The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 064 Karen Bulmer: Music, Mind, & Movement

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 64. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now, your host, Dr. Rene Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope you're doing great. I'm really happy to welcome Karen Bollmer, Associate Professor of Trombone, Euphonium, and Tuba at Memorial University and host of the Music, Mind, and Movement podcast of the show. Karen is a versatile tuba player, educator, and writer. She's active as a tuba soloist and improviser and has performed her original one-woman show,

Starting point is 00:00:55 Girl Meets Tuba in venues across Canada. In recent years, Karen's research and creative interests have expanded to include the exploration of various mind-body practices and their particular relevance to musicians. Her unique MindBody Tools for Musicians program combines mindfulness with movement and self-regulation strategies to help musicians access a greater sense of their innate capacity for expression, presence, and resilience. As I just mentioned, Karen is also the creator and host of the Music, Mind, and Movement podcast, a show that explores holistic approaches to music training and performance through in-depth conversations with educators, health professionals, somatic practitioners, and more. Karen holds a Bachelor of Musical Arts from the University of

Starting point is 00:01:44 Western Ontario, a Professional Studies Diploma from the Herod Conservatory, and both a Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts from Yale University. She trained in meditation facilitation under the mentorship of Michael Stone and is a certified yoga instructor with additional training in biomechanics, anatomy, and movement for trauma. I'm a huge fan of the Music, Mind, and Movement podcast, and I hope all of you will check it out. Karen is a wise host with so much knowledge and experience in the field of mindful music making, and I've found so much inspiration from her words. In our conversation, we cover many topics, including how our feelings towards practice affects our attitude about performance, attention, intention, playfulness, and exploration in

Starting point is 00:02:33 practice, how mindfulness helps us relate in a positive way to stress and stimuli, the importance of finding balance in our lives, and she shares some tools musicians can develop to get more connected with their body. At a time when things seem to be getting only more stressful and hectic, Karen brings us a message of very much needed mindful attention, and I think you will really resonate with our discussion. Let's go to the show. Karen Balmer, I'm so happy to have you on the show. Oh, it's such a pleasure to be here, Renee. Karen, you're Associate Professor of Tuba Euphonium, and you lead the program MindBody Tools for Musicians at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada.

Starting point is 00:03:28 That's right. You're the host of Music Mind Movement podcast, which I'm a huge fan of. so i'm i'm just so thrilled to have you on the show i don't know if i'm your number one fan but i'm definitely a big one thanks so much likewise and i was seeing that you were also doing all sorts of wonderful projects a one woman show you're involved with so many wonderful organizations so can we start with you and your musical journey i'd love for my listeners to know a little bit more about you and how you got to where you are today. Sure yeah I started my musical journey I came from a not a professional musical family but a very but a musical family all my my parents and

Starting point is 00:04:18 grandparents were all involved in music one of my grandfathers played in a in a kiltie band in his hometown and another one of my grandfathers was a barbershop singer and my grandmother played trombone and my mom played the piano and flute. So music was always part of my life. I started taking piano lessons when I was about maybe six years old or something. And that was not a huge success for me. I was really young. I was not a good piano student. But I kind of did it for a few years. And I always sort of sang in choirs and stuff like that and performed in our school plays we did these really awesome musicals when I was a when I was a kid I grew up in London Ontario and in southwestern Ontario Canada so I think the music bug really bit when I started

Starting point is 00:05:08 taking band in grade seven so we had a band program that began in grade seven and I actually started playing flute in band that was my first band instrument and um so you you went from one spectrum to the other. I did. Yeah. So I was a real, I think what you might consider like a stereotypical flute player. I was a really good student and like a really nice, well-behaved girl. And my mom had played the flute. So I was like, I'm going to play the flute too. So I played flute all the way through high school. And in high schools, when I really started thinking more seriously about pursuing music for a career. And over the course of my high school time, I started playing the tuba. So we, I think I was in grade 10 or 11, and we didn't have a tuba player

