The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 044 Sarah Whitney: Thriving Through Injury

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 44. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now, your host, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope you're doing great today. I'm really happy to bring you violinist Sarah Whitney to talk about a very important topic, which is dealing with injuries as a musician. Sarah is a celebrated performer, teacher, entrepreneur, career coach, and musical maverick. Praised by the Washington Post for her marvelous violin acrobatics, she's appeared on stages as a soloist and collaborative artist throughout the world.

Starting point is 00:00:58 comfortable in the wide range of settings and musical styles she's fearlessly dedicated to bringing fresh new ideas to classical music and empowering musicians to find their own voice sarah's a founding member of the acclaimed string quintet sybarit 5 which won several awards and continues to perform extensively around north america and she also founded beyond the notes an innovative concert series dedicated to breaking down the barriers between performers and the audience. Sarah's writing is featured regularly in Strings Magazine and 21cm.org, and her widely read blog, The Productive Musician, focuses on health and wellness, productivity, and strategies for developing and maintaining an effective mindset. Currently based in New York City,

Starting point is 00:01:45 Sarah holds degrees from the University of Michigan and the Cleveland Institute of Music. In our conversation, Sarah talks about her experience dealing with a serious injury and how she overcame it both physically and mentally. And we also discuss how helpful professional career guidance is for musicians. There's a lot of great information and insight in this show, so don't be afraid to take some notes. And both Sarah and I would love to keep the conversation going. So let us know that you're listening by taking a screenshot of your favorite moment

Starting point is 00:02:18 and sharing it on Instagram. And don't forget to tag us. I'm Mind Over Finger and she's Sarah Whitney is tall. Let's go to the show. Sarah Whitney, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Oh, thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Sarah, from an outsider's perspective, you have what seems to be a wonderfully fulfilling

Starting point is 00:02:52 career, I could say. you perform as a soloist and you play a lot of chamber music, touring, guiding young musicians in their career. But there were some challenging times, I believe, in regards to injuries that profoundly affected your trajectory. And we're going to discuss that more in length today. But before we get to that, I'd love for the listeners to get to know you better. So can you tell us a little bit more about you and how your musical path has unfolded? Absolutely. Well, I guess I'll start from the very beginning. In a nutshell, I guess. I started when I was four years old, and both my parents played the violin. Not professionally, but it was

Starting point is 00:03:36 something they loved to do. It's actually how they met. And so I was in a musical family from a young age and started the violin very, very young. And growing up, music was always a really big part of my life. I grew up outside of Boston and, you know, at a young age, I was sort of, I was traveling into the city to study at the prep schools at NEC and BU. And so I kind of grew up with it being a big priority. But, you know, it's funny, I was actually just talking to someone about, you know, someone asked me, well, when did you know you were going to be a violinist? When did you know you were going to kind of take this to a professional level? And I think my story is, I don't know if it's unique, but, um, you know, I didn't really grow up with this kind of one

Starting point is 00:04:22 track mind thinking that I was going to be a professional violinist. I knew that it was a important part of my life and something I love doing, but I had a lot of different interests. And I think, you know, looking back, that sort of, um, is reflected in the way I've created my career now, but, um, yeah, there kind of just came a time where college, college discussions were happening and the prospect of studying violin profession or studying violin in school came up and it kind of seemed like a good fit so it sort of just happened organically and um then I you know ended up going to the University of Michigan for my undergraduate and on to Cleveland Institute of Music for two graduate degrees so that's kind of like the nuts

Starting point is 00:05:05 and bolts of you know my training and I think um I guess why I chose the career in music I think you know I mentioned it it felt very organic to me I loved performing I loved connecting with people um it was a way that I could really kind of express myself and uh maybe it's like for me too where it's a universe where you feel comfortable and yeah becomes a part of us as we grow. Absolutely. And I think, you know, some of my earliest memories as a young musician, some of the most, the ones that affected me the most were, I used to go to this camp called Kinhaven, which is in Vermont. And I remember so distinctly going there and being in that community of young musicians. It was kind of a unique situation just to be surrounded by all these

Starting point is 00:05:54 people who are as serious as music as I was. And just the, like, it was so amazing. The people I met the community was incredible and it was just kind of like this oasis you know and I think you know looking back that was something that really affected me especially when it was you know time to think about like what I want to do professionally I really wanted to be in that world um yeah and Sarah as I mentioned earlier I I think it's really important for many people to hear your story because you have a very interesting one about injuries and it's a message that has to be spread and it's a conversation that everyone has to feel comfortable having because it I don't think it's as much of a taboo as it used to be there's more openness about injuries

Starting point is 00:06:45 for musicians at the moment but there's still somewhat of a stigma attached to it I think And I really believe that hearing your story can help those who are going through it right now and hopefully prevent many others from having to deal with an injury by raising their awareness about injury prevention. So can you talk to us about that a little bit? Can we dive into the details of maybe what you struggled with and how it affected and maybe changed you and how you coped with it and came out stronger? Everything. let's hear the whole story absolutely I mean I really couldn't agree more with you Renee that we really need to kind of build our awareness around this idea of musicians injuries and a statistic that you know I recently came across was something like it said that 75% of all

