The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 254 Finding Your Way Back to Playing - Gabriel Radford on rebuilding after fear, injury, and loss of control

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger podcast. This is episode 254. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger podcast, where we dive into the world of mindful music making, peak performance, and crafting a purpose-driven life and career. I'm your host, violinist, certified performance and life coach for musicians, and your guide to unlocking your full potential, Dr. René-Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Mind Over Finger podcast. If you've ever felt your body work against you in performance, if tension, fear, pain, or a loss of control has scrapped into your playing and you don't know why, and if you've ever wondered whether it can actually get better? Well, this episode is for you.

Starting point is 00:00:58 My guest today is Gabriel Redford, third horn of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. This is a position he's held since 2002, and he trained at the University of Toronto and the New England Conservatory. Over the course of his career, he's performed with a great number of orchestras, including the Boston Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, and the Kirov Orchestra. He's also a devoted teacher with a full studio at the University of Toronto and a long-time presence at the Bev Centre for the Arts and the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, where his work earned him the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012. But what brings Gabriel here today goes far beyond his resume. After 15 strong years in his career, Gabriel found himself

Starting point is 00:01:49 navigating a crisis that many musicians face in silence. A shift from normal performance nerves to real fear, followed by a diagnosis of focal dystonia by three different neurologists. Rather than step away, he spent years searching for answers and not only returned to playing at the highest level, but became one of the driving forces behind the Embouchure Project, a research and support initiative helping musicians understand and recover from embouchure and coordination challenges. In our conversation, Gabriel talks honestly about how the crisis began, what he learned about performance, and what he now knows about building a sustainable, joyful relationship with his instrument. We also talk about practice routines, how to approach your instrument with ease, and what it means to actually accept where you are on any given day.

Starting point is 00:02:55 So whether you're navigating something difficult right now, or simply want to understand your instrument and yourself more deeply, this one is going to stay with you. And I'm so glad you're here for this. And if your ear caught something you want to remember, everything's in the show notes. Click the link for the summary, transcript the works. Here's Gabriella Radford. Let's go to the show. Gabriel Radford, thank you so much for being on the show. Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm so glad to be here. It's great to see you after so many years. Amazing. And I have been diving into the content of the Embouchure Project and I have found that there's so many concepts, there's so much information that needs to be accessible to all musicians. You're a horn player, as the

Starting point is 00:03:55 listeners have heard in the intro, you're a fantastic horn player. But I think that what you guys do with this project is so incredible and is impactful for all musicians, string players, pianists, everyone across the board. So I can't wait to dive into this with you today. And I'm the start where I start with every guest, which is please tell us about your journey in your own words. Oh, thanks so much. It's really great to be here. And thanks for looking into the embouchure project. I'm really, really excited about it. Can't wait to talk about it. So far before I needed to know anything about embouchure, of course, I was a horn player. And I went to school where I'm from here in Toronto at the University of Toronto, and then I went to the

Starting point is 00:04:39 New England Conservatory and, you know, fell in love with Boston and Symphony Hall and the Boston Symphony and then got my first job at Winnipeg, which was incredible. I love Winnipeg. And then I got the job that I've always wanted, which is to be a horn player in the Toronto Symphony. And it was an amazing journey. My first 15 years, I felt like I was getting stronger and I felt like my career was on the rise. I was getting lots of great chamber music opportunities, recital opportunities. I was touring internationally with multiple orchestras and things were going really well. And then at some point I noticed playing was becoming a bit more of a struggle. And then what was a sudden trickle of doubt turned into crisis mode

Starting point is 00:05:25 and what eventually turned into dystonia. And then a years long, I'd say battle and pursuit of answers to understand what I had previously known nothing about, and eventually finding solutions that worked for me, you know, a pandemic worth of time to sort them out, and then a return to work, which I've been back for years. And I'm living the life of a busy symphonic player, playing two Mahler symphonies in the past three weeks, and tonight playing the Dvorak Cello Concerto and just did a European tour with Mahler IV and Prokofiev V and playing some of the best playing I've ever done. That's incredible. And when we hear this, what popped in my mind is that it really debunked this myth that it only happens early in the career. There are signs way ahead of

Starting point is 00:06:26 time that past a certain period, it won't happen to you, that it really can happen to anyone. And I was listening to the fantastic episode that you have on the Embouchure Project website. So you gave us kind of a quick snapshot now. But in that one episode, you really tell the whole story in details. And I'm going to put the link to that episode. I'm going to refer the listeners here to that episode. But you just mentioned that it started with a little doubt. So can you tell us a little bit more about this?

Starting point is 00:07:03 Yeah. And I, you know, what I don't want to do is build anxiety in other musicians that, that, that small doubts turn into dystonia because that's just not true. And I have to be really clear about that. So my story is not your story. I want to begin by saying that. But I, you know, what I noticed was first, before I started any sort of worries about my playing, I noticed a switch from, from sort of what I would call usual performance stress to, to fear, to being scared. And I remember I had a, I heard about a major performance coming up in a major hall being broadcast on radio. And I thought, oh, God, I hope they don't ask me. And I realized for the first time, I was like, why would I want them to not ask me? And of course, they did ask me. And of course, I said yes. And I was scared. And the funny thing is I played one of the best concerts of my life.

