The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 096 Uri Vardi: The Feldenkrais Method: Awareness Through Movement

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast, episode number 96. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice and building a purposeful career. And now your host, violinist, teacher and high performance coach, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope you're having a fantastic day as you tune in to this episode. Today, I'm really happy to bring you a very special artist, Professor Uri Vardy. Uri Vardy has performed as a recitalist, soloist, and chamber player across the United States, Europe, South America, and his native Israel. He studied at the Rubin Academy in Tel Aviv, was an artist diploma student at Indiana University, and earned his master's degree from Yale University.

Starting point is 00:01:03 His teachers have included Yano Starker, Aldo Pariseau, Eva Janzer, and Uzi Wiesel. Uri has recorded and toured widely with the Israel Chamber Orchestra and has served as assistant principal cellist of the Israel Chamber Orchestra and principal cellist of the Israel Sinfonietta. In 1990, following an extensive teaching and performing career in Israel, Uri was appointed professor of cello at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to his work at Wisconsin, Uri has taught and conducted masterclasses at numerous music schools, including the Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, Indiana University, Yale University, the Eastman School of Music, Oberlin College, Cleveland Institute of Music, University of Iowa, Geneva Conservatory, Paris Conservatory, and the Jerusalem Music Center.

Starting point is 00:02:01 He's also participated in several summer music festivals across the U.S. and Israel. In his teaching, Uri puts great emphasis on the choreography of playing, the relationship between movement and sound, and in order to further his understanding of this approach, he specialized in the Feldenkrais method, for which he received the 1999 University of Wisconsin-Madison Arts Institute Faculty Development Award. He completed a Feldenkrais practitioner's training and was certified by the Feldenkrais Guild of North America and by the International Feldenkrais Federation as a Feldenkrais practitioner in 2003. In our conversation, Uri talks to us about the basic principles of the Feldenkrais Method, how it aims to bring new awareness and possibility into every aspect of our life using gentle, mindful movements, And he elaborates on his philosophy of teaching, which I think you will find very beautiful. And before we join Uri, I want to remind you that the doors are open to enroll for the Music Mastery Experience,

Starting point is 00:03:14 my life-changing, highly personalized group coaching program. Over the course of three months, I take you through a massive transformation in your music making. We're going to tackle the elements that are going to help you feel engaged and efficient in the practice room and confident on stage. From our first session, you will start seeing results and you will not believe what you're capable of accomplishing by the end of the program. We cover tangible and effective practice and performance preparation techniques, mindsets that will optimize your playing and I give you a real process to consistently reach peak performance

Starting point is 00:03:57 for those auditions and those concerts that are coming back. You will truly enjoy the entire experience of music making. Here's what Anna said about the Music Mastery experience. I love Renee's knowledge of mindset, music, and technique, her never-flagging joyful energy, and her constructive engagement with every single one of her students. I went through the program twice, and it elevated my music to unforeseen heights. The individual coaching is also amazing. That and the community of the groups are further highlights of the program. Thank you, Anna.

Starting point is 00:04:40 In the Music Mastery Experience, you can get exactly what you need to create your ideal musical experience. Whether it's winning an audition, performing optimally time after time, leveling up your career, or exploring new areas of your playing. And you're going to do all of this while finding meaning and enjoyment in the whole process. So if you have big dreams, big plans, and you're ready for more in your musical life, book a call today at mindoverfinger.com and let's make it happen. And now, my conversation with Uri Vardy. Let's go to the show. Uri Vardy, it's such an incredible pleasure to have you on the show today. I'm very happy to be here and looking forward to have a nice discussion with you.