Starting point is 00:07:37 instrumentalists have either had an injury or experienced pain when playing and that number just really affected me but it also just kind of made it seem so obvious that if the number is so high. We need to be having these conversations. It's, you know, it's kind of just part of our lives as musicians that many of us are going to experience. And it's so important to, you know, kind of talk about these things. It's really the only way we can help one another. And I think one thing that I, you know, I talk about the parallel between musicians and athletes all the time. And, you know, basically I believe that musicians are athletes and I look at the athletic world and everybody kind of understands that athletes will get injured, right? That's a very

Starting point is 00:08:25 kind of universal, um, just, it's just known that athletes will get injured and you watch a game and you see there's physical therapists on the sideline, there's massage therapists, there's, you know, all this kind of support there. And it's just a part of what they have. And it's known to everyone it's not seen as weird or kind of unusual it's just a part of what they do and you know an athlete gets injured we hear about it and we know that they'll take you know some time off maybe a month or a week or whatever it is and then they'll come back most of the time and I mean it's accepted athletes injuries are it's accepted it's absolutely accepted and I mean I'm not in the athletic world so I'm sure it's more complicated than that but just kind of like

Starting point is 00:09:08 that. I love to use that model. And my dream is that we could kind of, you know, apply that to the music world. And it's just something that a lot of people will deal with. Um, there's resources and I think they could be more kind of widely known and, you know, brought into schools and institutions and, and organizations. But I, you know, I really think that it's just, it's a part of what we do. We are athletes. We use our bodies. We use our muscles and, um, you know, we use our muscles repetitively for hours, just like athletes do. I mean, it's such a, it's such an obvious parallel to me. Um, so I'm really, yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. I think that it's so important for us to have these conversations and, um, you know, I'd love

Starting point is 00:09:54 to share my story. Um, so basically what happened to me, it was about seven years ago and my injury actually didn't come from playing the violin, believe it or not. I was actually working on an arranging project for my string quintet, Sybarite 5. And we kind of do, Sybarite plays all different types of genres and there's not a lot of repertoire written for us. So one of the things we get to do is create our own repertoire and create our own arrangements. And I was actually working on an arrangement of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. Oh, nice. I don't know if the listeners will, some of you may know, but, um, I was, you know, a child growing up in the nineties. So, um, it was, uh, under the bridge actually, which was one of my favorite songs.

Starting point is 00:10:39 And it's such a good song. I know it's so good. Still good today. It's still good. Um, and I was spending hours and hours at the computer arranging this piece and I was really excited about it. I was really, you know, I just was, had this vision of this really great arrangement that I was going to make. And I started kind of experiencing some pain in my thumbs. And kind of my backstory is that I experienced a lot of injuries growing up as a, you know, in high school and in college and sort of, you know, I'd seen physical therapists. I had gotten familiar with kind of stretching and heating and icing and kind of ways to maintain things. So I kind of, you know, when I started to have the pain, I said, all right, I got this.

Starting point is 00:11:20 I'll just ice my hands later. No big deal. I was pretty, I was overconfident with kind of my ability to manage different pain. So I kind of pushed through, I just wanted to get it done. And unfortunately this was like an injury I'd never experienced in the heating and the icing, none of it helped. And so it was a really scary time. And I think, um, this was also a really interesting time in my career. My quintet separate five had recently won the concert artist guild competition just a few months before this happened so we were newly in the spotlight um a lot of people were kind of keeping an eye on us seeing what we were doing so there's a lot of pressure on us and and me you know to to be playing at a high level and kind of we were the

Starting point is 00:12:04 new the new group that everyone was kind of noticing and talking about so it was a really challenging time you know we were doing some concerts and I was struggling with how to manage this all um and the pain inevitably did affect my playing you know there's no way around that and so I guess I'm trying to think the best way to you know I could go into super detail but I'll try and kind of summarize some more things so I tried to manage it on my own I saw some massage therapists I saw musician specific doctors I was very kind of wary of seeing just a general medical doctor because I'd had an experience years prior where a doctor basically just said to me oh you just need to learn how to play your instrument differently and you'll be fine and it was kind

Starting point is 00:12:50 of a useless piece of information to tell a musician so I was a little wary of seeing people who didn't really understand what I did as an artist and some of these people did help me but nothing really nothing really kind of got to the bottom of it and I to be honest didn't actually know exactly what was wrong. I hadn't seen a medical doctor who could diagnose me and say, this is what's wrong. This is exactly your problem. So this went on for actually a couple of years. But believe it or not, I kind of managed things, but things got so bad to a point where I really couldn't use my hands. I mean, you think about your thumb joints and that's something we kind of use for just about everything from, you know, washing dishes to turning doorknobs,

Starting point is 00:13:35 to getting dressed in the morning to, you know, and, and computer writing emails, anything on my phone, touchscreen was really hard for me on a phone or iPad. So I also had lots of physical limitations in my life. Um, so I, it was a really hard time. And I think, um, I remember, you know, some of those really intense times of being really kind of in a pretty dark place. I didn't really think anything was possible. I didn't know how to get out of it. And I didn't really know what was helping me. Um, and I wasn't really telling people about it. You know, I knew that Sybarite was doing well. I didn't want to hold them back. I did not want to kind of hold back our success and be the person that, you know, said, I can't do this. So basically I did keep playing. I could