Starting point is 00:06:01 for our band. And so the teacher really wanted someone to switch to tuba. And at a certain point, I was like, okay, I'll switch to tuba. And I think I was, you know, I was really kind of a, like a very kind of a goody goody and I think I was sort of looking for a way to be like a little bit rebellious so I thought like the tuba seemed like a good way for me to sort of like break out a little bit but like still kind of in a band nerd zone so um yeah so I started playing tuba and then I honestly decided to go to music school for tuba I couldn't decide whether to do flute or tuba and I chose the tuba mostly because I um I didn't think there'd be as much competition I thought I'd have a better chance of getting in so I auditioned on tuba and I got in I studied at um

Starting point is 00:06:52 it's now called Western University at back then it was called University of Western Ontario and and I had really planned my plan was to be a music teacher because my music teachers throughout elementary school and high school had been just exceptional human beings and musicians. They were just hugely influential on me. But when I got to university, I had never really taken lessons until university. And so this was a whole new thing for me and the idea of like practicing regularly. And I just, I started getting better and I really, really got hooked on that whole thing. So I ended up majoring in performance and going off and doing graduate degrees. I did my master's and eventually my doctorate as well. And I'm now trying to sort of fast forward a little

Starting point is 00:07:44 bit. So, and yeah, so then I freelanced for a while. I think by the time I was in graduate school, I had really decided that an academic career, I always loved teaching, even though I pursued a performance pathway I'd always really loved teaching and really had intended to teach so I was thinking in terms of a job in in a university and so after graduate school I freelanced in the Toronto area for a few years and I taught at Western I went back to Western where I had gone to school and I taught there for five years just the tuba and euphoniums and then in 2006 I got the job here at Memorial University so teaching low brass and I've been here ever since. Listening to your story, I love how, you know, this love of music

Starting point is 00:08:34 and circumstances take us to unexpected places. Yeah. Yeah. It's really like if you had told me when, like if I could go back and visit my 12-year-old self and say, you're going to be a professional tuba player, my 12-year-old self would be like, no, that is not happening. Yes. And I'm glad we've established that two best are the rebels of the band. Karen, I'm also fascinated to hear about your journey to this mind-body connection, the mindfulness. And I've said I was a big fan of your podcast, and I hope all my listeners listen to your podcast because it's absolutely fantastic. But please tell us a little bit more about that side of things? So briefly, I got into mindfulness and yoga and stuff like that

Starting point is 00:09:27 because of my own anxiety. So I was always a quite anxious person from the time I was a young child. I was a really, really, really anxious kid. And over the course of my, Particularly my undergraduate studies. I think when I first started studying music, I felt like this was something I was good at, and I really loved it, and I loved the community involved in making music. But as I got better at it and as the stakes became higher, so I had decided I wanted to pursue playing professionally, my anxious personality and the environment of classical music study really, I think, were sort of on a collision course. so by the time I was you know towards the end of my undergraduate studies I had developed pretty severe not just performance anxiety but also practice anxiety like I think I was just the whole process to me was really really fraught because I was such a perfectionist and you know it's it's hard it's really spending all those hours with yourself in the practice

Starting point is 00:10:47 room. And so, you know, throughout graduate school and the early part of my career, I found certain things helped me to be able to perform. And I mean, I was working, like it wasn't debilitating. But by the time that I was, you know, after I'd been in my job here for a few years, It was just very painful to feel this worked up about playing all the time. And then at the same time, I was in this situation where I was like, well, I have a job. This is my gig. This is what I'm doing. And so I should really try to figure this out.

Starting point is 00:11:30 And I had students also that I could see who were struggling with similar sorts of issues. so I eventually I'd had some fits and starts with meditation um in my early 20s um I'd done some reading of Buddhist philosophy and I thought like being enlightened sounded awesome so I would try to meditate but I did not get enlightened right away so I sort of let it go big disappointment so you know once I got once I I got a little bit more serious I about developing a meditation practice or maybe it's maybe you know it's sort of the opposite it's I got to a point where I was able to approach meditation practice without really any expectations I felt kind of like a little bit desperate. And so I started meditating regularly and studying meditation. And I did a

