The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 074 Melissa White and Elena Urioste: Powerful Presence

Episode Date: September 11, 2020

Melissa White and Elena Urioste — violinists, yoginis, and dear friends run Intermission, a ground-breaking program that unites body, mind, breath, and music-making through yoga and meditation.    MORE ABOUT MELISSA WHITE AND ELENA URIOSTE FROM INTERMISSION: Website: https://www.intermissionsessions.com/ Intermission App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/intermission-app/id1464473222 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/intermissionsessions/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intermissionsessions/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/intermissionsr     And for  THE BEST PRACTICING AND PERFORMING SEASON OF YOUR LIFE Dr. Gauthier invites you to join:   THE MUSIC MASTERY EXPERIENCE A TRANSFORMATIONAL JOURNEY TO LOVING THE PRACTICE ROOM, ROCKING THE STAGE, WINNING THE JOB, AND TAKING YOUR CAREER TO NEW HEIGHTS A 3-month experience for all musicians, starting September 21, 2020 BOOK A CALL AND LET'S SEE HOW WE CAN GET YOU RESULTS!     And don't forget to join the Mind Over Finger Tribe for additional resources on practice and performing!     THANK YOU: Most sincere thank you to composer Jim Stephenson who graciously provided the show's musical theme!  Concerto #1 for Trumpet and Chamber Orchestra – Movement 2: Allegro con Brio, performed by Jeffrey Work, trumpet, and the Lake Forest Symphony, conducted by Jim Stephenson. Also a HUGE thank you to my fantastic producer, Bella Kelly!   MIND OVER FINGER: www.mindoverfinger.com https://www.facebook.com/mindoverfinger/ https://www.instagram.com/mindoverfinger/

You're listening to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 74. 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. Welcome to season three of the Mind Over Finger podcast. I'm so excited to be back and I'm equally excited about the fantastic guests I have coming for you this season. As always, I'm going to have wonderful musicians talking about practice, performance, and career building. In this season, I'll be bringing in experts in all sorts of modalities that help us

musicians feel better, work better, play better, and live better. So once a month, you can expect to hear about how yoga, physical therapy, EFT tapping, Alexander Technique, and a bunch of other disciplines and methods can enhance our music making. And before we dive into today's episode, I wanted to announce, if you're hearing it for the first time, or remind you if you're not hearing it for the first time, that the doors are open for the next round of the Music Mastery Experience. We start on September 21st. And you guys, I'm so excited because the Music Mastery Experience is the place to be to take everything about you playing to the next level. We're going to make over how you practice, how you prepare for performances, and we're going to transform

your mindset how you approach music making and we're going to have you experience results like never before we had an amazing round this summer and the participants have called the program life-changing and seen so many wins and so much transformation in their practice and performance but time is running out so if this sounds like something you'd like to experience and you want to get those incredible results go to mindoverfinger.com slash mme for music mastery experience and book a call today so you and i can chat about making it happen for you and i'll have more details for you at the end of the show and in the show notes of course but don't delay once again it's mindoverfinger.com slash mme to start an incredible journey to amazing practice and

optimal performance. Now to start this third season, I'm so happy to bring you two exceptional guests who are not only leading vibrant performance careers, but having a major impact bringing mindfulness to musicians. I'm really excited to have Melissa White and Elena Urias stay on the show today. Melissa and Elena are violinists, yoginis, and dear friends who spend much of their Lives on the Road performing and who co-founded Intermission, a groundbreaking program that unites body, mind, breath, and music making through yoga and meditation. Melissa is a first prize laureate of the Sphinx competition, has received critical acclaim for solo performances with some of America's leading ensembles, including the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Pops, and the

Atlanta, Baltimore, Colorado, Detroit, and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras. As a founding member of the Grammy Award-winning Harlem Quartet, she's appeared in many of the country's most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, the White House, and the Kennedy Center, as well as internationally. Elena is a BBC Radio 3 New Generation artist and also a first-place laureate of the Sphinx competition. She's given acclaimed performances with major orchestras internationally, including the Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Minnesota orchestras, LA and New York Philharmonics, Boston Pops, the Chicago, National, Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, and Pittsburgh Symphony orchestras, the London Philharmonic, and the multitude of others. She's performed regularly

as a featured soloist and given recitals in such distinguished venues as Carnegie, Wigmore, and Weill Recital Halls, at the Kennedy Center, Concerthaus Berlin, and the Mondavi Center. Melissa and Elena are both active teachers within their musical careers, and they've often found themselves advising students to explore principles learned in yoga as much as those from their musical studies. And out of this realization that the two fields are inextricably linked, the idea for intermission was born. Intermission is comprised of sessions for students, retreats for professionals, and there's an app for absolutely everyone. Their hope is that through exploring mindful movement, alignment, breath work, and self-compassion, musicians of all ages and

stages can begin to unite their physical, mental, and emotional selves so that music making may become a more holistic, healthy, and joyful practice. I had such a great time speaking with Melissa and Elena about all things mindfulness and better music making through presence. And I know you'll love our conversation. Let's go to the show. melissa white and elena urioste thank you so much for being on the show today thank you for having us we're very happy to be here melissa and elena you're both consummate artists with performing careers and you're also both share a passion for mindfulness and yoga that has brought you together and is positively affecting the lives of countless other artists.

