some types of suffering are unavoidable in life: Physical pain or illness, rejection, loss of loved ones. But often times the suffering we experience comes from our  reactions to situations, adding a second round of suffering. There is a Buddhist teaching that discusses the pain of two darts. The first dart is the unavoidable physical or emotional pain that we feel at certain points in our life. The second dart, the one that is avoidable, comes from the mental reaction to that pain which adds to our suffering.

In his book, “Buddha’s Brain” Rick Hanson describes this concept of the first and second darts, and the physiological processes that accompany them. 

“First darts are unpleasant to be sure. But then we add our reactions to them. These reactions are ‘second darts’—the ones we throw ourselves. Most of our suffering comes from second darts” (Hanson, pg. 50).

What Dr. Hanson is describing is something that happens throughout our day, often without us noticing. Someone might not say hi to us in the hallway, and suddenly we are imagining all of the possible ways we could have upset them. “Maybe I said something in the meeting that upset them, or maybe they are mad at me for not including them at last week’s party?” These reactions or ruminations are completely fabricated and usually are not helpful for navigating the present moment. 

This kind of internal disquiet is very common in the world of music, especially when considering the unavoidability of occasional mistakes. To make great music you have to take risks, and along with those risks can come mistakes. We have all felt that sinking feeling immediately following a mistake: an instinctual physical reaction that is generated from the disappointment of not playing or singing something in the way that we had intended. The second dart comes in from the mental reactions to that brief second. From that one mistake, completely fabricated outcomes begin to creep into our imagination, such as “This group is never going to hire me again,” or “Great, now everyone here knows I am a fraud—They think I’m completely worthless,” or “I am never going to make it as a musician.” 

If you take a step back and look at these ruminations, you can see how blown out of proportion they are, but in the moment it is more difficult to notice. This kind of thinking can become so prevalent that sometimes even the first dart can be fabricated without our realizing it. 

When you are living the life of a freelance musician, there are times when someone else will get a call for a job that you where hoping to get. This is part of life for all musicians in some way or another. Usually, the person in charge of hiring had no ill intent when they chose another musician over you, but a common reaction is to follow another mental path. We instead fabricate a scenario where we are the victim of an attack, that the personnel manager has something against us, or that they don’t think that we can hack it. 

Reactions like these are not helpful. It can be difficult to catch the second dart before it hits home, but a good first step is to simply notice when you have created an unhelpful reaction to a situation. You will start to see how much of an impact our mental reactions to things can have on us and those around us. Be kind and patient with yourself, and trust that by starting to notice these reactions you are working toward preventing them all together. 

Works Cited

Hanson, Rick. Buddha’s Brain: the practical neuroscience of happiness, love & wisdom. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 2009.

What I learned after 50 days of mindfulness practice

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On April 14th, I had about three weeks of university teaching left ahead of me for the spring term. That included giving and grading finals and final projects, listening to juries, and many other loose ends to tie up. That day I sat for a 20 minute mindful awareness meditation, quickly remembering how helpful that time can be in a busy schedule. Then I did it again the next day. After 20 days in a row, I made the decision to continue this pattern. Some days I did a 30-minute resting awareness exercise, and others were only 5 or 10 minutes of breath awareness, but committing to do something everyday made a huge difference. 

A cursory google search can turn up plenty of research on habit formation, and the importance of sticking with it for a sustained period of time. Most of the findings seem to indicate that a major key to establishing a successful and lasting habit is setting reasonable goals and holding yourself to them for a pre-determined length of time. 

I’d like to add that some flexibility is also crucial to success, along with some self-compassion. Through my 50-day streak, there were days when I was not motivated to meditate, but the knowledge that 5 minutes was still a success was very helpful. If I had held myself to 30 minutes a day, I don’t think I would’ve been as successful. 

After 50 straight days of meditation, I noticed serval things. I was quicker to notice my wandering mind, and it was easier to redirect my awareness to the present moment. This increased level of meta awareness was most noticeable while I was enjoying a walk, bike ride, or some time in my kayak. These activities can present many opportunities for the mind to drift into rumination, when I would much rather be enjoying the present moment. 

Also, I was quicker to notice when my mind would wander while practicing my horn. The thoughts that arose in this situation where usually unhelpful (often negative), and they regularly accompanied a moment of lesser quality in my playing. By noticing these drifting thoughts more quickly, the resulting quality of my practice sessions stayed much higher. 

While formal mindfulness practice every day is not a requirement to gain some of these benefits, my commitment to a daily practice was extremely beneficial. If you are inspired to give this a shot yourself, I strongly encourage you to do so, just remember to show yourself compassion and allow for some flexibility from one day to the next. Make your goal a reasonable one, taking into account your schedule and the amount of time you can commit, and I’m sure you can do it. 

Can Mindfulness Improve Your Focus?

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After spending a few years practicing mindfulness I noticed a dramatic change in the quality of my performance. Overall I was making less mistakes on my instrument, which led to a more relaxed feeling on stage. Looking more deeply at this phenomenon, I realized that a majority of the mistakes I typically made were a result of a focus. I knew there were collations between focus and mindfulness, but in what specific way?

In a study by Antion Lutz et al. (2009), a team of researchers looked into the effect of mindful meditation on focus. The two practitioner groups were assigned varying levels of a daily attention meditation practice, such as breath awareness, and participated in a barrage of tests to measure focus before and after the study. After three months, both meditation groups saw a marked increase in their ability to sustain focus through the tests. Additionally, the amount of energy it took these participants to sustain their focus was reduced, indicating they had an easier time with high-focus tasks. 

This last result should especially grab the attention of performers. A long piece in a recital, or lengthy orchestra concert can leave us feeling drained. Besides the physical exertion of performance, there is a heavy mental taxation. As I mentioned earlier, I think most of my mistakes in performance come from focus—either it wasn’t aimed in the proper direction, or there wasn’t enough left in the tank. I can deal with a bit of physical exhaustion toward the end of a performance, but if my mental strength wanes, I notice a more substantial drop in quality.  

Next time you are practicing your instrument (or while performing if you are really brave), notice when your focus veers away from the task at hand. You might notice yourself thinking of what groceries you need to get, or an awkward conversation you had recently. Make a note of this. You might be surprised how often you could be more engaged in the moment of music making. 

Lutz, A., Slagter, N. B., Francis, A. D., Greischar, L. L., Davidson, R. J. (2009). Mental Training enhances attentional stability: Neural and behavioral evidence. J Neurosci, 29(42), 13418-13427. doi: 10.1523/jneurosci.1614-09.2009