Starting point is 00:12:31 meditation teacher training, and I also did yoga teacher training. And I've done a whole bunch of other types of training and research as well. And it started as a way to help myself, as a way to gain some tools for myself. And then it sort of evolved into a little bit of a program that I do now with other musicians. That sounds amazing. I can so relate to what you're talking about this anxiety about practicing. I wrote a blog post a few years ago where the picture I used was one of my son's toy dinosaurs, kind of scary looking, hidden in my violin case, because sometimes that's how it feels. There's so much that goes through our mind and so many emotions attached to practicing that you just see the case sitting there in the corner and it looks

Starting point is 00:13:24 very threatening. Yeah. And I think this is actually pretty common. And, you know, in my own experience, when I really thought about like it took me a few years to sort of clock that I was having this anxiety in the practice room, I think partly because I was so used to just being anxious about everything. Like it just it was kind of it was a default state for me. But I would I would feel so distressed around performances and then it took me a while to sort of figure out that of course I was going to feel that way because I was also pretty distressed around practice and so in a sense I was practicing being anxious and it's not that surprising that that would kind of flare up when it came time to actually get up on stage yeah that makes

Starting point is 00:14:08 so much sense and I so agree with you I feel that the more advanced I am on my own journey to mindful practice is finding this joy of practicing and really making sure that I see it as practice is mastery. It's the process. So yeah, for me, that's a big thing to find this joy in the practice room. Yeah, for sure. And speaking of which, I want to hear a little bit about the program as well, but I'm curious, what is mindful practice to you? If I describe it a bit, that might be clear, but I think really broadly, the way I think about it is really intentional practice. So that our attention and our intentions aren't kind of getting yanked around by things that we're able to practice in a way that's very intentional. And that may look very different from

Starting point is 00:15:05 day to day. I really like to leave a lot of room in practice for lots of exploration, like not worrying about being particularly productive or efficient, but being very exploratory and experimental. And then I think there's a time to really try to be very efficient and do as much as you can in a short period of time. And I think there's times where it's okay to just be not really have any agenda and almost be sort of mindless, but doing all these types of practice as intentionally as possible. So a lot of this has to do with learning to respond really skillfully to external demand so like if I have a recital coming up that's I'll be practicing differently than if I don't have any big performances coming up but also learning to respond very skillfully

Starting point is 00:15:52 to internal cues as well I think is a is a big part learning to be responsive to our own internal state that's really great I love that thank you so much for sharing yeah of course and I mean we can go so many directions I have so many questions for you I love what you're talking about in terms of this attention and intention and I really love the language you use in terms of responding to the you know the stimuli that are around us and being extremely mindful of the internal clues as well this is so important yeah and I'd love to hear a little bit more about the podcast because I feel like it, you know, fits really well in the work that you do. You have interesting, so interesting conversations with experts in all

Starting point is 00:16:50 sorts of field, mindfulness, body mapping, Feldenkrais, meditation. So I'd love to hear a little bit more, first of all, about the show. Yeah. And also what you see in terms of the impact these modalities have on students or professional when they undertake one of those disciplines? Yeah. So I started the podcast when I'm kind of a podcast nut. I love podcasts. And so when I was first learning, particularly about, I did a lot of studies in like, I mentioned that I did yoga teacher training, and then I also did a lot of additional studies in biomechanics and anatomy. And I was really trying to understand more about how the body works and how humans learn movement. And particularly because there's a lot of new information in this area. So this field is

Starting point is 00:17:49 really very fresh and exciting right now. So I found a couple of podcasts that were kind of these DIY podcasts, just people like you and me who have an expertise or interest in an area and just sort of started an interview based podcast. And I was really, I learned so much from listening to these conversations with different people from all sorts of different modalities. And so that was really the inspiration for me for starting a podcast is I, it's a very selfishly, it's a way for me to continue my own learning. So it's nice to be able to just get in touch with people and ask if they'll talk to me for an hour. And then I get to, I get to pick their brains, which is really, really awesome. But then I also wanted to provide a resource for musicians to just kind of