And for me, I have to say it's very special to have you on because Discovering Yoga back in 2001, I think, and deepening my practice was really the beginning of completely redefining my relationship with my instrument, the way I practice, the way I perform in my whole musical career. So this is a very special conversation for me. I'd love to start with maybe having the two of you talk to us a little bit about you, your careers, how your path unfolded, and then we'll move on and hear a little bit about Intermission, if that works. Sure, I'll start. So this is Melissa here. I began playing the violin when I was six, but I come from a family of non-musicians, and I started because I saw Itzhak Perlman on Sesame Street when I was four. I loved how his chin fit perfectly in the

chin rest. So I begged when the show went off for a violin and it took two years, but I finally got one. So that's how I got to start playing. Fast forward, it became the biggest part of my life. And so I went to Curtis for undergrad and that's actually where Elena and I first met. And then I went to NEC for my master's and it was there working on my master's with Donald Weilerstein that he asked if I had ever done yoga. And the answer was no. And in my lesson, he starts talking about how yoga would maybe help me to feel things deeper in my body as I was performing and working with my fingers up top of my violin. And so I thought, okay, well, I'll give it a shot. I had a friend who was going to be going to a hot yoga class. This was 2009. And I went with her. And I

immediately loved in the hot room that the sequence was one that repeated everything twice. So immediately I could start to see a change, be it for better or worse. And then I also enjoyed that in the hot room, I was sweating. So there's a mental aspect of getting through the heat, doing these postures. And at the end, it felt like you would really accomplish something. so I kept going back and the series was all over the world so no matter where I traveled for performances I could go into the hot room and do this set sequence and then Elena and I crossed paths again and realized we both had really taken to it and specifically this this series of yoga and so then we became roommates in New York and over our dinner table we started chatting about

how beautiful it would have been if we had had this practice of mindfulness and a sense of the body in a greater way when we were teenagers doing so many hours of practicing at summer camp and in schools so we thought you know we should start a camp for students and they can this can be a part of their day and we sketched and we were like yeah but who's gonna watch them at nighttime when they're supposed to be in their dorm we're not we don't mean to babysit so we're like okay we'll start with adults and so that's how the retreats began and intermission officially started in 2017 and the most beautiful part has been the community that has grown and there it's just a lovely group of people and we're so happy to have found them although we started intermission together

and then hi Elena here um my story of how I began playing the violin is very oddly identical to Melissa's um we were actually doing an interview much like this one in I believe it was 2004 um and someone asked uh how we had both found the violin and she went first she gave her story and I was like wait no way I saw that same episode of Sesame Street and it made me want to play the violin um I also come from a family of non-musicians so um and I'm two years younger than Melissa so um I saw this episode when I was two so the story goes I don't actually remember it personally but my parents have told me the story enough times that it feels like I do um so I I was equally inspired and um started asking for a violin they thought this was deeply strange behavior for a

two-year-old so they had me hold off I kept pestering them and then finally when I was five years old I started playing via the Suzuki method in my my kindergarten I was lucky enough to go to a public school in the Philadelphia area which offered Suzuki lessons so that's how I started playing the violin I grew up in the Philadelphia area so I always idolized all of the kids who went to Curtis it was always kind of my dream to go there I met Melissa in the lobby actually when I was still in high school and I was there for a lesson or something like that and I was like you're Melissa I know who you are and I'm sure she thought I was a freak um I actually just thought she was amazingly friendly but um yeah so we we became close

through a combination of Curtis uh we went to a summer camp together called Encore um it no longer exists but it was kind of the practice camp um for a for a certain era and um and also through the sphinx organization um which is uh detroit-based um organization that um diversifies classical music that's our mission so through a combination of those things we started playing together we started hanging out a lot and and grew very close and um i did my graduate work at Juilliard very briefly, was living in New York. And then when Melissa moved, um, we started doing more playing together. We became roommates as she said. And, um, yeah, intermission was just something that, that kind of, as she said, grew over our dinner table. Um, and it really just

