The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 164 Practice Room Superpower: Joy

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast, episode number 164. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, optimal performance, and building a purposeful life and fulfilling career. I'm your host, violinist, and certified performance and life coach for musicians, Dr. René-Paul Gaultier. Hi everyone. I hope this episode finds you doing well. We are wrapping up our month of discussing performance anxiety and ways to prepare for performance so we can minimize this anxiety. And to finish this series, I cannot think of a better way to transform your performance experience

Starting point is 00:00:50 than to transform how you practice and how this element of joy, of intentionally bringing joy, welcoming it, and using it in your practice can change everything for you. So today, we're going to cover ways to incorporate more joy, presence, variety, and creativity in your practice. Infusing joy and purpose in your preparation journey, having it alongside you day after day, is going to have a profound impact on both how well you prepare and how confident you feel on stage. It's been demonstrated that joy broadens your focus and expands your thinking. And research shows that a positive mindset can increase productivity by 31% compared to a negative, neutral, or stressed state. So as your mind becomes more open, you find yourself feeling

Starting point is 00:01:51 more curious, generating more ideas, and ultimately becoming more productive. How about that? for significant benefits in the practice room. And speaking about significant benefits in the practice room and confidence on stage, before we dive into the joyful prompts, I want to invite you to join us for the Performance Anxiety Solution Workshop. We go live on April 1st and 2nd, 2023. But if you're listening to this episode after that date, you can catch all of the replays indefinitely by going to mindoverfinger.com slash P-A-S. So if you're someone who's struggling with performance anxiety, who feels like you have simply not been able to reach your full potential on stage yet, if you don't know how to make all of that hard work you do in the practice room

Starting point is 00:02:42 get you incredible results on stage, this is the workshop and I have designed it for you. I've been there. I know the struggle. And with years of research and experience and successes, I have the blueprint you need to start experiencing joy, flow, and confidence on stage. It's absolutely possible for you to experience optimal performance, and I can show you how. I'm going to give you a system to prepare for optimal performance, how to transform your performance anxiety into performance enhancement, how to condition yourself for confidence on stage, and how to do all of this without working harder or driving yourself crazy. So go to mindoverfinger.com slash PAS today and join us live or in replay. And that link will be in the show notes for you. So as I thought about this topic of joy, I decided to reshare an episode that came out here on the Mind Over Finger podcast in March 2020 about how focusing on joy helped me reconnect

Starting point is 00:03:56 with my love of playing and brought so much mindfulness in my practice as we entered the COVID-19 craziness. So I'm bringing back to you the Joyful Practice Challenge. And I think many of you are going to be excited about this because I have heard from so many of you that have shared with me how much you loved it, how much it made your practicing so much better, and how much presence, effectiveness, and enjoyment you got in your practice as a result of going through this Joyful Practice Challenge. Now, I'm not technically bringing the challenge itself back, but I invite you to listen to

Starting point is 00:04:36 this episode and experiment over the next few days at your own pace. So first, let me explain what the challenge was. Then I'll offer a few ways you can include it in your work. And then I will deliver the prompts to you. And of course, you know me, I have a handout for you. In this handout, you'll find a resume of those prompts and some space for you to explore and reflect on how they worked for you. This is available at mindoverfinger.com slash resources. And yes, I will have the link in the show notes. Okay, what is the Joyful Practice Challenge? The Joyful Practice Challenge is something that I came up with in the very first few days of the sheltering in place and something that really helped me set the tone for my mindset

Starting point is 00:05:26 throughout the early days of the pandemic. So in early March 2020, the ring cycle was canceled here in Chicago at the Lyric Opera. And that was really devastating for me. And all around me, I was seeing people dealing with similar heartbreaks. You remember all the canceled graduations, the postponed weddings, the massive loss of income, all of this. I think everyone experienced very significant losses during this crisis. And of course, the precious lives lost and the pressure on our healthcare workers, I'm sure you remember.