Starting point is 00:07:59 and so then I was sort of just noticing that I had I had changed from you know usual day of performance jitters two weeks before being being scared of what would normally have been an opportunity so I had noticed this change and so chicken and egg did this change to fear happen and then I noticed problems in my playing or was I scared because I wasn't fully confident in my playing I can't answer that question for you you're anticipating my question because I was going to ask, where do you think that fear came from? Yeah, it's impossible to know. You know, we've, we've uncovered a lot of research, part of my work in the embouchure project about what causes this. Now, you know, we've been using the term embouchure syndrome because I think we

Starting point is 00:08:42 all know what dystonia is. And dystonia is an inability to control, to control your muscles. And very often it's two muscles that are supposed to work in an opposite way that work at the same time that cause a functional paralysis because they're both operating at the same time. And the same thing can happen in the embouchure, but it's not usually what happens. And usually what just happens, these are my words, but systematic discoordination. So the inability to coordinate the timing and the use of the correct muscles. And so we, through some incredible work by Dr. Mark Edwards in London, England, and Dr. Zenos Mason at USC, and of course, Bronwyn Ackerman, who's a musician physiotherapist

Starting point is 00:09:26 and anatomist in Sydney, Australia, we've been able to piece it together that we understand that what happens here is that there is a sort of, the term that Dr. Mark Edwards uses is just overwhelm, where through injury or the perception of injury, that's important to say, or sort of persistent imposter syndrome. and and the the word that comes up a lot when i'm talking to people is humiliations where where a musician goes from from you know fearing missing a passage or or having a less than ideal concert to feeling humiliated like they're not really able to do it and when when we let these feelings get deep inside our bodies we can actually do sort of um damage and i and again i don't want to i don't

Starting point is 00:10:11 want to worry people stress performance stress is is a normal part of being a musician and and if performance stress caused dystonia then all of us would get it and when in fact one to two percent of us get what is dystonia but when we refer to to playing problems so when we refer to an embouchure issue that can crop up this is more like in the 40 to 50 percent range of professional musicians will at some point in their decades-long career will will will report a sort of embouchure issue that they work through and it's okay but without support it can be difficult and stressful and long-term. And with education, these things can be knowable and we can know how to deal with them and dispatch them pretty quickly. So, you know, you were asking a specific question,

Starting point is 00:10:56 what do I think caused it? I think it was a combination of my career expanding faster than I expected it to, finding myself on bigger and bigger stages and wondering whether I was up to it. And, um, and that having that persistent doubt over and over again, uh, being presented to me followed by sort of gaps in my technique that I hadn't addressed. And, um, all of these things led to a feeling of, of just not being able to do what I was asked to do. I was supposed to go on a, um, an eight concert, nine day tour of sold out shows on a recital. And, um, I had said yes to this a couple of years previous. And, and they were sort of the repertoire that, that hit me in the Achilles heel, the repertoire that, that worried me the most. I thought, okay, if there's

Starting point is 00:11:42 one time I'm going to do it, it's going to be now. So I said, yes. And I do encourage people out there to accept responsibility, to accept big performances, but to make sure that they keep things in perspective. I'm sure we'll get into this as we progress, but I allowed this to affect my confidence as a, as a player and, and made me feel like I wasn't able to do it. And I think you're asking what what ended up causing my problems it was allowing this sort of this doubt to go deep that i wasn't going to be able to do it and i believe there the changes happen in the brain at that point and um then then the path becomes longer and and what's important to stay is i was diagnosed with dystonia which is the most serious form of of what we're

Starting point is 00:12:24 talking about by three eminent neurologists um and i'm fully back to work and and better so So it's just important. This is a journey of hopeful solution finding and not one of, you know, if you're a little stressed, you're going to get dystonia because that's just not true. Thank you so much for sharing this. And I feel that for musicians out there who might have dystonia or eventually develop dystonia,

Starting point is 00:12:51 if they've heard this episode, you're giving them some hope that there's light at the end of the tunnel. I really want to talk about the Embouchure Project and all of the amazing resources that you guys are providing. But as I was listening to this podcast episode that I just referred to, you brought up two concepts that I think are so important for musicians to hear as they are going on the journey to heal from an injury

Starting point is 00:13:17 or perhaps struggle with mental illness, no matter what you're facing. You talked about the shed building analogy, which I think is fantastic, and the pot of gold. And I think that we have to mention these two as we're talking about healing from a condition, because, I mean, I'll stop talking. I'll let you do the talking. Please talk to us a little bit about this. A founding principle of the embouchure project is that it's not a business. And the reason why I did that is because I don't want to be in a position of of selling a solution to a problem that doesn't have a specific solution it's all helping people is great and and charging for your time makes sense but in this case in my role in this it was

Starting point is 00:14:05 really important to me that what i say to people is any solution is a solution i don't need to provide you with the solution and so let's begin with this shed analogy which is that you can go to people to get all of the elements of a shed the the wood and the roofing materials and the nails and all of the hardware and you can go online and get a plan and so the truck can drop off all of the things that you need and the plan and this would be the form of the support structure this is this is the people that you see that help you with the mental side of getting better and the physical side of getting better. But in the end, with any recovery, be it a neurological issue or a physical issue, any sort of injury, the solution is going to come from within. And this is a