stemmed from this idea of wanting to share everything that we were learning in yoga with students and colleagues. And another strange coincidence, I found hot yoga, the same practice during the same summer that Melissa started going to classes. She was in Boston. I was in New York. So we hadn't coordinated this at all. I went for non-musical reasons. I was in a kind of sticky personal patch in my life and I was feeling very sorry for myself. So I was like, okay, enough. I'm going to drag myself to a class. And I just became intoxicated by it. It was the first time that I felt powerful and strong and present in my body. I loved the heat. I also loved the set sequence, the opportunity to do everything twice. So yeah, you really do kind of feel that

progression. And I noticed kind of by accident that going to hot yoga regularly was having an enormous impact, not only on my physical and mental health, just in everyday life, but also in my physical and mental relationship to the violin. I found that my practice was becoming more efficient. I had to drill things far fewer times, like my brain could just give a command and my fingers would obey. My muscles felt better. I could focus better. And then when it came time to perform. I had new tools in my toolbox to kind of help with my performance anxiety. Didn't cure it, but I knew that, you know, if I breathe slowly, if I breathe deeply, if I plant my feet, if I balance my weight, all of these things will help me feel like I'm embodying the process of

being on stage in a much more calm grounded centered way so yeah intermission was our our baby that we kind of hatched over over our kitchen table and um yeah has grown since there and it's i'm so excited that i have discovered you there's a beautiful website and the great app so i'm going to encourage all of the listeners to check it out i'll have all the links in the show notes for sure and I love that we have this in common too because I loved hot yoga and I remember vividly the class where it kind of all came together for me I remember that morning I was practicing something and I remember this feeling of fighting against the passage that I was practicing because it was so hard and just feeling I mean this isn't retrospect of course

but feeling like physically and mentally fighting against this passage going to the hot yoga class and this this one was not a Bikram class it was just kind of a hot yoga sequence but I do love the Bikram sequence absolutely and I agree with you this feeling of going through the same movement twice it's just very calming but we're doing this warrior pose and the instructor to this day I can still hear his voice and he was talking about how you know when you focus on the specific to get the pose go deep and in the pose deeper in the pose and how you you try to get it really um align properly but it feels difficult and how you have to let go and let go and let go and in that moment there's something just clicked in me or trying to get this posture aligned beautifully and feeling

like stop you know not fighting anymore with it and letting go and it had such a resonance with what I had just been doing that moment it's almost as if it all came together for me and after that I feel like it really opened the door to so much insight in terms of the mindset all the things that you were just talking about how you you you know you have more focus and um just how things feel a little bit more effortless uh so that that that is so great I love that we have all of these in common. So can we elaborate on that a little bit more, how you feel like music and yoga are similar in the way? I think part of the reason we started talking about intermission or a way to share yogic ideas and principles with other people, even if we didn't quite know what

intermission was going to be yet. It stemmed from the number of times we would walk away from yoga classes, either that we'd taken together or separately and been like, whoa, what that teacher said could so easily be applied to, you know, a piece, a specific piece or a specific exercise or approach to the violin or any instrument really, um, to music. I think there were so many parallels that we were picking up on from, um, you know, really big physical ideas, such as knowing exactly what muscles needed to be engaged and what you could relax. So kind of, um, economy of motion, economy of energy, all the way down to like little phrases that would sound so much like things past violin teachers or conductors had told us there were just so many parallels or

or intersections between the two art forms and i i remember us just talking about um oh yeah did you did you hear oh i love that i'm gonna think about that the next time i'm you know start brook concerto or or something like that so we were definitely picking up a lot on a lot of wisdom from yoga teachers that were as valuable as things we'd heard from people in our musical lives. Absolutely. And to this day, stepping onto the yoga mat, it's a moment of meeting yourself right where you are. And I don't know, as musicians particularly, I don't know how often we just sit still in silence. And if we do, or if we try to, it probably still feels a bit noisy or loud within because we're creatives. There's so much happening in our brains. It's vivid.

And also lots of us are type A personalities. So we feel like we probably should be doing something else. And this might not be worth the time or we might not have time to do this. But at the end of the day, being a musician is quite like being an athlete. We need our bodies to be physically strong, mentally strong. We need to understand that feeling our emotions is not bad. It's not a waste of time. It's actually what makes us so beautiful. I think it's what adds beauty to our art and so taking time to do that really allows us to even start to feel stronger from within and then as we pour out we can pour from a place that's filled up versus always giving playing concerts thinking of others um and starting to feel empty after all of that i was i was

actually going to say that spending you know whether it's 20 minutes sitting and breathing meditating if you want to call it that or a full intense 90 minute hot yoga class taking that time to refill your tank and invest in yourself um is so important and it's it's that's actually i think been one of the biggest challenges um in getting intermission as a business um you know out there in the world. I think a lot of musicians, um, might overlook or undervalue this idea of making time to recharge, um, rejuvenate, hamper yourself. Uh, remember that playing an instrument is exactly that we play. The reason we came to the instrument is because we play for the beauty a bit yeah so carving out a space in each day to give back to ourselves because our profession is