Starting point is 00:18:40 try to put out there some of the range of types of modalities that are available to musicians. I'm definitely a believer that different things work for different people and different things work for the same person at different times. And I think it's really important that musicians are empowered to kind of chart their own course through, you know, if they're having difficulties with practice or performance or injury or anything like this. So that was really the, was that your question? How did I start it? I'm like, am I just like going on? Anyway, that is, that was sort of what the aim of the podcast was, was to kind of create a resource where, yeah, where musicians could get introduced to a lot of different ideas and voices and

Starting point is 00:19:29 approaches in one spot. And I love the combination of all of these different modalities. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm really into the mindfulness and all that, obviously, but also I'm kind of a body nerd. I really am interested in the way the body works and all that. And people have often asked me, what do I see as being the connection between those things? And I don't know that I have a really good answer to that question. I just see them as being very related. And I felt like the podcast was a way for me to kind of explore all that in a really nonlinear way, like in a very organic way, which is kind of the way that my brain works. Yeah. A few weeks ago, you had a great episode just about breathing. And, you know, I am someone who didn't know much about body mapping until a couple years ago. So to hear even more about it, it just, I feel like it's exactly what you said, you're providing this resource for us to know what's available out there. and you're making us discover new modalities or know more about modalities that we're already aware of. And I think that it really causes a reflection. It just really gets me curious about

Starting point is 00:20:53 knowing more about all of these topics. Well, that's great to hear. Yeah, that's definitely my aim. And it's also definitely my experience as well that I've learned something from every guest that I've talked to, that I've incorporated into either into my own playing or my teaching or whatever. It's, it's been just really, it's been really amazing for me. And I'm going to take you back because you said you have, you know, this background in meditation and yoga. And this is also how I started my journey into mindful practice through yoga and subsequently meditation and I find that sometimes it's very difficult to impress on you know on students and sometimes colleagues also really how much of an impact it can have on your practice

Starting point is 00:21:47 and your performing what do you see happens in the I don't know if you have some particular example or stories to illustrate that, but what happens when someone undertakes a journey in exploring, let's say, Feldenkrais or meditation? What I observe with the meditation or the, you know, I teach movement classes here at the School of Music where I teach. And then another big part of what I teach is some education around the autonomic nervous system and really simple exercises to kind of shift our state if that makes sense and so what i notice that people experience and certainly that i've experienced is that uh first of all i i find that a lot of musicians paradoxically because we're using our

Starting point is 00:22:44 bodies to play our instruments or in the case of singers our bodies are our instruments the musicians are often very very disconnected from our bodies and so just the experience of like oh i have a body and it is it is giving me information all the time can be incredibly powerful for musicians um and then learning to read that information and work with it skillfully so again we can i i'm happy to talk in more detail about about that um but learning to read the information and to just to sort of work with our state in a more skillful way can be really helpful so i i like to work with musicians on developing tools that they can use in real time so if they're feeling a little bit um over activated that help bring them back into a feeling of being grounded

Starting point is 00:23:38 or if they're feeling kind of sleepy and shut down and under activated that can bring them, you know, they can activate them a little bit more. So they're ready to like focus and practice or perform. So I find that can be really helpful is having, you know, when we feel our activation or our state changing to actually have some tools to be able to shift it. And then I think, you know, where the meditation and mindfulness comes in over time is that we can also learn to relate differently to stress or anxiety or perfectionism or feelings of being judged or you know all these things that that musicians often struggle with or like very strong internal internal self-talk we don't always need to get rid of those things but we can mindfulness practice

Starting point is 00:24:32 we can learn to relate to those things differently so we've got a little bit more space around our experience and i think this can be incredibly helpful for musicians yes i love that a few weeks ago i had an episode with nicholas pallison and he was talking to something a little bit similar where he was saying that you don't have to feel amazing to perform well. You can accept the state that you're in and still perform. Yeah, I think that's really true. And I think we want to have, for many of us, there's a limit to how activated we can feel. Do you know what I mean? Like there's sort of an upper limit if I'm in too much of a state of sympathetic arousal. But we don't often have to get ourselves all the way down to feeling super calm. And feeling

Starting point is 00:25:22 really calm is is not what many of us need when we're going into a performance um but if we can just be um i i call it the window of tolerance it's not my my term but it's a term uh and it's a it's a model uh by a psychiatrist in the states named dan siegel and it's it's a sort of a zone of arousal where we kind of have a feeling of i've got this so maybe i feel maybe i feel nervous Maybe I feel activated, but I feel like I have the resources to handle it and I'm prepared enough to handle it. And so that's what I like to work on is, is finding, you know, noticing what our window of tolerance is, noticing when we're in it and when we're out of it.

