A new season is on the way. With new possibilities.
Are you ready for it?
Maybe you’ve had a good, relaxing vacation, so you feel refreshed and invigorated.
Or you might have had a tough summer, but managed to find a place in yourself where some healing – however slight or gradual – brought you encouragement about your future.
If you’re like me, your summer has been a mix – of spaciousness and tough stuff, bringing you new healing and deeper joy.
In any case, in one way or another, you’ve grown. And you may be looking forward to some new ideas and plans taking shape in the season ahead.
The Big Question is: Can we keep our sense of possibility and newness as our lives start moving faster in the new season?
Soon we’ll have more work and less time for getting the refreshment our bodies and minds need for doing our work really well. And before we know it, we can start getting uncomfortable and stressed out from all the demands we have to meet.
We might start wondering when, and how, we can get another break.
The Pause That Refreshes
I’ve learned that taking a break can be the most essential step in moving forward in our lives, and that includes the time we spend practicing our instrument and performing.
What would happen if you inserted micro breaks into your practicing? If you started intentionally monitoring the time you spend each day at the instrument and really paid attention to each moment in which your body feels just a little tense, or your mind gets just a little frustrated?
Try it out. And when that golden moment of awareness arrives and you notice that tension or frustration, just STOP.
Stop and breathe.
And then WAIT.
Wait until you your head feels a little clearer, and your body feels a little more comfortable.
The Power of Awareness
Recognizing our habitual stress and tension is the first essential key to breaking free of it.
So look for your tendency to overwork, to push yourself. To get so caught up in the emotional intensity of music that you forget to give yourself the time and space you need to breathe. Allow yourself to trust that when you let yourself breathe, the music you love can breathe too.
The best way I know for cutting stress in your practicing is to give yourself time to breathe before you even touch the instrument. This is Step Two of the Art of Practicing: Settle down in your environment.
The exact technique for doing this is described in Chapter 4 of my book, The Art of Practicing: “Settling In”. It will help you remove stress from your body and mind when you’re about to approach the music you love, so you can give it your best.
Like so many of my students, you might be astonished at the difference it makes.
I’d love to hear what you discover from doing this simple, powerful, essential practice.
Warmly,