to give so much to others through recordings and performances and through teaching um and if you only ever do that without taking time to to refuel yeah we'll we'll be empty we'll be drained we'll be injured, will be exhausted. So I think a practice like yoga, although it doesn't necessarily have to be yoga, any sort of mindful movement or silence or relaxation, it's preventative medicine as well as healing from whatever you're dealing with at the present. Yes, absolutely. And I feel like it really, I love what you said about meeting yourself where you are on the mat. And that is so important to do every single time in the practice room. I mean, self-compassion is at the core of what I teach both with my students and my coaching clients and in the music mastery experience. Self-compassion is really what allows us to, I mean, I'm just going to start using that all the time now, meeting yourself where you are.

And from there, assess and build something positive as opposed to really constantly focusing on how far you are from your ideal and seeing everything through the frustration of where you're not. it's true a lot of times we remind our students when we're working with students to take a moment to claim small victories because all all the time we make to-do lists or we come to the practice room and we think okay what can't we do and what should i practice hopefully maybe one day being able to do but we never once you're able to do it it sort of flies by and then the recognition of what you've achieved perhaps doesn't happen but if we stop to pause and think you know what i i did do that i'm able to do that now and working from there it's a sense of empowerment and reminding yourselves that we can do hard things and we actually do hard

things all the time yeah on that note also um i think musicians are often um lots of artists are if not competitive by nature, comparative. I think so many of us, we're always looking around, you know, thinking how everyone else plays something better or with greater ease or, you know, they have that gig. I don't have that gig. They make it look so easy. They have no problems, et cetera. And I think being in a yoga room with others and hearing enough yoga teachers say your yoga doesn't have to look like anyone else's yoga. Um, your body proportions won't be the same as the person next to you. What you wait for lunch won't be the same. Um, everyone has a greater balance of strength versus flexibility in their body. So the same posture will look

entirely different for two people, even if they're both extremely able-bodied. Um, and it's not about what it looks like it's about how it feels and that's something we try both I know in our own personal musical journeys but certainly when we teach when we when we share these ideas with our colleagues we really try to impress that upon them that both in yoga and in music your playtime need not look like anyone else's playtime it's about how it feels within your own body and spirit. Yeah, this is great. What are some of your favorite tips to, you know, bring more of this mindfulness and this, you know, this approach of more efficiency and ease in the practice room? What are some of your favorite ways to do that? For me, I worry I wind up

sounding like a broken record, particularly to students, but I almost always take it back to the breath um because it's as string players breathing mindfully is usually not part of our instrumental education um i would say the majority of string teachers focus on you know we're lucky if we get past the rib cage it's it's usually just the arms and the fingers and like maybe the neck but usually only if it hurts um and obviously playing an instrument is a full body experience what you do with your feet has every influence over how the rest of the the machine is going to work um but breathing is not something we're really taught because we don't require air to make our sound um but i i like to flip that idea on its head and think okay we don't

have to breathe to play our instruments we get to breathe to play our instruments we have the privilege of doing it in a way that can potentially elevate our music making hugely um so my tip usually for anyone would be before you even raise the instrument whatever it is um to your body before you bring it to your body take a few moments meet yourself where you are notice how it feels to breathe today and then gradually integrate the instrument into your breath so you can spend a couple of times raising and lowering it to, to, uh, flow a rhythm of your inhales and exhales. And then with the bow, um, depending on who's listening, you know, you can make a flow, a yoga vinyasa, like connective series of movements, coordinating one bow per breath so

that it really feels like, um, uh, a flow for lack of a better term. And, and your sound is originating inside your body rather than, you know, you've got your arms dangling, you've got these two pieces of equipment, you have to like put one on the other and through some stroke of magic, it comes out not squeaking. Um, but you know, if you start thinking of it as something that originates inside the body, it feels better. You know, you're dropping further into your parasympathetic nervous system um and 11 times out of 10 it sounds better I would say it's very true um yes it's you know I would say for me the whole idea of practicing breathing was this cliche concept until I started to do it and then even still for maybe the first year

a couple of years when I would go to a yoga class and the first part of it and the last part of the class are for breathing. I would think, can we get to the movement though? Like, you know, we're all alive in the room. I think we're breathing here. And so it's hard to really portray how powerful it is until one just does it. And then you need no words and you start to see how it creates space where you might not even know you need it, but with space, anything's possible. And I think for me, that's been the greatest thing. So between action and reaction, there can be space if we're able to cultivate it and knowing what that means and then having the power to be able to take a moment to let that happen or create that space is just really magical. And then when you