Starting point is 00:05:46 Uri, you have such a wonderful path. It was so interesting for me to get to know more about you and watch the incredible content you have out there. So many great YouTube videos and I'm going to have all of these links in the show notes of this podcast. And what you do resonates so strongly with the work that I do with Mind Over Finger. I can't wait for the listeners to hear more about you and your work. So would you please tell us about you, how you got to where you are, and how your artistic path has unfolded? Wow, wow, that's a loaded one. Yeah, so I'll go back very briefly about my background. I'm a son of two Holocaust survivors who were liberated both from Bergen-Belsen and were taken

Starting point is 00:06:42 both to hospitals in Sweden to to recuperate and they actually met each other in Sweden and got married in Sweden then went back to Hungary where they were both from and my mother who belonged to a Zionist organization prior to the war actually found her group in Hungary and they joined the group getting ready to move to Israel. But before that, they started living a commune life, which is the Israeli kibbutz, which where people live together and share everything together. So they had about two years there, a year and a half. And this is where I was born. So I was born in hungary and then in 1948 when the state of israel was uh got independence this is when my family my parents and i uh immigrated to israel to the kibbutz that they founded there

Starting point is 00:07:48 so i grew up on the kibbutz and on the kibbutz you know it's uh it was they just started life there and they had to invent the wheel they have to had to invent everything including education for the kids so it took i i think i was 13 when they finally decided on the kibbutz the kids who show some talent in music should get some music lessons before that we all played some recorder and and i loved it and music was something that really captivated my attention much more than sports or any of that stuff. So

Starting point is 00:08:34 they told me that, yeah, you show musical talent, so you can start taking a serious instrument. What instrument do you want to take? I want the cello. No, cello is too late. Why don't you take a wind instrument

Starting point is 00:08:50 like clarinet or something like that? And I was already very stubborn. I said, no, I want either cello or nothing. So they allowed, they let me and I started taking lessons. And for me, it was mostly kind of a refuge from all the horror stories that I kept hearing from my parents. And music became something that I could relate very closely to. But because I kind of started late, I was I felt that I need to run after the wagon all the time and try to catch up.

Starting point is 00:09:31 Anyway, I started with a teacher in Haifa, which is a coast town in Israel who taught guitar and cello. So, and then I went to study with a major teacher in Tel Aviv, Uzi Wiesel, and then entered the Tel Aviv University Music Academy when I was around 18 or so. I finished my studies there, did artist diploma also there. and then I wanted to go and study abroad and the person that I wanted to study with was Paul Tortillier that I loved his playing and I met him in Germany

Starting point is 00:10:19 and he accepted me to his class in Essen but the day after that I met the Hungarian String Quartet and the cellist I sat with the cellist and took a lesson it was in Holland and I was in an international chamber music festival,

Starting point is 00:10:38 and he told me about Janos Starker, and I thought, ah, my goodness, this is what I need. I don't, maybe Tautelia is not the right thing for me. So I asked him if he could help me get in contact with Starker, which he did, and the rest is history, because I ended up going to Bloomington to study with Janos Starker for three years. I started the artist diploma

Starting point is 00:11:09 and then I went to do my master's at Yale with Aldo Paoli. So by the way, the picture behind me is, he was a painter also. He made that picture. Oh, wow. This is wonderful. So, but I think the person who influenced me most

Starting point is 00:11:29 about my approach to what does it mean to learn and teach was the pianist, George Schabuck, who was the starkest pianist in Bloomington. And I studied chamber music with him for three years. And he was the one who actually influenced my thinking about teaching more than anybody else. including Starkey. Starkey gave me great ideas about how the cello works,

Starting point is 00:12:05 and he was very much focused on making sure that you use your body in an effective way. But the subtleties of how you approach a student or how you learn and learning and teaching are the same thing, just the two sides of the same coin, I believe. So once I'm able to make the connection there, I have much better access to the students and understand how to approach each one on an individual way rather than try to just teach them what's the right way to play the cello.

Starting point is 00:12:52 Uri, in addition to your impressive career as a performer and a pedagogue, you also are a Feldenkrais practitioner and teacher. I'd love to hear about this. Sure, sure. So, by the way, I mentioned Schaebock. Schaebock's ideas about teaching are very, very similar to what I found out later is the Feldenkrais philosophy. And actually, I learned later from Shebek himself that when he was conducting festivals in Switzerland, in a small town called Ernen, he used to have a group of people in his chalet lying on the floor and doing Feldenkrais lessons. And he would read from Feldenkrais' book, Awareness Through Movement. And one person would read and the others would move.