Starting point is 00:14:23 play, but I was kind of hanging on by a bare thread and I basically canceled all of my other gigs, just did the Siberite ones. But my, you know, my mindset and the way I was in those rehearsals and on those, on the concert stages, I was a wreck. I mean, I was scared to play. I didn't know what was going to happen on stage. I didn't know if my hands were going to hurt, how things were going to feel like all of a sudden things felt different. I mean, I was, gosh, how old was I? I mean, it was my late twenties. I've been playing for, you know, 25 years and things were feeling different for the first time, it was the most terrifying experience. And, um, so I developed a lot of kind of tense performance anxiety and just kind of the whole, everything

Starting point is 00:15:03 around performing became very scary because I felt like I didn't have any control of what was happening. Um, and you know, but now we'll kind of move on to what helped me. You know, there was a time where the formula of kind of seeing a physical therapist and, you know, getting exercises and that helping was something that seemed very obvious to me. And I did eventually see a medical doctor who, um, worked with musicians. And I ended up with Carol Johnson, who is an incredible physical therapist that works with musicians. And she really, they were able to identify exactly what was wrong. Basically I am double jointed and my thumb joints were coming in and out of alignment. And when I was using the computer, I was, it was kind of like a repetitive motion.

Starting point is 00:15:51 You know, using those thumb joints over and over again in the incorrect position is what created the problem. And obviously, as I was continuing to use my thumb joints, they were, they would come in and out of alignment and they'd been irritated. And that's basically what created the pain. So she was able to kind of pinpoint exactly what was wrong, which was great. And I had physical therapy exercises I kind of had a plan and so that was I guess I was like I think that was about two two years maybe after the actual incident and I kind of said great great this is it I'm gonna just do the physical therapy and be fine you know give myself six weeks two months whatever it was but I found that even though the pain was actually getting a little

Starting point is 00:16:33 better my like my mind was in this terrible place I just kind of I didn't think I could play my violin anymore. I felt like I had lost my ability and it was really scary. Everything was scary. And I had lost my confidence as a player. And I think, um, what ended up helping me the most is I had this kind of realization. I was talking to a friend who was really into like meditation and mindfulness, which at the time I kind of just saw as this like extra thing to do. And he mentioned, he said, you know, have you ever thought about meditation or, you know, these practices? And I kind of scoffed and said, that's no, like why? Like my hands hurt. Like that doesn't, what does that have to do with anything? And he just, you know, he didn't really push it. He said, well,

Starting point is 00:17:21 okay, just, you know, maybe I'll just encourage you to just go read about it. Go get a book about it. Just go learn, you learn and you decide. And that's exactly what I did. I was so desperate. And I said, okay, fine. I'll go learn about meditation, whatever. But I, I started to learn about the mind and how much power we have over our mind and, um, essentially kind of making this connection that I had been taking care of the physical side of my injury, but I hadn't been taking care of the mental side and then realizing, you know, the connection between the anxiety I had and how meditation could help that. And I kind of got, I started to learn about, you know, how do I take care of my mind? I'd gone through a really traumatic event and my mind couldn't

Starting point is 00:18:05 really process what was happening. Um, so what do you do when you need to take care of your mind? Well, you go to a psychologist. Um, and so that's, that's when I really started to address the mental side of, of what was happening. And finally, I think that was the turning point when I was actually really able to see progress and kind of, you know, be on a route to recovery because the mind body connection is undeniably really powerful. And there was definitely a physical element undoubtedly, but I, my brain was in such a terrifying place of just, you know, I didn't think I could play anymore. I didn't think I could make progress. I didn't really kind of see any way out. And so I was in this cycle. And so until I was able to get out of that

Starting point is 00:18:53 cycle and sort of, you know, address the anxiety and all the things in my brain, I wasn't really able to recover. So yeah, that was, you know, that's, that's the story. You know, you, you bring up so many important points, but even that last one that you mentioned, what happens to our body affects us mentally as well and we also have to tend to that aspect and you know talking to a psychologist let's talk about another taboo right here you know and it's so true i'm so glad you mentioned that yeah and i think um you know one thing that i i learned from all of this work i went from you know i had a couple psychologists at the beginning actually and then i i ended up working with a musician's career coach, I guess she does. Um, she, uh, Dana Fontenou, who is

Starting point is 00:19:46 absolutely amazing and sincerely, she sincerely changed my life. Um, she was a professional cellist. She went to school for cello, studied professionally, was in a string quartet, and then had this vision of kind of helping musicians, um, uh, with the mental side of their struggles. And so she went to get her license. Um, she's a licensed psychologist and now has developed this really amazing practice helping musicians in all ways I mean people that are injured but also just people that have struggles in their careers in other ways as well and through the work I did with the psychologist and with her also made me realize that these tools I was learning that helped me come out of this kind of dark place in relation

Starting point is 00:20:30 to my injury also helped me in all areas of my life and understanding the power of the mind and that we have a lot more control than we think. Just, I mean, that is a concept that just, you know, still to this day kind of blows my mind, but, um, that we really do have a lot of control and a lot of power. And, you know, it's, it's obviously takes skills and guidance and resources to understand and you, you know, have to be open to really this information and this way of thinking. Um, but it's not, you know, it's more than a way of thinking. There's lots of science that backs this up as well too. And, um, it's just, you know, it's really, it's really incredible. And, you know, I tell this to, you know, my client, I work with a lot of, I work with a lot