Starting point is 00:14:54 difficult thing. And so I guess to finish the metaphor, the shed is going to have to be built by you. Whether you're following somebody else's plans and using somebody else's tools, you're still going to be the one that builds your own shed and and i there's a lot of subtlety in this message though that if you if you can't recover if dystonia becomes something that you can't recover from or an injury becomes one that that doesn't allow you to play anymore it's not your fault i sometimes when i when i say the shedman uh metaphor i worry that i'm implying that if only you were tough enough you could have built your own shed and that's not the case toughness toughness is not i mean it helps to have persistence uh persistence is is is vital

Starting point is 00:15:42 because frustration is is going to be a natural byproduct but but it's really important message to send out there that some people don't get better even if all everything goes right even if you do as an individual as an injured musician even if you do everything right some people don't get better. Now, as you said a minute ago, the message is a hopeful one. We can get better even from the dreaded dystonia diagnosis. You can fully recover. It is possible. But some people won't get better. Some people won't be able to build that shed. The other analogy you referenced was the pot of gold. And what I call pot of gold practicing is where you close the door of your practice student studio get your instrument out and you think in that session is going to be the

Starting point is 00:16:31 session where you quote unquote figure it out the session where you go from an injured or a dystonic or a problematic player to one that no longer has any problems or the the most common one is the one where you you figure out what you used to do and this is this is a path back to nowhere like there's there is no, you need to relearn how to play your instrument in the most healthy way. And with the health, most healthy mindset, that's getting better. It's not returning to something you did before. So this pot of gold mentality is one that, that, that assumes that you're not going to need to put in slow and patient work that takes you, gets you 1% better every day. And, and not to say you can't make quick progress because some people do make quick progress and also progress can

Starting point is 00:17:21 happen in a step function where you where where you feel like you make no progress for a week and then over a course of a couple of practice sessions you make a breakthrough these do happen but what i'm referring to in the pot of gold practicing is turning off your patient um analytic and compassionate brain those are three important concepts uh that compassionate brain and and and sort of beating yourself into submission and saying, okay, all I need to do is figure it out and I'll get better today. And that's not, in my experience, that's not how people get better. And the dangerous side of that is when you feel like you've hit the pot of gold, if issues rise in the next practice session, then the discouragement is huge. Or if you walk away

Starting point is 00:18:06 without having found it, then you feel like there's zero progress and all of this can really spiral into the healing not happening. That's beautifully said. And I'll say one of the things that people struggle with is that well-meaning teachers who don't know about injury will rely on the pedagogy. And in brass and wind playing, that pedagogy is, oh, don't think about your embouchure. Just blow. It's just the air. Relax and blow. You don't need to form an embouchure. And so what happens when you're injured or compromised, you're just, oh, it's my fault. I've been thinking about my embouchure too much. I need to stop thinking about my embouchure. But that's not how we get better. We get better by understanding what's happened

Starting point is 00:18:55 to our body, the ingredients of a healthy setup, a healthy embouchure. And then maybe temporarily, we actually need to think about it, to coordinate it. And of course, we know that eventually health is thinking about the music again, but temporarily we may need to not just relax. And what tends to happen is people can blame themselves. They can say, well, I, you know, oh, I can't stop thinking about my embouchure. Therefore it's my fault that just thinking about the air isn't working, but that, um, that is an incomplete solution at best. And, and if, if you, if you solve, if you solve your problems by just relaxing and blowing that again, that's a solution. But if you don't, it's not because you're doing it wrong.

Starting point is 00:19:40 Right. I mean, going back to the shed analogy, the tough shed analogy, you need to build it yourself, but you also need to have the proper tools, the proper material, and that can be a long search. Would you mind walking us through a little bit what that recovery looked like for you? And again, I'll refer to that other episode if people want the full story, but I'd love to have a little bit of that story here. And after that, what led to the creation of the Umbresure Project? Okay. I'll try not to ramble on. I will say that one word pops to mind when

Starting point is 00:20:19 I think about my search for recovery and it's flailing. So I, and I've seen this in others now, in an injured state, I was compromised emotionally. I was desperately searching for somebody to give me an answer, somebody to drop off a fully completed shed. And so the, the, the people that were the most certain that they could quote unquote, fix me are the ones that I gravitated to. And they're the ones I, you know, I spent tens of thousands of dollars, um, uh, a shocking amount of money, um, on practitioners who I, who are well-meaning don't get me wrong. These are not bad people, but many of them display a certainty that I think they think gives their clients confidence, but I think is in its own way, this is a strong word,

Starting point is 00:21:14 its own way dishonest in that the practitioner knows that their methods are sometimes effective and sometimes are often not effective, and yet they teach them as if they're always effective. and I think that that again the person walks away feeling like it's their fault they aren't doing it right and so this is what happened to me I um I would see somebody who would tell me that I needed to form um a certain embouchure and and you know freeze it there and and then try to blow into that and then I'd see other people who said you need to stop thinking about your embouchure and just relax your face completely and one week I would go on one side and the other week I would go on the other and I would feel like I'd get a breakthrough and as you said feel like I'd found