Starting point is 00:06:03 And in the beginning, with everything getting even more unsettling around us, I felt the need to reclaim my creative power and use this time to do something meaningful with other people. And that's how the Joyful Practice Challenge was born. And that support and inspiration we provided each other with was really a great source of positive energy in the middle of the chaos. The goal of the challenge was to focus back on what's at the core of music making that we so often forget, right? The fact that we love it. And the truth is that when we really make joy a part of our practice, when we make an effort to figure out ways to stay engaged, that's when we truly are interested and that's when progress happens.

Starting point is 00:06:58 So focusing on joy in practice is a powerful tool in becoming more efficient. So for 12 days, I posted prompts in my Mind Over Finger community, and they're still there if you're curious. And we committed to spending 10 minutes focusing on my suggestions or on anything else that made practicing fun, enjoyable, and or meaningful. It was a lot of fun, and it was so incredible to read everyone's amazing findings and realizations. It was hugely inspiring for me. And since then, I've held the challenge twice, and I've released two podcast episodes

Starting point is 00:07:38 about it. Number 72, which is the original joyful practice challenge, and that is the content you're getting today. And episode 128, which is the third practice challenge. And for that second and third challenges, I enlisted the help of some of my friends who also happen to be some of the world's best artists, and they contributed with their joyful practice tips. So when you're done listening to this episode, feel free to catch number 128, where you're going to hear from Rachel Barton Pine, Mary Elizabeth Bowden, Vijay Gupta, Tom Hooten, Kim Keshkasyan, Ryan Lewis, Jennifer Montone, Lori Niles, Elizabeth Rowe, Ralph Schiano, and Mimi Zweig. And you can head to the Mind Over Finger Facebook community to watch all the live videos from March 2021, where James Ennis,

Starting point is 00:08:33 Elizabeth Fadley, Simon Fisher, Billy Hunter, Stefan Jakiv, Tessa Lark, Damaria McGill, and Alyssa Tong shared their secrets to a joyful and efficient practice. So for today, you can sit back and relax, listen to those prompts, and keep them in mind as you practice in the next few days. And you can also try to recreate the challenge for yourself. If you want to try it, here are some really simple and flexible guidelines. So commit to spending 10 minutes of your practice focusing on one or more of the prompts, or as I said above, on anything that makes it fun, enjoyable, and or meaningful to you. The prompts are a great place to start, but don't feel in any way limited by them. They're merely suggestions. The important thing is for you to explore what brings joy and

Starting point is 00:09:34 meaning in your practice. I strongly recommend that you write down some notes every day and keep track of your experience, the questions that come up, and your findings in the handout I've created for you. Also, think of enlisting an accountability or inspiration partner to go through the challenge with you. And of course, please share your experience with me and keep me posted. I'm mindoverfinger on Instagram, so share those posts and tag me. I'd love to share this journey with you. Don't forget to grab the handout at mindoverfinger.com slash resources. And the link for this and links for all of the other things I've mentioned are in the show notes for you. Okay, now that we're all set, here we go.

Starting point is 00:10:31 So day one, we're easing into joy. Pick up your instrument and play anything you want. Some long tones, an etude, a piece you like, an exercise you're curious about, or maybe you feel like improvising. Anything goes. Pick something you really want to play. Enjoy it. Make it feel delicious. And as the 10 minutes comes to a close, start thinking about a specific project you'd like to pick for this challenge. Is there a piece you'd like to learn or a technical skill you'd like to work on. Or you just want to keep this completely open and have a free play every day. Once again, anything goes. Day two. Day two is all about nurturing a childlike curiosity. Usually when you practice, are you scrutinizing everything with a severe ear and a judgmental heart?

Starting point is 00:11:31 Is your quest for perfection causing grief and frustration? So the way you approach practicing can really slow down your progress. Let's try a different approach. Nurture a childlike curiosity in your practice today. For 10 minutes, experience playing with complete open-mindedness. No judgment, only curiosity, exploration, and objective observations. Ask yourself, what am I curious about today? What do I want to play?