Starting point is 00:26:08 And if we're out of it, having some tools to get back in. So, but it doesn't necessarily always have to be, you know, I think it's common to have kind of a, like an ideal, like if I could always be in this state when I perform, like that would be, that would be perfect. And I don't think we were, you know, I feel like it's really helpful to have a range in which you feel like you can perform well. Yeah. And what I love about that is that it really brings awareness to, I feel like we're using this word a lot today. It brings this awareness to the state that we're in and by being able to identify those feelings that we have, those thoughts, those physical reaction, combined with knowing that we have the skills. So you're

Starting point is 00:27:00 talking about how you give tools to the students, just knowing that you have a tool to deal with whatever feeling you have at the moment, that's already very powerful and it gives a sense of control over the situation? Yeah, I work with a lot of sort of body-based and movement-based exercises that can be done very quickly in the practice room or backstage before a performance. They don't necessarily require a lot of like quiet or calm. It can often be challenging in like an audition situation or, you know, depending on the performance situation, you don't always have the option of retreating to a quiet place and meditating for 10 minutes. So yeah, I like to have a wide variety of tools that are really quick. And yeah, that can be done pretty much

Starting point is 00:27:55 anywhere, oftentimes without anyone even noticing that you're doing some of them are kind of are super subtle. And then, you know, again, in behind the scenes, maybe maybe investigating some some other practices that work more slowly over time to help build our relationship to stress and our relationship to anxiety and our resilience. Would you mind sharing with us maybe a simple exercise that we could try today? Sure. One that I do a lot that I've had a lot of feedback from people that they find very effective. I find people on both ends of the sort of arousal spectrum. So people who tend to be a little bit hyper aroused, so they feel very anxious, you know, fast heart rate, racing thoughts, as well as people who tend to be on the lower end

Starting point is 00:28:49 of the arousal spectrum. So maybe feeling like if when stress hits, they kind of want to just go to sleep or check out and maybe they want to isolate themselves socially. Both groups tend to find this effective which is just to pat yourself down from head to toe and I know it sounds sort of crazy but just like starting with your your face you just lightly pat all over your skin you sort of massage your scalp with your fingers you can you know grab your earlobes and sort of like massage them a little bit and then pat all down your neck on your chest your abdomen your back as much as you can, your arms, your legs. And people often find, so people who are a little bit more sleepy or shut down, just that stimulation of the skin kind of wakes them up a

Starting point is 00:29:40 little bit. And people who are more hyper aroused, a lot of people I think have the experience if they're feeling very anxious, it's almost like the world is coming at them or they feel very insubstantial, like they're almost sort of wispy and life is just kind of happening to them. And so bringing some awareness to the boundary of the body often helps people feel a little bit more contained. So it gives you a sense of like solidity and this is me, this is my body, that's the outside world. It creates a little bit of a sense of containment. So that's one example that even though it's a bit goofy, people seem to like it. I do a lot of balancing activities as well. So things like if you take a couple of Jenga blocks and you make a little two or three Jenga blocks

Starting point is 00:30:30 and balance them on each other and walk around the room and try not to let the Jenga blocks drop. And it causes you to have to pay attention. Your breathing has to be calm. You have to be simultaneously aware of your own physicality and the environment around you, just like playing music. It helps people if they're feeling kind of jittery, like it takes a little bit of fine motor skill to keep a little tower of blocks balanced. And so it sort of reinforces the idea that you can, even if you're feeling a little bit activated, you can still control your body. So that was two examples, but those are ones that I like a lot. I think it's fantastic. And I love how fundamentally they're basic exercises, but so powerful in, as you mentioned, bringing the awareness back in the body and to the body. That's really fantastic.