Starting point is 00:21:18 of musicians now and I tell this to my clients. I say, you know, my favorite part about this is that it's free, like these resources. I mean, you think about musicians, you know, oh gosh my violin's not good enough I need to go buy another violin or I need to you know go um take lessons with this person I mean yes those are things we have to tackle and we have to do but but with this work you know there are lots of resources out there and people that can guide you and we we all have the ability to do this yes and that just is like I mean gosh I want to like frame that and just like put it everywhere we really all do have the ability and that is you know and so I'm just really fascinated by this subject now and I'm you know passionate about

Starting point is 00:21:59 sharing and teaching it to as many musicians as I can it's so true I mean even just having the fears that you were mentioning earlier when you pick up the instrument and you have a mental fear either in regards to fear of feeling pain or um you know it's it's such a complex web of emotion but that translate into physical tension which really does not help with the recovery You know, I think that we can learn so many lessons from what you just said. It's don't ignore the signals and you have to be very proactive in finding solutions and we have to take the recovery seriously. It's really not a small thing to overcome an injury, but I'm so happy you also mentioned the aspect of really making sure that we are attending to what's happening mentally. yeah I mean I think I think that actually the mental part of my recovery was much larger than

Starting point is 00:22:59 the physical part and and I guess you know as I'm talking I'm realizing I say this word recovery I mean yes it was a recovery but it's sort of like a practice it's something that I continue to do today so it's not necessarily that I I guess you know I didn't recover and then it was like okay I'm recovered. I'm done. I mean, not really. I mean, it's, it's kind of like an ongoing thing that I've incorporated into my life. And, um, you know, as far as my, the physical part of my hands, I mean, they're much better. Do I experience pain sometimes? Yes, absolutely. I think I had to kind of make a lifestyle change. And for me, because of the mechanics of my body and being double jointed, it wasn't quite like just a muscle healing and then it being done.

Starting point is 00:23:40 It is something I've had to learn about and strengthen and, you know, kind of deal with, but yeah, I experienced things occasionally, but, um, but the mental practices, it's just kind of a way of my life now and how I approach things. So it's kind of an ongoing thing and it probably will be forever, you know? So many things that you say I resonate with, because I think, I mean, I'm not the guest of the podcast, but I had two very significant brush with injuries. And the first one was my freshman year in college when you get to college and all of a sudden you're playing violin all the time and you're very eager and i was just um i was still doing competitions at the time and i was just being very stupid i would walk into school uh you know at 8 a.m and

Starting point is 00:24:29 think oh i'll just run through tchaikovsky concerto before my nine o'clock class no warm-up whatsoever and just playing difficult stuff in orchestra and then chamber music and and all of that stuff and I just got a really really bad tendonitis from overuse early on in the semester but thankfully my teacher was really smart about it so right away he was sending me to all sorts of doctors and you know thanks to the Canadian system all of this was free so you don't have to worry you just go And so, you know, physical therapist, all that good stuff. But basically, really was caught on to the importance of warming up. And that was very, very important. And the other thing I really discovered, I think that was probably my first time really seeing the powers of mental practice, because he and I wanted to get started on the Shostakovich first concerto. And for two to three months, I barely played the violin while I was recovering, but we talked about the piece. I read about the piece. I looked at the score. We looked at fingerings. I would play the part in my head and then slowly as I recovered and started to play the piece very slowly, I just learned that piece in a way that was so different than I had ever done before. And just, it felt so, I felt like I really knew the piece before I started it.

Starting point is 00:26:02 So for me, that was extremely powerful. But the second injury I had was shortly after the birth of my son, where I got something called the de Courvin tenosynovitis. And I'm not even sure I'm saying that word correctly in English. This was all in French. And that was just a very devastating injury. I had a lot of concerts at the time and I could not move my thumb. I was in so much pain. And going into the mental aspect that you were talking about, you know, you have all of these hormones, you just had a baby, new life adjusting. and this physical injury deeply deeply affected my mental state and I was lucky enough to have a physical therapist who was so wonderful and really helped me through this physical and mental difficult time and it was really really instrumental but once again I really took the recovery seriously

Starting point is 00:27:04 I did everything that she said all of the exercise she said to not play for six weeks I did not play for six weeks and i just was really trying to be mindful of of this recovery process and respect the limitations of my body and um really took seriously as well what you mentioned to be kind to myself and also at the time i was meditating and by then i couldn't do yoga anymore you can't use your can't use your hand i couldn't i couldn't use my hand but the meditation was really helping And I know that for me throughout the years, what has really helped is staying physically fit, you know, yoga, weightlifting, having core strength, all of these things, massage, acupuncture, but warming up is like the daily, the daily gymnastic of, of preventing injuries. But I'm sorry, I'm taking over here. Oh, no worries. But I think there's so many amazing things you said. I mean, I'm going to go back to the athlete reference from musicians, this idea of warming up. I mean, that's also something in the athletic world that is just known. We all kind of know that. And I think it's just such a great parallel to make the musician world. Same thing. You have to warm up your body, get your muscles warm and limber before you put them to hard work. And I think, you know, that is a concept that is so important. And I think even, you know, now, as I'm in my career, and I'm touring a lot, and I'm busy, I don't have, you know, I'll have those days at school when I can practice all day. But, you know, my warm up is hands down the most important thing.