Starting point is 00:13:50 So Feldenkrais was an Israeli physicist and judo master who knew a lot about martial arts. And he developed a method which was named after, I mean, him, his name. I mean, the Feldenkrais method, Moshe Feldenkrais, his first name was Moshe. And the whole idea with the Feldenkrais method is that we all learn how to move through trial and error. Unlike, for instance, other species, when a calf is being born, a few minutes after birth, they already stand up. And a few hours later, they move with the mother cow, pretty much like the adult species. Now, the same applies with horses and others. And the point is that the knowledge of dealing with movement and gravity

Starting point is 00:15:07 is part of the genetic makeup. So it's very immediate. Now, humans are learning machines. That's why our brain is quite small where we are born, and it grows tremendously through life. Now, when Feldenkrais was working, the common knowledge was that at age, I don't know what, 20-some, the brain stops really learning much. And then it becomes, it starts deteriorating. And already then Feldenkrais said, no, that's not right.

Starting point is 00:15:49 The brain is a very elastic organ. And it constantly makes new connections based on experience. So anybody who goes through a certain experience, and usually a lot of it has to do with kinesthetic sensory experiences, there are new neural connections made in the brain. And a lot of scientists at that time dismissed his ideas. Now, these days, most scientists or brain specialists talk about brain plasticity. That's a common knowledge. And actually, there are many books written about it. And Feldenkrais has been quoted as a pioneer in this kind of thinking.

Starting point is 00:16:49 And the whole idea is that we all learn to use ourselves by trial and error, but very often when we stop the journey of trying new things, we get stuck in that one way that we do things. And we assume that that's really us, the real ourselves. And everything else is not really, in Hebrew we say, or Yiddish kosher. It's not really me. It's something that I acquire now. So Felicris, the whole idea is that in human development, There are so many years at the beginning that babies are so fascinated with so many different things, and they try different things, and then they start playing with what they discover. And then they slowly build up their ability.

Starting point is 00:17:49 They go from the back to the front, and the front, and they lift their head, and then they are standing on four, and then they can sit, and then they start crawling. They can start walking and so on and so forth. But if you know someone and you saw a shadow of that person somewhere in a dark alley, and just by the way they walk, you can recognize that person like as if it was a fingerprint. Everybody has their own fingerprints. And the problem, according to Fallen Christ, is that we, at a certain age, when we start really thinking a lot and become very intellectual and everything needs to be very logical and there's always some things that we need to accomplish, we stop really figuring out how to improve our well-being or our movements. And we get stuck with our habits. So the Feldenkrais method comes to unlock this stuckness and provide the system new experiences so that we can make new neural connections in the brain and start using it.

Starting point is 00:19:11 And the good news is that the same nervous center, nervous system will choose the best configuration of possibilities for a certain outcome. But it can use only the configurations which are available to it at the time. So what we do, we provide new experiences which become available. And then the idea is to leave it alone and let the system take care of itself and use some of these new experiences spontaneously. That was long, wasn't it? No, this was great. One thing I love about this is it's very reminiscent of something I include a lot in my teaching, which is this mindset of beginner's mind. And so when you talk about this, it's this idea of, you know, this endless discoveries and mindful exploration.

Starting point is 00:20:10 I love that about what you're describing about Feldenkrais. In what ways do you see this as beneficial for your students? Okay, so I'll go back a little bit because I've been exposed to other modalities which deal with awareness, body awareness. So when I was an undergrad in Israel and doing my artist diploma there, I used to take Alexander's lessons. And it was very in, in Israel, in spite of the fact that the creator of the Fallen Christ Method lived in Israel. And actually, all the great musicians at the time, Yudi Menuhin, Gina Bachauer, the pianist, And many, many, whenever they came to Israel to perform, they were flocking into Father Christ's studio to take lessons with him because they discovered how important it is. So the way that I look at teaching and learning is the role of the teacher, I believe, is to join the student in the journey of growth.