take it to the practice room and you think of course I mean there's always a list of more than a hundred things probably that needs to be done we think in the practice room but if you if you start so simply and it can be beautiful and it's mindful and then starting to connect from there for me it feels a lot less overwhelming than this checklist that I maybe need to go through and then one more thing I would say is the idea of compassion we oftentimes in a class will have students think a compassionate thought for someone they love and then think a compassionate thought for themselves and we ask them afterward was it easier to think the thought for your loved one or for yourself and nine times out of ten it's for the loved one versus themselves and we say but

you know if if you're able to do that for someone else if we can start thinking to treat ourselves Like we're our loved one. We are our own best friend. And that mind, the mental game of how we speak to ourselves is also a very powerful thing. And so sometimes now in the practice room, I'll play something I love because I love it. And I mean, who knows if it's going to be the way I meant for it to sound, but playing it gives me joy. And I don't know how often we stop to do things like that because there's so much to do all the time. Mm-hmm. And when we take the time to do that, then we become more efficient in all of the other things as well, the things that we have to do. Absolutely. Yes. I feel like the next question will probably bring a lot of similar answers, but Alina, at the beginning, you were mentioning how it affected, you know, performing anxiety. So can we speak about that just a little bit? absolutely um I was plagued by quite um acute anxiety I mean I still am in some ways I like I said I just have a a bigger toolbox now I would say um I mean I get nervous pretty much

anytime I I I appear in front of people um and I love it I'm a junkie I'm like a total adrenaline junkie so so if I the day I don't get nervous um I'll be concerned because it might be an indication that I no longer care actually um but but already um I try and I choose I I pause between action and reaction and like in that pause try to make the choice um to convince myself that actually it's a good thing nerves are a good thing for me personally it means that I care that I'm invested, um, and that I hope to have, you know, a nice outcome, whatever that means on a given day. Um, but for many, many years, I would say until, until I found my way to yoga. So 2009 or sometime thereafter, um, my, my nerves, my anxiety manifested really physically, um, particularly in

my bow hands I would shake and so I terrible bow shake so badly that for years I I had to start everything up bow um which is quite impractical a lot of the time like I I couldn't put my bow onto the string from the middle to the frog without it bouncing audibly um and I you know I I had a lot of different tips from different teachers all of which had to do with like distributing the weight in different ways in the bow arm um you know in the elbow in the in the hand um not once did anyone suggest that i should inhale and exhale um so i kind of figured that out myself um when i started uh you know doing yoga with a with a prominent breathing practice and noticed what an effect it had on my heart rate, on the relaxation in my hands.

So definitely, I make time to breathe now and have for the last 10 plus years. Not only before I go on stage, so in my dressing room, I will usually do a at least, you know, three to five minutes of a breathing exercise where I sit and I try and visualize sending air and summoning air for my belly, ribs, and chest. Um, another, um, practical tip I like to, to practice, um, both on the yoga mat and, um, in the dressing room is lengthening my exhale so that they're longer than my inhales. So basically breathing to a, to a pattern, you know, inhale for four, exhale for six, something like that. Um, so I definitely make time to breathe before I go on stage. But then once I get on stage, I've got like, um, there, there are just things at this

point, they happen really quickly and I barely notice them anymore. It's just, it's part of some sort of subconscious routine, but I make sure that I can really feel the soles of my feet, obviously not on the ground. They'll be in my shoes, but I'll, I'll try and spread my weight evenly all across my feet, spread my toes as wide as my shoes will allow, and just feel really rooted through the soles of my feet. Put a little bend in my knees, and then I'll take at least three deep breaths. And on stage, I try and think of breathing as much as I can, almost to the point of it not pain but like like a balloon being uncomfortably full like that's how full I want to be so that then when it relaxes I've got all this extra space like Melissa was talking about

earlier that was such a good vivid image that I just did that while you're I just felt I was like oh how does that feel it feels great so anyone listening I invite you I'm out of breath because that sentence was so long. Right. So, um, yeah, a balloon that's like nearly about to pop, but won't pop. Um, yeah. So, so I always just take those couple seconds, um, just to feel my weight across my feet, feel my lungs at their fullest capacity. Um, and then, you know, exhale into my down bow, which I can now do without shaking most of the time. It doesn't mean I'm not nervous, but you know, my hands are, are a little bit more obedient. And one thing, um, we, we run into this situation a lot when we teach masterclasses, um, students sort of feeling like it's an

imposition on the audience to take three seconds to take some deep breaths and we have them do it. And of course, it feels like an eternity for them if you're not used to doing it. But what it does, and we try our best to convince people, convince students of this, is not only does breathing, making time to breathe, make you as the performer feel better. It actually, it's like yawning. It makes other people around you want to do it. So I'm glad you said it. This sort of proves my point, even though I swear I didn't set Melissa up. um me talking about breathing made you want to breathe you know just like if someone yawns you