Starting point is 00:28:48 If I only have an hour to practice before a concert or whatever it is, you know, I will always do the warmup. You know, I've learned that the warmup is actually even more important than say like running over those passages or whatever, and that the warmup gets my body in a place where it can execute what I want to do in the best way. so that has been a really kind of a really important thing I've learned and took me a while to get there but you know just being disciplined if I only have that time taking a 30-minute warm-up is the best thing I can do for myself what does that look like that warm-up gosh well it it changes but um you know I I actually um when I practice I I set a lot of timers and especially with my warm-ups I try and like make sure I get through a lot of things and recently what I've been doing is I kind of will plan my warm-up in like five minute chunks and right now I kind of I'm cycling through you know I'll start with just like long tones and

Starting point is 00:29:54 just kind of like that's always the first thing I do and then I'll cycle through like Shradiak I'll find you know a shifting I guess a subject shifting and sometimes actually I'll just pick a shift from like a piece I'm working on and I'll find the correlating, the exercise that, um, corresponds or that, what am I trying to say? An exercise that, you know, has that same shift and I'll just use it as my warmup. Um, also the subject, what is it? The 40, oh gosh, I should get my iPad out. It's like the four, it's like, I have it on my iPad and, um, it's like the 40, um opus 40 oh gosh well anyway and and i'm the other violinist that also doesn't know the opus number well my ipad is dead so i can't get it but um anyway it's opus 40 i think um and i guess i

Starting point is 00:30:58 never look at the cover because it's on my ipad um so that cycles in i'll do vibrato exercises exercises um I've started trying to do thirds and octaves which is like pulling teeth for me but my god like it it's really helpful and actually something else I've been trying to incorporate into my warm-ups is um I've also studied jazz violin and it's you know I I'm an improviser and it's something I'm constantly trying to work on and I try and incorporate that as well to kind of just change it up it gets my mind into a different place and you know I have some exercises I can put on um i have an app on my phone that'll play chords for me and i can practice you know improvising or doing certain exercises leading through those chord changes to kind of just reinforce my knowledge of

Starting point is 00:31:40 the chords and how they relate to one another so that's something i try and do um but i think i always try and kind of set a goal for the warm-up and one thing that i've been working on a lot that i have to constantly work on actually is the release of tension um that's one thing that happened when I was injured I developed a lot of tension and I think that was related to my anxiety around everything that was happening but that was a something that I had to spend a and I still have to spend a lot of time kind of undoing um so I'll set an intention like just really noticing the way my fingers are dropping on the string with every part of the warm-up I'm doing um so I try and set like a greater intention for that time and that's kind of been the one I've been doing most recently

Starting point is 00:32:22 um yeah so that's sort of what my warm-up looks like and I actually I'll write it down I'll make a plan like I'll you know write down I'm going to do these things and I might set a I'll set a timer for five minutes just keeps me on track and when I'm actually practicing I don't have to think about what I'm going to do next I kind of just look at my list I go okay finish that move on to this and it takes out some of that kind of um it just allows me to execute in that way so I love how you were talking about intention and planning it ahead of time and you know one thing you mentioned earlier is how important um these people in your life you talked about dana fontenot which i should have on the podcast actually because i love her work oh my gosh yes she's amazing and i know that

Starting point is 00:33:06 you also do productivity in career coaching for musicians right now correct do you want to talk to us a little bit about that yeah well you know one of the things that came out of this my my journey through recovery was, um, you know, in learning about mindset and the way the mind works, I've also developed a real fascination for productivity and how we achieve things and kind of the science behind everything. Um, which is all, you know, to me, understanding how the science work, it sort of gives us tools, you know, and kind of, it's, it's kind of changed a lot of the beliefs I had about how to get the most practice done or how to, you know, get the best work done. And, and I juggle a lot of different things in my career. I mean, I'm in a touring

Starting point is 00:33:48 ensemble, I run a concert series, I'm a music director for Lincoln Center Stage, and I have like tons of things going on. So I've really had to be to learn to be strategic with how I manage all of them. So yeah, I mean, I do I work with a lot of musicians. I call it productivity consulting and career coaching. And basically, it, it has a lot of different. It's a lot of different things I work on with musicians, one of them kind of is sort of helping musicians kind of take the driver's seat of their career and looking at how we kind of look at what we're doing. How do we execute things? You know, how do we get things done? What makes us get something done? How do we get something done in the most effective way or, you know, getting out of our comfort zone? When do we

Starting point is 00:34:32 do that? Why do we do that? How do we do that? Sort of along these lines of being able to do the things we want to do. You know, if we have a goal of say, recording an album or collaborating with a certain musician, like how do we get there? How do we kind of take control, take the driver's seat and say, I want to do this. Um, and this is how I'm going to get there. So that's something I work with musicians a lot on. And I also work with a lot of musicians who are injured. Um, I was just, you know, recently talking to a client who sort of has a similar injury to what I had actually. And I work with them. We talk just a lot about what's going on, ways to get through the injury, the mental side and the physical side a little bit. But generally, I focus more on the