Starting point is 00:21:29 Of discovery. It's not, the teacher is not there to fix problems that the students brings. I'm always joking that we are not in the fixing business. It's not a body shop for vehicles that we have to fix something. And the key component for success, I think, is the curiosity of the teacher in the person who is in front of them, rather than trying to make them become something that I, as the teacher, believe that they should become. Who am I to decide what's right for that student? I want to discover together with them, first of all, where the passion is and what holds them back from achieving this passion. And very often, it has a lot to do with certain ignorance about who they are and what they do.

Starting point is 00:22:43 kind of an oblivious what i call uh twilight zone mentality that i'm not committed and you know in our language also especially youngsters they say it constantly every other word that they say is like like like like i don't like and i think what it does it dilutes the concept and allows them to stay in this kind of foggy, non-committed place. So where I'm coming into the picture is that I'm curious. I'm not

Starting point is 00:23:27 criticizing them for not being more clear about what it is that is going on. But slowly, slowly I make them realize that they are living in this kind of a twilight area and are not very specific about what it is that they, first of all, just even finding out what it is that you wish that will happen. How do you hear in your inner ear this phrase? What does it do to you? Where are you afraid to show parts of you because you are protecting yourself because maybe it's too painful and the music will bring out some pain in you. So you're tightening up and you're not allowing it to come across clearly. So it becomes like a journey for the two of us to figure out what it is that is going on.

Starting point is 00:24:29 And of course, behind all of that is all of those physical laws that guide our instrumental knowledge. Because a lot of what we do on the instrument, the tools that we choose in order to express and communicate our musical ideas, rely on physical laws. Like gravity is there. Just the idea, and none of my teachers ever talked about the fact that cellos constantly work with a surface which is on a slope, a downhill slope. The cello is diagonal to us, which forces everything that we do downwards into the floor because of the angle. So we have to learn to adjust to that slope, like every normal person who goes downhill automatically will pull back. I mean, the system will pull back, otherwise they will fall on their nose. So all of this awareness needs to be introduced in the teaching.

Starting point is 00:25:50 So it's not only the scales or the double stops or how well your intonation is. Of course, it's very important, all of that, but it is part of the bigger picture. So it's a much more holistic, I think, way of looking at teaching. That's really interesting. What are some of the big transformations that you see in people when they start to practice Feldenkrais and incorporate that in their practicing and their performing? It's funny because I was injured by a chiropractor who pinched a nerve in my neck. And for eight months, I didn't know how to press the string. I lost the ability to do it.

Starting point is 00:26:39 And then I was exposed to Feldenkrais. I knew about it, but I never had an experience with it. And luckily enough, close to medicine, in Milwaukee, I found a wonderful fernicare practitioner, Anna Johnson. She lives in New York now. And I started taking lessons from her, private lessons. And right away, it rang a bell in me. It was so familiar because of my exposure to Shebok. It's like, okay, I really want to learn it more.

Starting point is 00:27:20 Every year we have at UW-Madison a competition among the art faculty for one award of $30,000. I mean, you make a proposal, what are you going to do with $30,000 so that it will enhance your endeavor as an artist and a teacher and so on? And I argued that taking the Father in Christ training for years would really enhance my understanding. And luckily, I won that competition. And so the university actually paid for my training. And then I, together with my wife, who is also a musician and a Falkenkreis practitioner, we took the training in Chicago.

Starting point is 00:28:14 And then I started giving Falkenkreis courses at the University School of Music. And actually, we opened it up to dancers and theater and actors together. Now, the idea is that once people get away from the notion, which is very goal-oriented, I'm going to learn this passage so well that I will never make mistakes, and this is going to make me a great musician. so many people feel that way that so the perfection and for string players a lot of the perfection about intonation and all of the other things is something that is constantly looming and they are very goal-oriented to make sure that they protect themselves from playing

Starting point is 00:29:09 out of tune for playing this way or that way or that way so so much of the energy goes into protecting yourself and i'm always saying that if you are preoccupied with protection and guarding yourself you don't have any energy left for being creative anymore because the whole focus is not about not making mistakes it's not about living what it is that you're doing and immersing in it and getting to know so the process into getting something which is closer to your musical ideals is the key instrument i believe that i want to help my students get so get interested in the process of getting there because no matter how many times i played beethoven a major's cello sonata at carnegie hall i never finished with it