Starting point is 00:21:55 the pot of gold and then feel terrible about myself when I'd have to undo all of that work because it wasn't working anymore. And so maybe I just wasn't ready to get better. Maybe these practitioners weren't the right ones for me. I'm not sure. Um, but in the end, what, what happened was I began to, to rebuild my intuition about, and I said, you can't go back to the way you did it before, but I think there is an intuitive way that we play that if we get the right building blocks of instruction, we can start to find our way back home and start to, okay, let's stick with one metaphor, just start to find the outline of the shed. Because if all the ingredients are all in a mix, it's hard to know where to begin. But once you start to build the

Starting point is 00:22:41 foundation of what you're going to, and then you can start visualizing how it's going to go, this is what ended up happening to me. I was able to start understanding the direction that I needed to go. And I found the people that explained it in a way that I understood. Again, I don't think it's the solution for everybody, but I actually, if you'll allow me, I do want to get into what I do think the solution for everybody is, but individual practitioners do not have that. That, that is how you, you build that, as I say, that foundation of the shed. And that's in the end what happened to me um i was very lucky and i i don't know whether the pandemic gave me more time so that i had time to to um recover because like many professionals i only

Starting point is 00:23:22 get 12 weeks uh which is too short a time we do have a long-term disability which would allow me two years which would have been okay but that is at a severely reduced uh income level so that would have been very hard on my family. And the pandemic allowed me more time. But for me, I really didn't get better until I was back at work. And even back at work with none of my confidence or really ability to play. But just getting back into the routine allowed me to build that shed piece by piece. And I had an incredible section that helped pick me up when I couldn't play something and i had a lot of support and uh eventually um i was able to uh find the path back do you mind if i go on that um okay so so and and um i'm always careful to to to separate when

Starting point is 00:24:13 when there's something i know um proven by science and then when things are my opinion so um as to you know your approach back that would be opinion but there are things that we do know um research backed um answers to what dystonia is and and what dystonia is that going back to that word overwhelm um can happen in and it can happen with completely non-musical stressors it can happen because of of traumatic events in your own life um it can happen because of uh instrument stress it can happen because of injury or the perception of injury but but neurologists use this term chunks. And it's funny, it sounds like a very non-neurologist term, but a chunk is a motor pattern. A motor pattern allows me to throw a ball without thinking about how far I retract my elbow

Starting point is 00:25:01 and my wrist and all these things. I just think about throwing a ball. And that's because as a toddler, I built a neurological chunk around throwing with my right arm. Okay. I don't have the same chunk about throwing with my left arm. So I really have to think about it. And the movement of throwing with my left arm is jerky and inconsistent and the results are poor. But because I have a neurological chunk with my right arm, I'm pretty consistent in how I throw a ball. Is this related to the myelination process that we hear so much about? Yes, it is. And it's a bit deeper, but you know, you're absolutely right. This is myelination. And so the thing is that what happens with these neurological chunks is they become compromised.

Starting point is 00:25:44 Now, the mechanism for compromise is above my pay grade. That's among the neurologists. And it has been explained to me, but I wouldn't be able to articulate it with good accuracy. But for musicians listening, just understand that that neurological chunk is compromised. And my best metaphor for that is that you're driving on a road and a big boulder has come down and has blocked the road. And so no matter how many times you drive your car into this boulder, that boulder is not moving.

Starting point is 00:26:10 so so what we know what we know is that however whatever solution you find which would be opinion it's going to be a method of retraining and that retraining is going to be new stimulus for the brain so you have a new response so that would be that a new road that goes around the boulder okay and so that is how people get better even from the what i call the voldemort of our industry The name that shall not be said is dystonia. And even around to get beyond dystonia, the way we do that is by retraining with, as I say, new stimulus, a new way of the brain conceiving of play. And that can happen through a physiotherapy-based approach.

Starting point is 00:26:54 That can happen entirely mental-based approach. But in any case, it will become retraining. And that we will myelinate a new neurological chunk in a different sort of road around that boulder. And then you don't need to worry about the boulder anymore. Was your approach a combination of all of those? It was. So my approach was what I call, and again, these are my words, but a physiotherapy-based approach. Dr. Bronwyn Ackerman taught me about the various muscles of the embouchure.