Starting point is 00:12:04 How do I feel right now? What does it sound like? Am I noticing anything new in the score? What would happen if I tried it like this instead? Ask yourself those questions and notice your thoughts. What other questions popped in your mind? What did you notice? How did it feel to approach things this way?

Starting point is 00:12:24 How did it affect your playing? day three is all about breath for practice before we even begin to practice our heads are often so full of thoughts goals expectations concerns and anxiety the best mood and mindset regulator is actually the easiest thing for us to do breathing so try this today begin your practice session by closing your eyes and taking several deep breaths or by doing a breath exercise of your choice. Play something slowly for five minutes and bring extreme awareness to what is happening to your breath. Don't try to control your breathing. Simply notice how you're breathing. What do you notice? How does it feel? What happens to your playing when you focus on your breathing? What

Starting point is 00:13:17 happens to your body. Then on day four, pick one teeny tiny thing. Today you bring your focus to one teeny tiny thing you'd like to improve and you explore it. So pick a really small element in something you're playing. Transition between two notes, an articulation, one shift, a bow change, the shape of one note explore what is happening gently and with patience ask questions and consider solutions using positive language don't try to fix it just explore different options for fun and notice what happens to the passage when you're simply exploring without judgment and with pure childlike curiosity. Then on day five, try a body scan.

Starting point is 00:14:12 Today, before you launch into serious practicing, use your 10 minutes of joyful practice to do a body scan. So pick an exercise or a piece that you enjoy and can play rather mindlessly, maybe some long tones or slow scales or a piece you know really well by memory, or you can also improvise. And as you play, bring your awareness to your breath, not controlling it, just noticing it.

Starting point is 00:14:39 Then move this awareness slowly through all the different parts of your body and notice what happens. Notice where the tension is. Pay attention to your feelings as well. So maybe bringing your attention to one specific area will awaken a feeling, either good or bad. What do you feel? Why do you think you're getting this specific feeling sensation associated to this body part? You can also try that exercise throughout your practice whenever you feel tension or frustration rising, or when you're working on a particularly difficult passage and feel

Starting point is 00:15:15 stuck. Try playing the passage while focusing on your breath and moving the awareness slowly throughout the body and observe what happens. for day six we explore the power of the gaze in general our focus is heavily influenced by what we look at and those of you who practice yoga will know how drishti or the gaze is a big element in improving concentration bringing precision to the movements and directing the energy so we're going to have some fun with it in your joyful practice segment today play letting your eyes go anywhere they want. Notice where they go. Notice what you see and if it influences what you're playing.

Starting point is 00:15:58 Then bring your gaze to specific areas of your body. Use a mirror if necessary and notice what happens. For example, what happens if you look intently at your left index finger? What are you thinking? How do you feel? Do you notice an effect on your playing? Then play a short passage with your gaze fixed to the ceiling? What do you notice? Then try playing with your eyes closed. What do you experience? There are many other things you can try. For example, what happens if you play a passage and look intently and with hyper focus at the music as if you're trying to imprint it forever in your mind? If you play the same passage again with your eyes closed, can you see the music? Keep experimenting and trying new things and have some fun with it.

Starting point is 00:16:47 On day seven, ask how creative can you get? Do you get stuck in the rut whenever you work on a hard passage and always resorting to the same way of working on the same stuff? So today I challenge you to come up with at least five new fun ways to work on a passage. Pick a passage that presents a challenge at the moment. Think of at least five ways to work on it that are completely different than what you've done for this type of difficulty in the past. Get really creative. Here are some possibilities. So how about playing it slower than you've ever played it, analyzing every movement, every detail. Or you could do fast practice with note grouping, playing it in a different key or a different

Starting point is 00:17:38 string backwards with a different style. Or you can even arrange an etude to fit the passage. Anything is possible. Go wild. Do anything you'd like. We're not so much focused on the results as to experimenting with new possibilities and seeing what could help. On day eight, we get a little bit more serious and we observe fear. What would a challenge be without a little bit of fear, right? In exploring fear, we get familiar with it and we diffuse some of its power. Think of a passage that's giving you grief. Now let's pause for a moment. Are you struggling with this passage solely because you lack the skill?