Starting point is 00:30:12 it's there's always something new that comes and and then that uh gets me interested and i can i feel that i that my music evolves rather than okay i reach this level i rent a safe deposit box. I get the key. I lock it there. Whenever I need it, I take the key. I open it and I reproduce it. First of all, it's very boring to look at our profession this way. Plus, that's not what living creatures do, I think. And I want to help my students students become flexible to change the spot and be quick to respond to different things

Starting point is 00:31:13 that happen in them. And once they become more aware of what is really going on and they have a very large, vast toolbox to draw tools from, automatically they will choose something that will make them cope with any situation the best way. Yes. I love this philosophy because it really encourages everyone to dig deep inside and really constantly

Starting point is 00:31:49 reinvent themselves, find the answers within themselves and reinvent themselves through the process. You know, I mentioned the course that we give. So in the course, there is one hour every week where the students lie on the floor and discover stuff based on some Feldenkrais group lessons, which are called Awareness Through Movement, ATM, Awareness Through Movement. The thing is that there's no cash or money involved in it. It's just but the nice thing is that the beginning of semester, there's so much confusion and confusion is actually good because it's not anything that is expected from you, from the student, except to be aware of what is going on. And the instructions can be very confusing, but they are meant to be in a way very specific so that you learn to figure out your habits and add new experiences to your body on the sensory level, on the kinesthetic level. And then after the one-hour lesson, you stand up and you feel very differently than when you started the lesson.

Starting point is 00:33:13 Now, the second half of the course every week is where participants play. And what we do is apply some of the discoverings from the floor without the instrument into their playing. And I encourage the participants also to watch and see if there are interesting things that they see, regardless of whether they are related to the music making or not, that you want to share. Because if something is interesting and something keeps coming back, even the small thing like, you know, every time you are very emotionally immersed in the music, your right eyebrows is raising. But even the awareness of this happening can become a tool for you to discover more about yourself and your way of expressing your music. So there is a balance between what you discover without the instrument on the floor and then what you do when you play with the instrument. And very often people discover that the same habits that they feel on the floor do apply to their performance also, to the way that they handle the instruments. I'd love to hear more about this a little bit.

Starting point is 00:34:49 You're talking about this awareness through movement, this ATM. What are some basic concepts of that, Ian? Is there anything that people listening to this episode could maybe even start applying today? Oh, definitely. First of all, there are many, many free ATM lessons online these days. Anybody can look up Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lessons, free lessons, and you can lie on the floor and try some of them and see what it feels like. And what this method is, these days it's so easy. I mean, when I first was exposed to it, you either had to buy a CD of lessons or attend a workshop or any of that. Now, I will make an analogy.

Starting point is 00:35:49 What does it mean to have a habitual pattern? And habitual patterns are things that go with us all the time in our lives. So, Renee, I ask you, can you interlace your fingers? Is your left thumb over the right or the right over the left? Right over left. Right over left. Mine is left over right. That's my habitual way, and this is yours.

Starting point is 00:36:22 Can you turn and put the right over the left and move all the other digits and feel how it feels? Very strange. Yeah, it's not you, right? Right. That's a habitual pattern. For instance, fold your arms. Which arm is for arm is on top of the other forearm? Left over right, yeah.

Starting point is 00:36:48 Left over right. switch it in here just figuring out how to do it is not that easy right because this is a habitual pattern your central nervous system is functioning with this habit right now it doesn't half of the population will have just the opposite of the the one that feels so strange to you And for them, your habits will feel strange. Now, the point is not to change our habits, but to expose our system to the sensation that comes when we are changing the pattern. And then right away, there are new signals, new neural connections in our system that actually broaden the horizon, broaden the opportunities for us. So this is something very small. So a Feldenkrais ATM lesson is full of minute little changes that the instructor is talking, is instructing the group to do,

Starting point is 00:38:00 which lead the group to discover where things feel uncomfortable or if there is a place where things are more comfortable. Is there one side of them that feel heavier than the other when they lie on the floor? Is there one shoulder blade that feels wider than the other when they lie on the floor? And it's not from a punitive point of view, just to correct it. No, the whole point is not about correcting. It's not about the movement.