yawn um so if a performer visibly is making that time to carve out a little space a little bubble for themselves on stage by breathing you kind of can't help but want to do it yourself like you realize oh that seems like it might be really nice really nice and calming so you you're inviting others into your space and isn't that what performing is all about anyway um and you start to think as a performer that it's it's not just about what's coming out of my instrument but it's it's the whole force field of energy that I'm projecting um and I think yoga has certainly taught me a lot about that both in uh musically through breathing and just yeah just the energy that impalpable energy you carry around. And like anything else, that's something that needs

to be practiced. Yeah. You're like creating space, not only for yourself, but for your audience to be able to receive what you're offering in a more relaxed way. Absolutely. Yeah. And then it turns performing rather than performing like a trained circus animal, putting on a show for people you start to take on the role instead of someone who's merely guiding a collective experience so it's not you're not kind of performing at people but you're sharing something I love that yeah how about you Melissa what are your thoughts on that um I mean honestly much of what Elena said and also I guess I would just add for me personally I also went through the idea of my right hands shaking as I would get nervous and starting to try to figure out what to do about

that. And breathing was absolutely helpful. Also, there came a point as I got older, when I started to feel really vulnerable about the idea that I was sharing my personal emotions through my music with a room full of strangers. And I don't remember the exact moment or day or performance, but it just hit me and it felt pretty overwhelming and then I started to be scared to do that because if I'm speaking I mean speaking about my emotions has never quite been my favorite thing to do and meeting with our participants at our retreats we have what we call share time in the evening and share time has become this beautiful time when people it's it's unscripted so people can share whatever is on their mind and it's been a time to see that lots of we have more in common

than not and we're complicated and there are lots of things going on inside of us and we share this space that we don't even know because we don't often take time to talk about it um you know particularly in the musical world when injuries come up it's not something that is shared it's more so something that's kept quiet or even covered up and if you think again in the sports world when someone gets injured you hear the commentators talk about how well they're doing or what happened in the last practice and when we might see them back on the field and you can't wait they're looking strong and in the music world we would like to think that it should be the same way? Wouldn't you want to see a person you enjoy performing back on the concert stage

should they have gotten injured or had to go through something? And so having these share times really showed me that we do share more emotionally and physically than we don't. And so then I guess starting to embody that and starting to feel like what Elena was saying that my yoga or my performance doesn't have to look like anyone else's and so often I think we learn things and we think there's a right or a wrong way to play it but really it's yours and I wish we went back to the days when you could put on a record and you knew who it was because it was their sound it was like someone speaking with their voice truly through an instrument and nowadays it's almost like um who does that sound like it could be this one it could be these other ones and we've

sort of lost like the special quality of being unique and I would say tapping back into that and starting to cherish that again has been a true gift and a joy to explore and speaking of gift and joy to explore I was really loving what I saw on your website about these sessions that you give to younger students it's kind of going back to your dream of having a summer camp but in a smaller format. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that because I feel like everything that you've talked about so far is so needed in our community right now, especially with all the stress that everyone is, you know, living in, of course, with, you know, we've seen it coming for decades, but the scrutiny that comes with the increase of media usage, videos, all of these

things. And so I feel like there's a real need and desire and a wave also going on in the musical community of going back to these values of, you know, being unique and going back to this joy of music making. And I feel like that's, you know, what you guys do with, of course, the retreats, but also these sessions. So I'd love to hear a little bit about the sessions. sure so our sessions are for students and the sessions came after the retreats because we felt like it still was important to start to share these ideas and these concepts with musicians as they're forming and so sessions are held well when we're in person and not in a pandemic at schools or at summer institutes or community music centers whatever it may be and so

now in the virtual world it has moved to being online and I think like you said in these uncertain times it's been a really important space to work in because right now really all we have is ourselves And so music making is a communal thing, and we miss that. We miss being with people. But if we can be in community on the screen, starting to strengthen ourselves from the inside, it still has proven to be powerful and beneficial. And on a practical, literal note, I would say our sessions vary in format from place to place, depending on how much time we're there or what the school or festival or institute is asking for. But I would say it like an ideal day of sessions for us would look like the two of us co-leading a movement class where and we trade off teaching so that one of us can always be keeping an eye on the students and, you know, doing little alignment checks and making sure everyone's staying safe. um so a yoga class with breathing built in some meditation plenty of attention given to the wrists and arms um a lot of alignment work so we so we know how the the whole body um can stand and combat gravity optimally some flowing some cool down some yummy stretches so kind of um a nice

overview to yoga and movement for a musician's body so we would have maybe a 75 minute session of that. Then we might hold an instrumental masterclass or actually any sort of masterclass as we worked with singers, which is really fun for us. We learned so much. But a musical masterclass where we listen to students play and approach the music. I mean, we certainly address phrasing and, you know, normal masterclass stuff, but we have a real emphasis on breathing and alignment and making the performing experience, like we said earlier, as comfortable as possible through breathing and carving out that space both physically and emotionally. Then we might break off into private sessions where we see people one-on-one and work with specific bodily