Starting point is 00:27:27 It's not part of our pedagogy. and she taught me exercises for my embouchure she also does this with string players and pianists but but as you're aware of the anatomy and as i say if you can feel it you can fix it if you have a body map neurologists call body map proprioception so if you can create new proprioception around these small muscles that are that are misfunctioning or or misfiring um you can then command them you can then be intentional in your movement and and so if you can if you can feel it you can fix it if you if you have exercises or or new ways of feeling the muscles that that make the music you can then learn the order in which you need to fire them

Starting point is 00:28:14 and that sounds to a healthy musician that sounds crazy like that's far too more detailed you know we just learned as kids right you just put your finger down or you just you just blow but the reality is when you're injured, you need to do it differently. You need to, again, I'll throw another metaphor at you. It's like how a kid learns to ride a bike and how an adult learns to ride a bike is very different. And so when we injure ourselves or when we get dystonia as an adult, it's a more patient process that requires, yes, put your foot here. Yes. Turn the pedal there. Yes. Put your hands there. And for me, it was the ability to then feel the healthy engagement of the correct muscles. And then as I added air to make a sound to not flinch or adjust or

Starting point is 00:28:56 compensate, but rather to just allow those muscles to support the sound in a way that a healthy embouchure does. And then over the course of weeks and months, and maybe even years, being able to trust that those things will fire without me thinking about them anymore. And now when I play, I just thinking about the sound and the phrase and the beauty. And a couple of little cues might remain where I, where I make sure a certain, you know, make sure my chin is flat before I play or something that to me is that's still healthy. Um, but this is the process. If, if not thinking about specific muscles, if that doesn't work for you or it doesn't suit you, you can find a new way to retrain. But, um, what we know, what we know at Proven Science is that some form of,

Starting point is 00:29:38 of a new way of thinking about creating the sound is what's going to be required. Hmm. That's such, such important information. Yeah. What about the emotional component part of this? What does that healing look like? Oh man. I mean, that was quite a journey. Um, I'm, uh, a very literal guy. I, I, I, I'm not a openly emotional person, but boy, oh boy, there were emotions. Um, so of course stress is a form of fear, which is, um, you know, which is, which can get deep in your body in an emotional way. And, um, and so when my playing started going downhill, I was, I was, I was trying to hold on, just try to hold on and, and feeling these, these incredible stressors. And then, um, and then I had to go through a

Starting point is 00:30:27 process of, of acceptance, uh, of sort of mourning. And it's a mourn the player that I was, I needed to accept the player that I am and, oh, the tears, you know, I had to go through it. I had to, I had to go through it. I, you know, I remember spending, my, my family went away to go visit family and I was just home by myself and I basically meditated and, and, and, you know, people should seek out help more than I did. I tried to do it on my own and it's, it's too big a task. I now know that I should have, I should have asked for more help.

Starting point is 00:31:03 And, and through this process, I really sort of came face to face with myself. and um and i found myself apologizing to myself for putting myself through so much strain and so i would say that the process for me was beginning by accepting um allowing myself to sort of mourn and grieve and and then and then sort of saying you know sorry um to my to my body for putting it through that and then um and then through acceptance i i found gratitude um i i learned to look at my dystonic symptoms as my body trying to help um and very often um let's say a violence you can't put a put a finger down on the fingerboard or or harm player that can't form a note in some way the body is trying to protect you from something it considers um what can feel

Starting point is 00:31:55 like mortal danger so so we're just um our first uh study is coming out uh from the embouchure project and and it's an interview study where we we prove conclusively i think what musicians know is that our our music making is part of our identity and so if you if you lose that ability to make music it can it can feel like a like a mortal threat it feels like you're you're losing your name um and so so in that in that there's a there's a lot of fear and so if the dystonia is is trying to stop you from from from this mortal threat you know a very reasonable response could be thank you thank you for protecting me and so what i learned to tell myself is is thank you but i don't need i don't need help i'm i love this and so i i use the word cultivate a lot

Starting point is 00:32:42 as we cultivate soil as we as we as we grow as we grow something that is not there yet we cultivate so, so seeds can grow into something. And so I learned to cultivate gratitude for the ability to play. And so when my symptoms would not arise, I learned to say, thank you, that thank you for allowing me to, cause I love making this gorgeous sound on this instrument. So, so thank you for that. And, and I think that that was a huge part of my recovery where, where I realized that it's okay to be scared that, that, that, that, that fear shows how much I care about it. And then it's the gratitude that allows me to play beautifully. Thank you so much for sharing this because musicians who are going through hard times, whether it's a physical injury or anything

Starting point is 00:33:28 in their professional life or their personal life, it's easy to feel isolated and feel like seeking for help is a sign of weakness that, as you said, we should be able to handle it ourselves. So I think that you sharing this is helping someone out there feeling like it's okay to be hurting and it's okay to not try and fix it on our own. So, you know, you asked me about the origins of the embouchure project and the question, I didn't get back to it. So as I got better, you know, I'm in a certain leadership position in our business. You know, the Toronto Symphony is a good job and I've been teaching 25 years.

Starting point is 00:34:07 I have a lot of very successful students and I love teaching. And so, you know, people look to me sometimes as a leader. And I thought, well, I've just been through this hell, to be honest. And all that flailing was years of my life and tens of thousands of dollars of my money that many people don't have, right? And so I thought, what can I do for my community as a leader in a way that doesn't benefit me directly because I just don't want to be another person trying to sell solutions. And so what can I do? And so I thought, well,

Starting point is 00:34:48 what's the actual problem? The problem is you go to your doctor, your doctor, no matter how well-meaning your doctor is, they don't know. They're not trained. And so they'll say, well, okay, let's try an anti-anxiety medication, which by the way, absolutely take if you need and prescribed it but but that won't necessarily fix an injury and so um doctors are often lost um and and so they'll say well go see your teacher and then teachers well-meaning won't have any idea of how to how to address it so i thought well what's the problem musicians don't trust doctors and i think for good reason because because as i say doctors can't help them and so we need to connect musicians and doctors and then we need to help the teachers