Starting point is 00:35:16 mental side with the musicians and different tactics that you can take, really easy things to do to make sure you're in a good headspace through the recovery so that you can see possibility in your career, that you can see past what you're going through. And also a really big one for me and I think this was one of the biggest turning points for me and my injury was actually being able to kind of let go of the resentment of being injured I resented so much being injured I was so angry why did this happen why did this happen at a time in my career when my quintet had just won this big competition you know it was kind of like why like things were going so well like why did this happen and that was a like a very real thought to me for a long time and I

Starting point is 00:35:59 think what I had to do was kind of let go of that and and turn it kind of you know look at what had happened to me as a learning experience and now I can I can look back on my experience and and honestly I'm really grateful for the experience that I had because it's taught me so much and in essence helped me shaped my career now and where I am and now I'm able to help musicians in this way. And it's a big part of my, you know, my career. So I was able to kind of turn that around and really see how those experiences helped me. And I've actually, you know, helped my career, helped me get to where I am. And that was hard. I mean, I'll tell you what the first time that my coach said to me, mentioned that idea of like, well, why are you grateful for your injury?

Starting point is 00:36:45 I nearly screamed. I mean, I was so like, how dare you? How could you? How could you say that to me? You know, I'm going through, this is such a hard time. How could you even ask me to think about like why this is good? But, um, and it was a concept that took me a while to really wrap my brain around. But once I did, it really kind of opened me up. Um, and I think it opened my mind up to really being able to move forward and move on, um, past, you know, those times. So, yeah, so I work with a lot of musicians doing a lot of those things, a lot of the things that I did that helped me get through my recovery. And I think it's so important and I think we should all seek out for coachings like this. It could benefit so much from that objective and outside perspective, like, you know, and we invest so much money in our instrumental training and we're often resistant to make like the smallest investment in coaching for our own life and careers. And I think that it's really something we could all benefit from. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, every coach that I've worked with has a coach and that's something I've learned, you know, it's, it's not like, oh, you get a coach and then you're done.

Starting point is 00:37:56 I have a coach right now. And, um, it's like a constant learning process and it's just kind of, I mean, there's so many benefits to it, but one thing that I think I've learned is it's really helped me take action on things. And, you know, I am very good at living in my comfort zone. I think all of us are, right? But having that outside perspective to not only help me identify when I'm kind of living in that comfort zone and just kind of staying, you know, because in our comfort zone, that's not the place where we're going to really grow and make the, you know, like those strides forward. Like we're going to stay where we are in order to kind of grow and really, you know, get to the next level. We have to get out of, out of our comfort zone.

Starting point is 00:38:42 There's just no way around it. And ultimately that's when we're going to learn the most, you know, we're going to learn from things that go well. We're going to learn from things that don't go well, but, um, and all of that's really important, but that's one thing with having, you know, the various coaches I've worked with is, is it's about taking action and really, you know, it's kind of like a muscle. Like the more you get out of your comfort zone, the easier it is to do. I mean, it's never like the easiest thing in the entire world, but that's where you're

Starting point is 00:39:09 able to kind of do those things, like have those goals and actually take the steps to reach them. And it's just such a powerful to have that outside perspective and, and guidance is, it's not, you know, it's not that there's, there's nothing wrong with having guidance and having help. I mean, I think one thing I work with my clients on, and I also, in the productivity, you know, consulting and the work I do, a lot of it is kind of straight up business coaching and career coaching. Everybody is working with a coach. You know, if you look at the business world, people are working with people above them.

Starting point is 00:39:47 And just this idea that really an amazing way to get knowledge is, you know, having guidance. Yes. Like, you know, we all had teachers in school. and that doesn't need to stop and it's exactly what you said it's growing out of the comfort zone which is what our our violin teacher our piano teachers do all the time they take us out of our comfort zone onto the next skill onto the next level of playing and that's what we need to do in our daily life and it's so important i think to reach out for advice yes from loved ones from spouses, from parents and teachers, but these people are emotionally involved in our lives.

Starting point is 00:40:29 So to get that outside opinion of someone who is detached and see things from a very objective point of view is very important. I agree with you. Yeah. And I think one thing that I tell people a lot is that, you know, all these skills can be learned. And I've had clients who say, well, I'm just, I'm not good at networking or I just, I'm not good at the business side. I just don't know. I just want to, you know, but all of these skills can be learned, you know, just like we learned our instruments. That was, we all have the ability to learn. And I think it's, you know, some of it is kind of making the connection between, I mean, it goes without saying we need to play our instrument at a high level. I mean,

Starting point is 00:41:13 that goes without saying I will, you know, of course, but being able to make the connection between being that good player and then actually being able to perform where you want or create the things that you want. The connection needs to be made there. And, you know, so if you're a great player and no one knows who you are, what good does that do? You know, so understanding the way the business works, how do you become visible? How do you market yourself? How do you, you know, reach out to those people you really want to collaborate with? How do you make those connections so that you can actually do those things you want to do, perform those places you want to perform? And that's where a lot of these skills come into play. So I try and always bring it back to, you know, yes, we have to play our instruments at a high level, but if that's the only thing we're doing, you know, we have to, what do we want to do with that? You know, we don't learn our instruments, spend so much time doing this just so we can play in our practice room all day. You know, there's another component to what we want to do as artists.