Starting point is 00:18:21 Or is there something more at play here? Might there be some fear getting in your way? Let's explore that. Play the passage a few times and examine your feelings as you're playing it. List all the negative feelings that come to you when you play this passage. Then keep playing and examine further. Do you have strong emotions about the whole passage? Or is it just a few specific notes in particular?

Starting point is 00:18:49 Or one particular element about the passage? Why do you think you feel this way? To what degree? How strong are the emotions? Without judging it and without trying to change anything, play it a few more times and keep observing your feelings and thoughts and keep this in mind this is just exploration we're not fixing anything we're just getting acquainted with fear and the rest is for tomorrow then on day nine we work on taming fear now that we've allowed fear to be in

Starting point is 00:19:25 the practice room and we've explored it let's see if we can get comfortable with it pick a scary passage, same or different from yesterday, and play it a few times, investigating your feelings similarly to what you did yesterday. Once you've identified your feelings and their possible origin, play the passage several times and try different approaches to tame your fear. Here are some suggestions. Take a deep breath and play the passage while accepting fear fully. identify where fear shows itself in your body where does it cause tension just notice where it is then bring your full awareness to the tension and let it diffuse feel your breath dissolving the tension engage your courage muscles and jump in what i mean by that is as the scariest part

Starting point is 00:20:24 approaches, focus your awareness more and more on something really tangible. For example, flowing bow arm, relaxed shoulder blades, etc. So what Dr. Don Green would call a process cue. Then as you're thinking about that, play through the passage and notice what happens. Something else you can try is bring a hand to your heart, close your eyes, breathe deeply and mentally play the passage, infusing it with joy and physical comfort. It sounds tacky, I know, but it can be really powerful. Then ask yourself, what else can you try to tame fear? Let that fear, the type of fear, the degree at which you experience it, where and how it manifests itself in you, inspire what you try. What else did you try? How did it feel? What happened to

Starting point is 00:21:21 the passage as you experience taming fear. And before we go today, then just a few words about that. The reason why it's important to figure out the origin of fear is because sometimes there are some really concrete measures you can take to tame it. If it's coming from really not feeling comfortable with a specific skill, then you can plan on working on that skill. Make the decision to get information on the technique, work on it, accept that it might take some time and some patience, and embrace the process. Another reason may be simply because you don't practice playing at a tempo, so you don't have the acquired skill and the courage to play at a full tempo. Kind of like learning to ride the bike, the balance point comes only at a certain speed,

Starting point is 00:22:09 so if you don't grab your courage and go for it, you never get the momentum to ride the bike. and if it's deeper than that there might be a need for a greater personal reflection incorporating some meditation in your life or exploring other modalities to get a better understanding of yourself and of where the fear lives and how to get comfortable with it now day 10 it's time for a treat you've worked pretty hard for the past few days and you've focused on pretty serious stuff for the past two so let's ease back into something more soothing let's sing. Pick your absolute favorite passage in a piece, whether a piece you have to work on or any piece you'd like to play, and focus on phrasing, singing, letting the music flow through

Starting point is 00:22:58 the passage. Explore and have fun with different ways to phrase. And here are some more things to experiment with. Sing through the passage a few times. What do you feel instinctually drawn to phrasing-wise when you sing. Think, how would it sound on a different instrument? Then try to emulate that. Is there a specific emotion you're trying to convey in this passage? Do you have a narrative, a story to tell in this passage? What is going on in the accompaniment? How can you use that even more? Let yourself be free and allow yourself to enjoy expressing yourself through music in this passage. Then day 11, record yourself joyfully. Yes, that's possible. I know that the idea of recording yourself might sound as remote as possible to any feeling of joy.