issues they might have or specific anxiety issues they might have and see what we can do to help that um and then we might close out the day with a q a or a share time because it's been really interesting actually over the last few years how open students have been with us not just about physical issues but about mental issues as well and we have found that yoga one of i mean one of the many many many cool things about it is it's such a layered practice it starts with this sort of physical movement and layer by layer you kind of work inward to the breath and then to the your mental state mental health emotional health um so we've gone pretty deep totally by accident with a lot of our students who um you know might they might have done a gentle back bend and then 15

minutes later they're like telling us about the last 10 years of you know issues they've had um with their instrument. So it's, it can be a really powerful thing. But anyway, all of this is to say that, um, the sessions can, can take on many forms and, um, it's basically just what the institution is looking for. That's amazing because so often these are things that could come in much later in one's life. I mean, you were talking about how you explored and came with what works for you in terms of you know the breath exercise that you were describing and how that helps you performing but to expose the younger students to this approach of that they can pay attention to those things they can have this awareness and tune in to their feelings both physical feelings

the experience and their emotions of music making in that way I feel like it's it's so beautiful and important because it's really kind of creating a new generation of musicians who is you know they are more aware and more open and and kind of setting the stage for an environment that's going to be um just more accepting loving compassionate all of those things yeah i love that that's the goal yes it's definitely our goal this is great i really want to i want to go to one of those um retreats as well i have my eye on the august 2021 so how tell me about this then a little bit what um what can people expect in the retreat and what do they walk away with you think oh great question honestly every retreat is different it it is unique it's its own personality

because it's really a first come first serve basis so we actually have this joke on our website it used to say apply the application is here but as musicians everyone thought it was an audition although no tape no tape is required like oh my god am I gonna get in so much time at share time so much shared I didn't know if I'd get in there's no audition so we simply need some information to know about you um but yeah so it's a first come first serve basis and luckily it's just been a beautiful group of people we tell ourselves we remind ourselves people who are willing to do yoga twice daily. Come to a country house in Vermont and stay under the same roof together for a week. Communal meals, farm to table, amazing cooking. Can't be that much of an unkind person.

It's pretty self-selecting, I would say. It's quite a specific group of people. Yes. So these are our days. So we arrive to this house and the entire house is ours. there's a space that's set aside for yoga we leave the yoga mats out and then everyone's got their rooms and so we book in the days with the yoga morning yoga then we have breakfast and then during the day people are are able to do whatever it is they want to so some practice some are there for more of a break so they might go out for walks the grounds are beautiful we're close to mountains so you can take a hike uh there are ponds there are lakes it's so many choices to be outdoors um and then sometimes we'll schedule activities everything's optional we always remind

people this is your retreat so you choose what you want to do um and so sometimes we'll make little field trips in case people want to hang out during the day and then we'll come back together late afternoon for the second yoga class and then dinner will happen there's always a delicious dessert and so with dessert we transition into the living room and then it turns into share time and what share time is really differs from day to day it could be a game night it could be a chat it could be a sing-along it could be a made-up anything and then usually it almost becomes like a fun no one wants to go to sleep so you know it could go into the night and it's basically summer camp for adults i would say with that's what i call it but then people remind me that

not everyone loves summer camp I happen to love summer camp but um but the then you asked about the takeaway and you know at the end of the week it's an emotional goodbye because we really have become like family we've shared a hard physical week you know when you do something that's physically draining you can't help but tap into an emotional side of of yourself you know and and start to notice there's work to do and the thing is once we notice this during the week you start to see that everyone is there for each other everyone is rooting for each other and as musicians it's a beautiful thing to see that there's space for everyone to succeed and you want to see people be their best selves and that's what happens and so um that definitely trickles

into the musical also like we've had people um kind of do mock auditions if they had a if they had a big um audition or orchestra audition coming up or a concerto date people have like run through pieces um shared their composition so the the camaraderie that forms through the yoga and through the hiking and and just through being together in nature it definitely um trickles into the into the musical aspects of our lives which is sort of what we were hoping for when we started these retreats in an abstract sense we didn't quite know how it would land with people but like the musical community that has formed has just been so heartwarming and again it speaks to that idea of moving music into a kinder more supportive place so we credit the yoga with that

and just the humans that yes and that is extended beyond the retreats and so now we have chat groups that continue three years later and claiming victories sharing auditions um wins not wins all of the things and so for each person it's an individual takeaway but I would say as a collective the takeaway is is definitely more it's positive it's the family thing yeah we've definitely formed a little retreat family which is it feels very cozy another thing you said i love is when you said that through the physical action a lot of emotions come and i feel like it's the same thing for me too where the the yoga practice will untangle things in the practice room for me you know and yes and it's also you show up different differently in the practice room you