Starting point is 00:42:09 Absolutely. Sarah, I really look forward to us having a chance to talk again. But for now, how about a round of rapid fire questions? Absolutely. Bring it on. What's your favorite tool in the practice room and why? Ooh, well, I sort of mentioned this a little bit, but, um, my timer is a really, is one of my favorite tools. I set a lot of timers and I think actually, you know, one thing that took me a while to understand is this idea of planning before I practice. And that actually, when I plan, it saves me time in the practice room. And, and that was a concept that was really hard for me to understand. I mean, if I only have an hour and I spent 10 minutes planning, you know, it could be,

Starting point is 00:42:53 well, I'm losing that 10 minutes of practice. But what I've learned is when I plan out what I want to do, what do I want to get accomplished today? And also realistically, what can I get accomplished? I mean, am I going to get through an entire concerto in an hour? Probably not, you know? And when I, every time I plan my practice, I sit down, I write down, you know, the things I need to get done. Inevitably, I always get more done every single time. And sometimes that involves me actually setting timers and saying, I'm going to, you know, if it's just kind of nitty gritty technical work, I might take little passages and say, all right, I'm going to spend five minutes on this five minutes on this five minutes on this five minutes on this. And then I'll do what I call

Starting point is 00:43:28 that a practice loop. And I'll do that. And then I'll come back and do it again. So I would say timer and planning. So that's two things. I hope that's okay. Perfect. It's a twofer. Yes. For the young musicians out there who are maybe dreaming, or considering a career that resemble yours. Can you tell us a little bit about what your life looks like? Sure. So kind of from a logistical standpoint right now, I'm, I'm touring about 30 to 40% of the year. So I'm on the road a lot. Um, so that's a big part of, of what I'm doing. Um, and then I think, you know, if you think about my day to day life, I mean, it's, it's a combination of practicing obviously, but there's a lot of admin, a lot of admin and kind of managing. Um, and you know, I manage a concert

Starting point is 00:44:19 series. I have a blog, I have a lot of things that are going on, but I guess it involves a lot of discipline. So I had to be very disciplined with my time. Um, and I spent a lot of time planning. I spent a lot of time kind of, um, organizing things. Um, so yeah, I don't know if that really answers your question, I guess. Um, but like, I guess the typical week in New York, which is, um, right now I'm in New York and I, you know, I have a day like this morning, I have this interview and then I have a chunk of time where I'm going to have to do some admin. Then I go coach for a couple hours and then I have the evening free. I might play my violin for a little while. I actually would love to play my violin for a little while. Um, but,

Starting point is 00:45:00 but then, you know, like coming up tomorrow, I have a bunch of phone calls in the day. I have a chunk of time where I'm going to practice. And then, um, and then another day I might have one rehearsal um and then some more time where I have to do admin I mean it's it varies it varies a lot but it's a combination I mean it's a very I do a lot of admin I mean that's a huge part of what I have to do in order to keep things going um so it's a balance I guess does that answer your question absolutely it covers so many things you know that you're talking about good habits of planning and being disciplined and you know you mentioned also several skills that is I think it's very important for all the musicians to develop so that's great how about a piece of

Starting point is 00:45:47 advice that was given to you that you would like to pass on to the listeners one thing that has really helped me and it's some advice that that I was given um is actually the ability to ask for things and actually the ability to ask for advice. Um, I think that I'm, you know, I'm, I can be stubborn at times and kind of think I can figure it out or, you know, I got this, I'll figure it out. Um, and sometimes I can, and there's nothing wrong with that, but just the ability to reach out to people is really, is really important. And I think one thing that I've learned is that everyone loves to be asked for advice. Everyone. I mean, you know, you ask someone for advice, you're basically telling them, I think you have knowledge that is valuable that

Starting point is 00:46:32 I want. I mean, that's great. Everyone loves that. So I think, um, you know, the ability to reach out to people and also that, you know, when you're asking someone for advice, I used to get this feeling of like, Oh gosh, I don't want to bother them. They don't have time or they don't want to, you know, but the thing is you're asking, you know, they, they can choose to give it to you or not. Maybe they have time, maybe they don't. And I think, um, that's one thing that I had to kind of learn. I don't kind of create these scenarios. Oh, they, they don't have time to talk. They don't want to talk to me, but really you don't know. And it's a really powerful way to expand your network, but also get information. It can shorten your process a lot. If you could

Starting point is 00:47:13 talk to someone who's already done what you're trying to do and figure out the things that worked and didn't work. Um, it's, it's such a powerful tool. And, um, and also one thing I'll add actually that I love is that if you need something like say you're raising money or you are looking for a venue or a house concert or someone to lend their house to host a concert or something, um, a great tactic is if you have people you think could help you that are interested and supporting you. A direct ask may not feel right, depending on your relationship with them, but an indirect ask, which is a very powerful way to do something is say, hey, I'm raising money for the album that I'm creating and all these things. Do you know anyone that could help me? And

Starting point is 00:48:00 that's a really powerful way to kind of approach someone that you may not feel comfortable asking right out. And that's, you know, because first of all, they might say, well, yeah, like I, I would like to, they could say that. And of course they can recommend people. Um, and people always love to get asked for advice or, you know, to recommend things. So that's just like a little, another side note on the asking portion. That is really helpful for me. That's really great. How about a quick actionable tip that listeners could implement today in their musical lives actionable tip gosh we've talked about so many of them um well I think you know one thing that I think is really important is being able to recognize the things that are working