Starting point is 00:31:23 Yeah, the mind and body come together really quickly. And what I find too about the balancing exercise is that people experience how they can be in a state that feels quite focused and concentrated. So they're really paying attention, but the focus is quite dynamic. So if you're just sort of walking through a space, or even if you're not walking around, like sometimes I'll build a little tower of blocks and like sit down on the ground and stand back up. And my attention has to be quite dynamic in that situation. And I think sometimes we get the idea that to be focused or concentrated means we put our mind on one thing, and then we don't let it leave. And that is a type of focus. And it's an important one. And it's one that we often will work on in the context of a meditation practice. But when we're performing, we often need our attention to be a little bit dynamic. So we don't actually want it stuck on one thing. We want it to be able to be dynamic and responsive to the situation we're in. um and so an exercise like that can give musicians a little sense of what that feels like and and it doesn't feel out of control they realize the attention can be dynamic and it but that doesn't mean that our attention is out of control yes absolutely hearing you speak really makes me want to participate in one of your workshops so yeah i love doing workshops and doing you know one of the things i find about doing some of the movement-based stuff is

Starting point is 00:33:00 is that it's it's really fun and playful and that's the other thing that i think is so important for musicians is to restore that sense of play and experimentation yeah one thing i love also i'm going back to what you were talking about earlier in terms of this response and one of my favorite quote is uh the one from victor frankel you know um let's i'm kind of paraphrasing now but uh about how between the stimulus and the response there's a space and then in that space lies our freedom yeah i so much of my work in my research during in my doctorate and my dissertation, I actually use that quote in the dissertation. I realized that thinking about that is such a powerful way to see things. And exactly what you say to bring

Starting point is 00:34:02 this joy back in the practice is we really can change how we perceive issues, how we perceive failures in the practice. I mean, what we think are failures to really change how we see those things and take actions to make things more fun, make them stimulating, make them more engaging and not feel that it's, you know, have to go in there and punch time. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, one of the things that I have learned recently is that particularly for adults, so meaning anyone, you know, we sort of get our adult brain, you know, usually kind of in our early to mid-20s, the adult brain to learn, so adult plasticity, requires us to have a sense of really strong attention and engagement. So unlike kids who can kind of repeat things over

Starting point is 00:35:02 and over again without paying that much attention and they will learn it and their brains will actually change in reflection of that learning, for adults this is more dependent on being really engaged in what we're doing and having a little bit of a sense of urgency. So I think it's important to learn to develop the sense of urgency and engagement, but without the stress. Yeah. Oh, I love that. Karen, I would love to speak with you all day, but how about a round of not so rapid fire questions before I let you go? Sure. Yeah. What's your favorite tool in the practice room and why? Okay, this one I thought about quite a lot. And I have a lot of tools in my practice room. So it was it was hard to choose. I think it's a TheraBand. So those stretchy bands

Starting point is 00:35:52 that you use like for physiotherapy and stuff. And I love to use TheraBands for exercises like shoulder warm ups and stuff. They make your body feel amazing. And I also use them a lot. I tie them around my ribs or my waist or things like that to help feel the movement of breathing. And I will often use them on my skeleton, my TheraBand. I'll use it to illustrate where a certain muscle is. So yeah, I think it's TheraBand for the win. I love that. No one's ever mentioned that on the show before. This is great. And this is why it's never rapid because I always get involved. But you know, if that's what you would do, I want to share a little anecdote too. You were talking about yoga and I really believe that being physically fit and strong really helps with

Starting point is 00:36:44 our playing and I was reminded of that lately because we had a long afternoon rehearsal of a Wagner opera recently and the morning before I had a training session and my trainer had told me we're going to do a lot of upper body work and I thought oh I don't know if that's a good idea you know right before a big wagner rehearsal yeah but we were doing a lot of um back exercises and i have never felt better in a wagner rehearsal i just feel like the session prepared my muscles for the work that was ahead and stretched everything and for me it was really a moment where i realized to not fear you know carefully curated exercises even if they involve weight lifting yeah right before a rehearsal yeah i think i think some a little bit bit of you know