have this um awareness this uh this open space exactly between the stimulus that we get and our response so this is yeah it's great melissa and lena can i ask you before i let you go um maybe a quick actionable tip that the listeners could implement today in their practice room or their musical lives or maybe there's a challenge you would give them maybe it's a breeze a big bubble or something well i would love to share a tool that i've i learned at my own yoga teacher training and um i i'm in development with applying it to myself but it's definitely one that i'm quick to share with other people. So the way our practice teaches would work throughout the training is before every time we were set to teach a yoga class, either to one person or to the whole

room, there was a process that would happen. So before we would teach, we had to write out three, what they would call inquiries. So three, basically things that we wanted to explore, not even goals they didn't use the word goals because that felt too kind of finite and competitive with ourselves so they were inquiries three things we wanted to inquire about ourselves and this could be um can i make my language efficient um can i cue from the ground up things like that so then you would teach the class you would then claim three victories like melissa mentioned before so claim three victories and they could again be tiny like I ended on time or um I didn't say um a lot you know things like that and then it's harder than it looks and then

once we had really claimed those victories we would write down three potential improvement points or pips um so these weren't again uh in the musician fashion three things we hated or like oh I can't believe I messed that up or you know not criticisms they were three potential improvement points so I try and share that process with as many musicians as possible and myself included and I really have to you know remind myself to do this and I think if if the musicians process both in the practice room and with regard to performing could more closely resemble that um i think we'd be taking some steps in a in a much healthier direction because you know claiming victories and setting inquiries rather than hard and fast goals it

doesn't make us lazy or less ambitious or less excellent um it's just a way to reframe and kind of balance out expectation versus compassion i would say so that'd be my um my little tip that's a great that was so good and you were so quick i've been thinking you know i wanted to share one of my favorite breathing exercises although I started to think about how much we've talked about breathing but I wanted to to maybe impress upon people that that you're worth it sometimes I feel like we don't even think we're worth it to start but something we teach is having a beginner's mindset and when we come to something we shouldn't expect to be good because we're beginning and so as musicians we've gotten to a point where we're

probably accomplished and we can basically do things. So being a beginner is scary. We don't want to do it. We don't want to sit in that space of, of feeling the difficulty of whatever it is we might be doing. Um, but really whether it's entering a practice room, stepping onto a yoga mat, going to a retreat, whatever that may be, um, just knowing that you're worth the exploration and you're worth the time and the journey and that from a beginner's mindset so much can grow and through that the the possibilities are endless this is great i want to thank you so much for for speaking with me and you know taking this time to bring this awareness and shining your light onto us today. So I'm so grateful,

so excited to have discovered you. I'm going to have all of the information about intermission, the retreats, the sessions, and in the show notes. And I'm just so happy that we've had this chance to talk. Thank you so much. Thank you. It was really wonderful to speak with you. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Melissa White and Elena Urioste from Intermission. You can find more information about Intermission, Melissa and Elena, by visiting intermissionsession.com. And I encourage you all to download their amazing intermission app. And I hope to see you at one of their upcoming retreats. And I'm going to have all of this information for you in the show notes. I would love to know what

your favorite takeaways from today's conversations were. So please get in touch with me. I am mindoverfinger on both Instagram and Facebook. And why not share the podcast with your friends and tag me Elena and Melissa. So we know you enjoyed the episode. And the last few words before I wrap this up, as I've mentioned at the beginning, the Music Mastery Experience is starting on September 21st. It's a transformational journey to loving the practice room, rocking the stage, winning the job, and taking your career to new heights. The Music Mastery Experience is a three-month-long, highly personalized group coaching program where I'll show you how to implement mindful and effective practice techniques, make them habits, and get results.

I've spent years developing my deep practice model and putting it to the test in my own career and with my students, and I'm so proud to share it with you through my music mastery experience. Over the course of 12 weeks, you will learn to direct your attention and your intention. We're going to explore efficient practicing systems, performance preparation methods that give you massive results, and will overhaul your mindsets so you can experience wonderful music making day after day. You'll reach a superior level of productivity and performance. And I've created for you an environment that's going to provide you with tons of inspiration and motivation. so if you're looking to elevate your practice and performance i think the music mastery experience

is perfect for you the music mastery experience kicks off september 21st and there are a limited number of spots so let's talk now to guarantee you a spot in the program and to have you take advantage of the early sign up bonuses so book a call with me we'll talk about your goals your dreams and how the music mastery can get you there. You can find more information at mindoverfinger.com slash MME. And of course, I'll have that link for you in the show notes. So that's it for today. Again, thank you and à bientôt.