Starting point is 00:35:31 understand that these are not just psychological problems psychology forms a big part of injury but you you know you can get into injury type situations with just psychological stress but you can't get out of injury type situations by just relaxing so we need we need to go through a process and so teachers need to understand that when students or or former students come to them in the need of help, that we need to have an integrated model where students, teachers, allied health professionals such as yourself, so we're talking about counseling, therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, chiropractic, acupuncture, any solution, as you say, is a solution, allied health, and then finally physicians, and then we get into

Starting point is 00:36:19 physician researchers so the embouchure project was an attempt to bring in physician researchers let's call them the top there's no real hierarchy but physician researchers down to students okay and all the way through the business talking and so what i found and many um allied health professionals they say doctors don't care i found doctors who care a whole lot about musicians health and you know what they say we can't get musicians to be part of our studies because we don't trust the doctors so what i've been doing is i've been connecting musicians with physician researchers and as i say we've got our first published study coming out and i'm proud to say we have we have you know incredible compassionate and knowledgeable physicians um at some of the

Starting point is 00:37:11 finest institutions in the world who are committed to trying to solve this problem and if we can get the research to get the student physicians to be interested in studying these problems we can come up with science-based solutions that then can filter their way through allied health and and local doctors down to allied health which is so you're you have a physical therapist physiotherapist who knows how to deal with musician injury if we can get one in each region of north america and then expand to europe then we have we have everybody we have access for every musician to have knowledgeable physical therapy. Now, what about psychological therapy? Well, we need psychologists and therapists who understand what it is to be a musician. I had one who called what

Starting point is 00:37:58 I was going through stage fright. And I was like, I'm a 20-year pro. This ain't stage fright. What I have is something that is much more insidious, much different than stage fright. And so just being able to go to somebody who actually knows what you're talking about is key. So that is what the Amateur Project is. You know, it takes its form as a nascent social media. I'm too busy to be a social media guy, but I am using social media because now I have about 11 or 1200 Facebook group of people that then when I have a physician who has access to research money, I can then make a call for people who are interested in in research projects to go and then the the doctors have the research and the people who need help um get it and and we've been involving a lot of the

Starting point is 00:38:49 main pedagogues and um other teachers in the embouchure sorry in the in the wind and brass field to get to get them interested and i'm proud to say we've helped a lot of people um we've helped a lot of people get access to health care. But also, as you say, to remove the stigma, to jump on a Zoom call with me or anybody else from the Amateur Project where we just chat with them. We say, yeah, we get what you're going through and we can help you. You know, here's the basics of what you're going through. I explain the boulder in the road and the shed and the pot of gold and leave them to go off. And often, especially pros, that's enough information for them to, to go, Oh, I just need to reset. You know, I just need to, I need to go back to what

Starting point is 00:39:33 I know and, and, and trust my ability. And then maybe if they need some more help, they get more help, but that's the project in a nutshell. It's such an impactful endeavor. And I'm, I'm just in awe of everything that you guys are doing. You're also, I believe, educating, helping educate practitioners and really spreading the love around that's fantastic yeah quickly there's very quickly let me say that um that a goal is to train uh in the u.s we call them they call them physical therapists in canada we call them physiotherapists but the ability um that for us is along with psychological counseling um physical therapy for us is is the sort of richest vein of possibility that really what this is in the end is muscles and the use of muscles and

Starting point is 00:40:24 that's their expertise and there's there's a certain amount of occupational therapy in there as well and if we can train physical therapists in um in the use of the embouchure then they can help uh people that have been taught like me were never taught about embouchure can make people understand how their embouchures work and so yes we've been we did a session of training at usc in Los Angeles last summer. We've also given presentation to neurologists and I give presentations to students as well. Again, that whole layer of the business I want, I want everybody to know about it. Now I'm curious, is there a branch out for non-ambushure musicians, strings, pianists? So what I didn't mention, I don't know if it

Starting point is 00:41:06 makes it in my bio, but I did my MBA in the pandemic as well. I needed for my own mental space I needed. I've always wanted to do it. And I'll tell you that in the MBA, they teach us to, what we would say is stay in our lane. And in the MBA, it says, you know, know where your expertise is. And people often ask me about expanding to hand and arm. And I'll say that those resources often overlap. But in terms of my leadership, I think that the tighter the community, the more inspired people are. And, and I hope, and I have spoken to people who, who want to do this for, for strings, piano, guitar as well. Um, and I hope they do so. And I hope we all work together. Um, it, I, as far as I know, it hasn't happened yet, but, um, that's the idea is that,