Starting point is 00:37:38 depending on your capacity and your experience but like a strength training is it can be awesome for musicians and it's actually another one of the reasons i love the thera bands is it's a way to add a little bit of load to a movement like a shoulder circle or something and i could step on the band with one end of the band with my foot and hold the other end of the band in my hand and just add a little bit of resistance to that movement and it's very controllable it's very manageable and the body really loves it. Karen for the people who are dreaming of maybe a career that resembled yours can you tell us a little bit about what your life looks like? Yeah I wake up every day around usually between 5 and 5 30 and either I meditate

Starting point is 00:38:28 then, or I go to the gym depending on the day. And then I come home and I have a cup of coffee and I sit and read my book for half an hour or so. And this is something I've been doing since I was an undergraduate, having a little bit of quiet time in the morning. And then I usually go to school about 8.30. I try to get about 8.30 and my mornings are typically free or partially free. And that's when I do things like practice and work on the podcast and have meetings and do all the administrative parts of my job and then I teach for most afternoons then I go home around 4 30 and have supper with my family and put my son to bed and then I usually go to bed not that long after so I try to I do try to put my job as a job that I could spend and I think

Starting point is 00:39:18 many of us find this like I could be doing it 24 hours a day seven days a week but I really try to not work too much in the evenings or weekends as much as I can avoid it I'll practice on the weekends but um so that's the day-to-day and then I you know I give recitals sometimes and I do the podcast and um you know sort of whatever it's so inspiring how well balanced it is and how you keep time to really nurture things that you value and things that nourish you Yeah, I mean, it's not easy. And it's something I've really had to discipline myself to do. And it means that I'm not as productive. So I don't give as many concerts as some other musicians do, or produce as much, you know, work or, you know, as many podcasts or whatever. But I've really made the decision that that balance is important to me. So it takes effort to maintain it, but it's really it feels my life feels better when that's when that's the situation. You know, thanks so much for sharing that, because I think that's a very important message that we need to hear that you're really living an intentional life.

Starting point is 00:40:31 And as you said, it requires effort and reflection to live this way. And I think that this is definitely a message that we need to hear more. Yeah, and I feel really strongly as a university professor that it's important for me to model this for my students as just one way to live. I think people should choose how they want to live. But I worry that if we as professors and sort of leaders, anyone who's kind of in a position of authority, you know, if we run ourselves ragged, we send the message that the only valuable things are the sort of products of our hard work, if that makes sense. And I think some people really, really thrive on working a lot and traveling a lot. But I'm not one of those people. So, yeah, I try to sort of, I try to balance that in my life. Well, that's beautiful. Really inspiring. What are some skills that you think young musicians studying today should acquire in addition to learning their instrument? Okay, well, this is sort of related to what we were just talking about and something I've been talking about with some students recently. And it's that I think it's important to have the skill, because I'm starting to think this is a skill, to do leisure well.

Starting point is 00:42:05 I think it's easy if we work all the time, we can sort of be at sea, like we're kind of lost when we do have some time to just chill out. And this came up for us recently because we just had this like ridiculously huge, crazy blizzard and our whole city. We were under a state of emergency for eight days and the university was closed and many students didn't have access to their instrument during that time. And so, you know, we were all confronted with this unexpected week where we weren't allowed to leave our homes. And so, you know, we were talking about this and I actually think like, you know, doing leisure well is a skill and maybe a bit of an art form that I think I'm worried it's getting lost. And then what happens is we have time to ourselves, we sort of, our attention gets yanked, we end up just spending three hours on Facebook or Instagram and then we don't feel that good about ourselves and we sort of, then we course correct by just working harder the next day. And I have no problem with spending time on Facebook or Instagram. It's not not the thing. But just, you know, I think the skill and the intention of having activities that aren't work that really are nourishing and enlivening is really, really important for for all humans, but I think especially artists. Yes. Oh, I love this. Thank you so much. What's a habit that you have that you think has contributed to your success?