Starting point is 00:23:53 We can feel so exposed and it can trigger so many feelings of frustration, but recording ourselves can be one of the absolute best ways to progress faster. And that's a great source of joy. There are ways to get more comfortable with it. So let's see. Pick one phrase you'd like to work on. Take a deep breath and set your mind to having an objective view of the experience and a non-judgmental approach of assessing your playing. Record the passage, audio or video. Listen to it one or more times, as many as you'd like. And one, list three things you like about your performance. And then two, identify one thing you'd like to play differently on your next take. Then record another take trying to execute the element you thought of above right away without

Starting point is 00:24:45 practicing. Repeat this process a few times. Keep in mind, and this is a very important thing, music mastery is a path. You will hear things you don't like when you record yourself and beating yourself up about it is not going to help. It's not helpful. So appreciate the process, the fact that you're here holding the instrument, curious, ready to improve. That's a big deal. That's an awesome thing. So appreciate your dedication and your discipline to sit here on the quest to better skills and greater musical expression. You should be proud of yourself. You want to listen to your playing with critical but non-judgmental ears, identifying aspects that can be improved without attaching a judgment to who you are as a person. If you feel frustration mounting, stop and move

Starting point is 00:25:43 on to something else, or maybe try again tomorrow. Finally, on day 12, we have no shoulds, no shame, just relentless tenderness. That's it. We made it. Last day. We've done many things in this challenge. We've played things we wanted to play, brought curiosity into the mix, gave attention to our breathing, used hyperfocus, did body scans, gazed intently, practiced creatively, faced our fears, sang our phrases, and approached recording ourselves from a joyful perspective. So that's a good list. So today, go back to where you started and just play with no should, no shame, just relentless tenderness. And just be there. Experience it with no expectations and no judgments. Let go. There will be plenty of hours of hard, dedicated work

Starting point is 00:26:46 ahead in the days and months to come. So take that 10 minutes and make it deliciously yours. Listen with tenderness. Feel your body with tenderness and reconnect to what it is you enjoy about music making. Let your thoughts and your feelings rise. Let them come and go and simply notice. Notice how you feel and what's enjoyable right now. And when you're done, see if you can carry that peacefulness in the rest of your practice that day. And remember this, when you let the pressure and the need to and the have to get in the way, you close your mind. I think that if you bring more of this relentless tenderness in your daily practice, I think you'll find that you're much more engaged and interested and as a result, way more open to problem solving solutions

Starting point is 00:27:45 and much more efficient. So this is it for the joyful practice challenge. As I said earlier, it brought me so much inspiration, hope and joy. And it was so special to share it with a really awesome community. I hope you try it out. And I'd love to hear back from you what you did, what you observed, how you felt, what kind of results you got, or any thought that crosses your mind about the experience. So please get in touch with me and share your experience. So that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. Stay in touch and à bientôt. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Mind Over Finger podcast. If this content was helpful for you, please share with everyone you think could benefit

Starting point is 00:28:44 from it. Take a screenshot, share on social media and tag me. I'm mind over finger everywhere. So reach out, send me a DM and let me know how this content helped you. Let's keep the conversation going. As always, I 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 free resources on efficient practice and performance preparation, links to sign up to my free workshops, and information on how to work with me. Don't forget to sign up for my newsletter to receive your free guide to a productive mindful practice, transcripts from the Mind Over Finger podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week, and more. also join the mind over finger facebook community my private group for access to my live videos and to exchange with a community of like-minded musicians so make sure you're subscribed to the podcast and if you have specific questions for me or my guests that you would like answered

Starting point is 00:29:53 in an episode share them with me using the link in the show notes or send me a dm on instagram or Facebook. That's it for today. Again, thank you and à bientôt.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 164 Practice Room Superpower: Joy

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