Starting point is 00:41:59 that these things filter throughout our business. Well, the invitation is there now. Yes, it is. Absolutely. Uh, Gabriel, thank you for sharing this. Um, it, it makes me think of the four core mindset that I have in what I use with clients. And we have these four mindsets, which are bare awareness, beginner's mind, self-compassion, and the problem-solving approach. And I feel that these four really come together in searching for answers when you're facing something like this and hearing you talk about it, I see how you are really implementing this. And that seems to also be at the core philosophy of the Umbresure Project to have this sort of holistic approach. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Starting point is 00:42:52 I couldn't agree more. That sounds like a perfect construct for solving problems. Yes. Gabriel, I want to be mindful of your time, but I have a few more questions for you in the not-so-rapid-fire questions. I love this question, and it might be something that you've said already, but I would love to know if there's a thought or a belief that either had a powerful impact in your life or something that continues to support you. Yeah, you're right. I have alluded to it already, but this is a very important thing to me. You know, we're musicians, and in the end, it comes down to the music. And there's nothing like having something taken away from you to realize how much you appreciate it. I'm playing the Dvorak Cello Concerto in a few hours. And, you know, some of the music in there is so beautiful. I almost can't believe it, you know?

Starting point is 00:44:01 Including a pretty great horn solo. Yes, that's right. Yes. And a beautiful horn trio in the second movement. And, and it's this concept of gratitude. And, you know, I was a pretty intense person in my twenties, You know, coming to work, ready to make change, you know, ready to stir things up, ready to be, you know, a big influence on music and music making and in my job. And that sometimes led me to a hardness about the work, about the job. And orchestras are sort of famously cranky places. and i think that that it becomes very easy to lose our our gratitude for the lives that we can create making music because you know many of us don't get paid enough money and and many of us

Starting point is 00:44:52 have very difficult working conditions and very stressful jobs that often are not well recognized i understand all of that but i don't think that that we can or should lose sight of the the tremendous privilege it is to to to make a life or to support a life making music and whether that's as an amateur or professional doesn't matter that when you're making music just the ability to have gratitude for the ability to do so um or for the pursuit of getting back to it gratitude for for getting better for for enjoying a sound or a phrase or or even you know if you're in the depths of dystonia, being, being thankful for being able to make one note without symptoms and just to stay on that note and think this is the best feeling in the world. Gratitude is the thing that has,

Starting point is 00:45:42 has allowed me, I believe, to, to get better and to continue getting better. The greatest gift of, of injury. And there are, there are a lot of things I would never wish on my worst enemy, But the thing about coming back from injury is that the gift is at 51 years old and still getting better. And this is something that I make sure I think about every day and I try to enjoy. So my main concept is, and if you're a young person out there just beginning your career, I would strongly urge you to cultivate gratitude in your playing. And that doesn't mean that you shouldn't want things to change because you should as a young person, but that within that, you realize that when you go to play phrases, you appreciate beauty and the joy of music making. That's a beautiful answer. Thank you for this. Thanks.

Starting point is 00:46:41 A question I ask is one of your favorite tools in the practice room. But with you, what I would like to know is, in the light of what you've been through, what is something new that you bring in the practice room with you? It could be a tool, could be a mindset, could be anything. I'm very curious. yeah this is probably a common answer but but the answer for me is timers and so when I as a tool so so one of the problems about an injury mindset that we see a lot is that people what I just call spinning your wheels where you'll just get in the practice room and an hour will go by where you're just trying to play one note you know and I don't think there's any any benefit to that I'm sorry to say I just don't think trying to play one note for an hour is is the path to health. And so if we can put a timer on for literally three minutes and say, for three minutes, I have an idea. I have an idea, a problem-solving mindset where I said, okay, well,

Starting point is 00:47:39 what's going, what's happening and how can I fix it? And then for three minutes, you try it. And then the timer goes off. You need to try something else. Now, whether that's in a different range of the instrument or a different finger or a different articulation or something, try something else for three minutes and then you can come back to that first idea again but the discipline of the timer is that if the timer goes off and you're still doing good work okay you're the one in charge you can keep on going but every time that timer goes off you should ask the question am i doing good work is like am i am i on a path to health and so for me that the the discipline of paying attention when the thing goes beep asking the question is this practice session getting me

Starting point is 00:48:23 somewhere. Again, excellent answer. There's one more I'm curious, and I feel like I'm tweaking them all for you today, but a question I ask often is if there's a specific habit that guests have that contributed to their success, is there or are there any new habits that you have developed? yeah and i this this one i i couldn't be stronger about and and uh i it sounds very highfalutin but but the answer is acceptance and and you know in some ways age has benefited me in this that that i think that you know now that i'm over 50 i've got nothing to prove you know um i've had a long and incredible career um but but listen i'm no virtuoso at acceptance. If I, if I miss a note, I still beat myself up about it. Let me be clear. But, but

Starting point is 00:49:20 way better than I was pre-injury, I am able to understand that if I am accountable for my preparation, if I do my best work, do not add stress where stress doesn't belong, then when I go to work, I can simply accept the level that I play. And if I have colleagues that are cranky or stressed. I can allow them to be themselves because that's their process. But me, I don't take that on. And the ability for me to accept the level that I'm at in the moment is new. I was always, always striving. And there's a certain amount of that striving that's healthy, but there's far more we need to understand that when we go to perform, we're at the level we're at. And then when that performance is over, we can go back to a problem-solving mindset in our

Starting point is 00:50:10 practice room the next day. But in that moment, it's not going to help you to hope that you're going to play perfectly when your skills aren't at that level. One of my favorite quotes is by Byron Katie. And she says, when you fight reality, you lose, but only every time. Exactly. Yes. So acceptance is a constant topic in my life for sure. I love that. It was a question that actually popped in my mind as I was listening to you. I think you and I could agree that the way that we practice our routines, our rituals change depending on what season of life we're in. When we're students, it's different. And when professionals, then we have children and things change. In the light of what you've been through, what does your routine look like now?