Starting point is 00:43:30 Okay, I want people to know that I do practice and work really hard because I feel like all my things are like, do more leisure. But I actually, so I do work pretty hard. Like when I'm at work, I work hard. But I really think that prioritizing sleep and exercise for a really long time, like since I was a student, I've always really, really tried to get enough sleep and tried to be fairly active. I'm not like really athletic or particularly fit or anything, but I try to be sort of active. And I just think that that's helped me to be physically resilient. So when there are times when I do have to work really hard, I can work really hard, but then I can also recover really well. Yeah, the words keep sounding like a giant slacker. no but it makes so much sense and i really believe that all of those things that you do to really you know to use the word of the 2020 the self-care that you do means that when you are working you are i i don't want to assume anything but i'm guessing focused concentrated rested and

Starting point is 00:44:45 really in the state of mind to be very productive? Yeah, I think so. I had to sort of figure this out because what I was finding is I was getting sort of sucked into the mode of like 24 hours a day are available for me to do work. And so it was meaning I was doing a lot of work in the evenings and weekends. But then because I perceived those hours as being available to work, I wasn't as focused and intentional about how I spent my work hours, if that makes sense. So it's like sort of what I found is like I need to sort of set some boundaries around my work life, but then also make sure that I'm really able to be efficient and engaged and into it when I'm doing it. And you know, it's a learning curve. Absolutely. Karen, how about a quick,

Starting point is 00:45:38 actionable tip that the listeners could implement today in their musical lives it's not a musical tip per se but i think getting out of the practice room or away from the computer and going for a walk outside i think for like 10 minutes it doesn't need to be long but you know without a phone but going outside and taking a walk i think this is an incredibly powerful reset for the mind and body, gets you moving, the fresh air, natural light. But also when we spend a lot of time looking at something that's a fixed distance away, sort of like a computer screen or a music stand, two things happen. The muscles in our eyes actually get a little bit sort of locked up there's muscles in our eyeballs and we it tends to drive sympathetic activation it drives

Starting point is 00:46:36 our stress response because of you know when we're focusing for long periods of time on one thing and so just getting outside moving your body but then allowing your gaze to relax and be a little bit more panoramic can really really help down regulate the nervous system and then make us ready for whatever is the next thing we're going to do. I love that. I challenge everyone to do it right now today. Karen, thank you so much for being on the show. I really hope that the listeners tune in and listen to the past episodes of your podcast and the future episodes of the podcast. And I feel so privileged that I had the chance to speak with you. I feel so inspired and And I feel that you gave us so many ingredients to lead a more productive but also meaningful musical life.

Starting point is 00:47:32 Oh, well, it's really it's been such a pleasure. And even just preparing for the interview and thinking about these things has just been it's it's so nice to reflect on this and so nice to talk to you. And again, I'm a big, big fan of your show as well. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Karen Ballmer as much as I did. I am personally taking away so much from chatting with Karen. And mostly I'm taking with me a feeling of expansion, of wanting to breathe and take time or make time to be really intentional about my practice and my life. And I would really love to know what your favorite takeaways from today's conversations are, because I believe this is the direction we all need to go in. Slow down, create a life that nurtures and supports us in our endeavors and really bring attention and intention in all our actions.

Starting point is 00:48:39 so please get in touch with me or with karen i am mind over finger on both instagram and facebook and you can find her at music mind and movement on both platforms also take a minute to visit music mind and movement.com to check out all of the wonderful resources karen has to offer to musicians and when you're done there visit mindoverfinger.com to read the show notes Find more information about mindful and deliberate practice and check out all of my favorite resources. If you're looking for a community of mindful practice enthusiasts, join the Mind Over Finger tribe at facebook.com slash groups slash Mind Over Finger tribe.

Starting point is 00:49:24 This is my private Facebook group where I pop in once a week to talk about mindful practice and answer your questions and where you can exchange with fellow musicians about practicing and music making. And because I like to make things as easy as possible for you guys, I'll have all of those links in the show notes. So that's it for today. Again, thank you and à bientôt.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 064 Karen Bulmer: Music, Mind, & Movement

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