Starting point is 00:38:37 The movement is the tool for awareness. That's why he called it awareness through movement. The movement is just an excuse for the awareness to allow more awareness. And every time this kinesthetic sensory awareness comes in, our system becomes richer because we are so accustomed to think about things intellectually and logically. And for us musicians, also overly, with our ears, just about the sound. Many of us are very ignorant about all these cues that come to our system through the kinesthetic senses, through the sensory levels. There are so many cues that come in. Unfortunately, because we are so intelligent and so logical, we kind of throw away all this stuff that we cannot prove logically. And we don't even pay attention to it.

Starting point is 00:39:56 So very small differences we ignore completely because that's not big enough for us to really notice. And I always joke with musicians, OK, if you think about the violin, what's the difference in distance between a finger playing a note in tune and out of tune? It's so tiny, but it's huge. Yeah. And the same applies here. And when you realize how you function, even if something feels slightly better than the other, just noticing it already brings in some kind of a possibility for the system to reorganize on its own. and training ourselves to be aware of those things can definitely impact the way we play and perform absolutely what is playing what is it let's let's let's just think uh out loud what it is that we do so we have a certain image in us about the music that you're going to play now we involve ourselves our heart our mind our everything in creating a story or whatever it is

Starting point is 00:41:28 that we well you know the father cries once you you become aware of physical differences in you It's not just the physiology changes. It affects immediately your mental state and your emotional state too. Because habits are not only in your body, are also in your mind and your heart. And you start noticing some habits. now I've I recently I've been looking even more into it as uh where is the imagination what is the imagination what are the spiritual elements that we are involved with when we create music what is it that we do we when we sit on stage

Starting point is 00:42:22 and we play we send energy out to the hall it is energy i know a lot of people will say oh here's start talking about this new age voodoo stuff that but this is what it is yes and that energy is going to influence people in many different ways and this is what energy does so in order to be authentic with your energy field you need to know yourself and how much you will allow of yourself to get immersed in the music making and you have if you're protecting certain parts of in you you want to know that this is what you are doing and you deprived your listeners from maybe 30 of you when you play because you don't want them to discover all of those things about you so that's not the whole you and then you get the score the composer

Starting point is 00:43:20 and I'm not talking about improvisation I'm talking about what we do let's say in classical music. This is where you get to know the person who wrote it through their score to their music and you really want

Starting point is 00:43:37 to understand what they have, you want to say and then you connect with them in order to become to make a conversation so that you can apply you can communicate that kind of relationship between you and the composer in this particular piece in the most effective way so that

Starting point is 00:43:57 we'll go across and we'll reach people that you want to reach. Now, this requires a lot of soul searching and discoveries. And so the Discoveries are not only physical, like what we do in ATMs, but involve many, many other layers in us. And the more, I think, whole you are in your musical communication,

Starting point is 00:44:37 the more you're going to effectively communicate with your audience. and this needs to be learned I think it needs to be explored and I think the teacher is the most important part there in

Starting point is 00:44:58 helping the students discover it rather than me telling them how they should be who needs another Uri Vardy in the world that's not really the point yeah well yeah i love this wisdom uh before i let you go there's one thing i want to hear a little

Starting point is 00:45:18 bit more about and i saw that you have this wonderful workshop that is usually in person but has been virtual because of covid and it's called your body is your strad can you tell us a little bit more about that yeah of course i think that the title says everything the real instrument is you right no matter how many millions you paid for a strand at the end of the day what is going to make the music come out is the way that you use the real instrument which is you so what we do uh usually uh we started it as the national summer cello institute so we started with cello and we used to have every summer two weeks of getting together

Starting point is 00:46:08 cellists from all over the world to explore new ways of approaching cello teaching. I very much geared it towards other teachers, either teachers or undergrads or grad students who are interested in teaching. And the goal was that I'm very hopeful that the next generation of teachers

Starting point is 00:46:39 will put a lot of emphasis on the discovery elements, the discovery of how the body is functioning while creating organic music, Something that is really organic and whole, full. There's too much, according to my belief and experience, of very mechanical approach to music with a lot of emphasis on perfection. I always say perfection is the enemy of excellence. And it's true because all this energy that goes into protecting us from not being perfect is not available for real good stuff. So the Institute, we usually, I used to invite two other major cello figures in the world to do a presentation and residency with us.