Starting point is 00:51:04 Oh, this is a really important question. And I know we're supposed to be in quick fire. Uh, but, but, uh, let me tell you that, that, um, a routine is a nice touchstone, um, a way to, to, to calm your mind and to test, test your skills. That test is not the word I want, but reinforce positive habits. Um, I will say though, that, that, that neurologically a more modern way of, of understanding it is that, is that routines need to iterate. They need to change because our brains actually, that's, that's how they work. And so what I would encourage people to do is to have a health routine that is variable.

Starting point is 00:51:40 And that's going to include moving your body in a healthy way, approaching your instrument with healthy posture and healthy use to avoid unnecessary tension and to produce sound in the easiest way it can possibly be made and to cultivate that ease. But I think that rigid routines, that's an older way of thinking. In fact, I used to teach doing the same routine absolutely to the letter every single day. And we now know through the neurological plasticity that a little bit of variation every day is a good way to think about it. And it doesn't have to be radical change. But rather, even if you do the same exercise, think about it in a slightly new way. Change up the rhythm. Change up the articulation.

Starting point is 00:52:22 Change up your posture, whether sometimes you sit or sometimes you stand. this is a form of variation. So I am still a routine person. I still love my, my daily check-in, but I am aware that it should constantly involve along with my playing. Which is very human. Yes. Yes. Okay. Last question. How about an actionable tip that the listeners could implement maybe in their regular life, but their music life, it's up to you. yeah my uh my actionable tip um is to uh to stay present in your um daily and moment by moment

Starting point is 00:53:02 interactions with your instrument so that happens in the very first moment that you pick up your instrument or approach your instrument if you're a pianist um that you you cultivate these feelings that we talked about today, that when you sit down at the keyboard or when you lift up your trumpet or your horn or your violin, that you put a little smile on your face. You think about the possibility of the beauty of the sound you can make. And to do this constantly, to constantly teach your body that you enjoy, that you love making music. And when you take this actionable change, where you make a conscious decision to cultivate love for playing, you can rewire your relationship with your instrument in a way that will put you on a path so that you can start

Starting point is 00:53:51 understanding how to build that shed, going back to that metaphor. And that if you are cultivating a stress or a negative or a fear-based reaction to your instrument, the path is longer. The shed it takes longer to build. Fantastic. Gabriel, please tell us where we can find everything about you, about the Embouchure project. It is such an incredible, important, impactful project. And I am just, as I said earlier, I'm going to use the same word. I'm just in awe of what you guys are creating and the resources you're making available for musicians. Please tell us where we can find it, maybe get involved. Yeah, that's great. Thank you so much. So the Facebook group, I think is the, is the easiest place to go. It's just called the embouchure

Starting point is 00:54:41 project group on Instagram. We are the embouchure project. Again, I need to post more often, but that's okay. There is a website as well. If you want to get in touch, I offer and, and my, my colleague Frankie offer free consultations where people can reach out if they, if they need help with their options. What we offer is I just give away 45 minutes of my time just to just to help people find that road. And then and then I offer them referrals to where they think they need to go, whether that's physicians or or psychotherapy or whatever they feel like they need. I try to find them resources in their area or online. So that's, as I say, the website, the Facebook group, and Instagram. I will say we do have some exciting things coming.

Starting point is 00:55:28 We have major funding requests out through Stanford University and USC that if we get that, then we will be seriously ramping up our research into embouchure. And I believe strings are going to be involved in that too. So there's lots of stuff to pay attention to happening on the embouchure project. One final thing is on the website, you can sign up for our quarterly newsletter it's a high quality so no spam uh four emails a year great resources and i'm going to have all the links in the show notes gabriel thank you so much for this gift of your time and thank you i think from the community at large for everything that you do to help musicians first find hope and then hopefully find some solutions it was a great pleasure to be here

Starting point is 00:56:13 thank you so much and there you have it thank you so much for spending this time with me today if you enjoyed this episode i'd love it if you'd share with your friends and colleagues take a screenshot post it on social media and tag me i'm mind over finger everywhere i always love hearing your favorite takeaways. And if you're ready to take your playing career to the next level, I'd love to invite you to join the Music Mastery Experience. This is my signature group coaching program where we're going to dive deep into building your confidence and mastery and set you up for success and fulfillment in your life and career. You can find all the details

Starting point is 00:57:04 at mindoverfinger.com. While you're there, check out the free downloads and online courses available to support your journey even further. And don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter so you never miss an update or a tool to help you thrive. Again, thank you for being here. Until next time, much love and à bientôt! Thank you.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 254 Finding Your Way Back to Playing - Gabriel Radford on rebuilding after fear, injury, and loss of control

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