Starting point is 00:48:47 in order to kind of be able to see our progress I think as musicians we're so highly trained to be very critical of what we're doing in the practice room and that's a it's a great skill to have. It's one of the reasons, you know, we can succeed and, you know, get to this high level as being very critical of what we're doing, analyzing and making things better. But something I've also noticed with musicians is that sometimes we don't recognize what is working and that when we do make progress. And I think for us to build the confidence in moving forward, we need to take time to recognize what is working. And actually, I've worked with certain people that actually track this. And I used to track this, I'd write it down, you know, kind of keeping track of things

Starting point is 00:49:33 that are working in my life, things that I have accomplished, I actually just wrote, I think it was an Instagram post about this, where I had played, like, I was just on tour last week, I played a bunch of concerts, I had three concerts of entirely different music. And it was, it was great. It was amazing. But a lot of my admin stuff kind of fell behind, I fell behind. And I was talking to a friend and I was like oh gosh I have so much to do so much to catch up on like my blog and I was just going on and on and he said Sarah didn't you just play like three concerts of different repertoire like in the last five days and I was like oh yeah you're right I did and I hadn't given myself time to say that's a big accomplishment and as soon as I just was able

Starting point is 00:50:17 to sit with that and say oh yeah then I my stress level lowered and I was able to kind of not be so worried about the other things. Cause I was able to say, yeah, I accomplished something I did. And do I have more to do? Yeah. But I think also the way our brain works, you know, when we acknowledge we've reached a goal, we kind of, we get like a dopamine hit and it's a good feeling, right. And that helps us build confidence to then accomplish more. So I guess like a tactile thing might be actually just tracking. Um, I actually take time every day to write down things I've accomplished um i do it in the morning usually actually so i'm looking back at the previous day but um or you can do it weekly to just really take time to write down things that you've done

Starting point is 00:50:59 they can be small they can be big but i think it's a good practice because that helps us build confidence to keep the momentum going oh that's really great sarah you mentioned separate five and you have so many wonderful things going on you wear many hats what are some projects you coming out that you're looking forward to? Sure. Well, um, yes. So Sybarite, we have an album coming out. Um, I think it's going to be, I'll say in the next few months, I don't exactly know the date, but I'll just say it that way. Um, because album releases can change. Um, but yeah, we have an album coming out. It's, it's really cool. Actually. It's a live album of, um, a compilation of a bunch of concerts we did last year. Um, so that is happening, which is really

Starting point is 00:51:49 exciting. Um, and I guess just kind of on a smaller note, even just this week, I'm actually about to post a new blog post, which I'm excited about. Um, I have a blog called the productive musician and that's a project that's kind of ongoing, but something I'm starting to put a lot more time into, um, that should be coming out this week. And, um, yeah, those are two things I'm excited about. Oh, that sounds great. And I'm going to put links in the show note to all that good stuff. Great. Yeah. Oh, actually, can I mention one more thing I'm excited about? Absolutely. I have a string trio actually with the two girls in Sybarite called Trifecta, and we are doing some New York shows coming up. And that's a project I'm really excited about.

Starting point is 00:52:30 Trio repertoire is really fun. And it's kind of an avenue I've been excited about exploring. So that's a concert coming up that I'm really, really excited about coming up. We're called trifecta sounds great sarah thank you so much for this wonderful insight and wisdom i really really appreciate this gift of your time today well thank you thank you so much for having me i really i really love what you're doing and the conversations you're having so i think it's a really important thing for us as musicians to keep doing and building awareness around a lot of the things we talked about today oh thank you thank you guys so much for listening i hope you enjoyed this conversation with sarah whitney

Starting point is 00:53:18 i resonated strongly with so many things she said and i wanted to reiterate how important it is to seek second opinions until you find a proper diagnosis if you're dealing with an injury you have to keep searching until you find someone that you feel understands you and someone that you can trust and I think it's important to do that early so things don't deteriorate I think that if you feel in your gut that it's not quite right you have to follow that instinct and keep searching until you find someone who will like Sarah said pinpoint exactly the source of the problem and can offer solutions that will yield positive results. One of the other extremely important points she makes in our chat is how crucial it is to also keep track of how we're doing mentally

Starting point is 00:54:08 when we're in this whirlwind of dealing with physical pain and all of the consequences that derive from that. And it's important to monitor our mental state and make sure that we take great care of our mental health with the proper tools, whether that's professional help or anxiety management modalities like meditation, yoga, or Alexander technique. I also love her advice about not being afraid to ask for help. And I'd say that this applies to everything. It's something that's very difficult for so many of us. And I really agree with her that usually people are so eager to help and bring assistance. So I'll encourage all of us to not be hesitant to ask for help for anything at any time. As always, you can find the show notes for this episode and more information

Starting point is 00:54:58 about Sarah at mindoverfinger.com. You can also find me in the Mind Over Finger tribe at facebook.com slash groups slash Mind Over Finger tribe. This is where I like to pop in with live videos, answer your questions, and talk about all things mindful practice. Again, thank you and à bientôt! Thank you.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 044 Sarah Whitney: Thriving Through Injury

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