Starting point is 00:47:57 And every morning starts with an ATM for all the participants, and then we apply a lot of it into the actual playing, and we have discussions, and we talk about cello pedagogy issues. Now, we opened it up three years ago to violins, violas, and we started with piano, but we are not sure yet. We might open it up to double bass players also. So mostly strings. And we moved it from Madison to the Adirondacks at Upstate New York, where one of my former masters and DMA students, Kyle Price, who is now the, is very, very successful. he's a cellist of the Cavani Quartet now

Starting point is 00:48:56 and he has a festival there he got to know me through the institute and then decided to come and study and he convinced us to move the institute to the Rondox to his festival now because of COVID we tried something to do it virtually which I have never done ever in my life before COVID.

Starting point is 00:49:22 I've never taught anybody virtually because, you know, the touch, the kinesthetic elements are such an important tool for me. But once I discovered actually the pluses of teaching virtually, we started it last June. We offered it and we had like 75 or 78 participants from all over the world. And so they requested that we do another shorter one in January, which we did. And now we are planning our June Your Body is Your Strat virtual. It's still going to be virtual.

Starting point is 00:50:04 And I think we're going to have great presenters this summer also. So, again, every morning starts with an ATM so people get to understand how important it is to listen to their bodies when they sit and play. And I always say, instead of thinking about warm up with the instrument and doing this pattern of scales and so on, why don't you think about it as reacquainting yourself this morning with the instrument? you don't get up every morning the same way exactly the instrument doesn't get up every morning the same way you want to get to feel each other in the morning so you go slowly and you really create the relationship again based on your awareness of where i think what the instrument can give this morning oh okay i'll let you left let you off the hook we'll wait i will do this i will do that you become very sensitive to feel what is happening and and of course you can do a lot

Starting point is 00:51:11 of different things about about your instrumental technique but but i think the whole idea is okay let's meet this morning and let's see where each one of us us is and then create relationship for today. I love this approach. As you and I are talking, I'm in the middle of what I call the joyful practice challenge. And that's definitely one of my favorite thing about practicing is to do what I call the delightful 10, where before you launch yourself in your practicing and your to-do list is to spend some time with your instrument, just making sounds, exploring where your thoughts are where your body is and just spending some high quality time getting reacquainted with your instrument before you jump right away in the work absolutely and it is a little bit what

Starting point is 00:52:14 we do in atms you get inwards you discover where you are at this particular moment so i sit with the cello and I want to feel at the frog how my arm feels when I allow it to sink into the string through the bow. Just that. How does it feel at the tip? How does it feel to put my left arm in first position this morning? How does it feel to put it in fourth position? How does it feel to put it closer to the bridge? How does it work? And then slowly, slowly I work from that. It's like an ATM. Yes, this is so great. Uri Vardy, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I'm going to put the links of everything you mentioned in the show notes so everyone can access these YouTube videos, information about Your Body is Your Strad,

Starting point is 00:53:12 and all of this great wisdom that you shared with us. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for inviting me to have this talk with you. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Uri Vardy. You can find more information about Uri's activities and the Feldenkrais method at harmoniousmovement.com and you can check out the program Your Body is Your Strad at yourbodyisyourstrad.com. Now, I would love to know what your favorite takeaways from today's conversation were, so get in touch with me. I'm Mind Over Finger on both Instagram and Facebook

Starting point is 00:54:05 and share your thoughts on those topics. As always, I'll have all the information related to this episode in the show notes. You can find them via your podcast app or by visiting mindoverfinger.com where you can also find more information about the Music Mastery experience and how it can help you reach all of your goals. I would love to speak with you, so book your call with me today. That's it for this episode. Again, thank you and à bientôt.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 096 Uri Vardi: The Feldenkrais Method: Awareness Through Movement

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