I've been interested in the connection between practicing and meditation for a long time, so it was great to spend an hour listening to two people discuss it who know more about music, practicing and mediation that I ever will.
Eugene Friesen is a composer, Grammy winner, cellist with the Paul Winter Consort and faculty member at Berklee College of Music. He also has a podcast called BEYOND MASTERY. The episode released on July 14 features Barbara Bogatin, cellist with the San Francisco Symphony. Much of their conversation deals with meditation and its overlap with practicing.
https://www.beyondmastery.com/interviews/barbara-bogatin
I've listened to it several times. Here are some highlights.
Barbara's introduction to meditation was a retreat that required her to be completely silent for 10 days. In the evenings instructors would lecture about Buddhist philosophy and practice. Their ideas were all new to her – and yet, also surprisingly familiar. She says, “They sounded a lot like what I do when I try to the practice my cello.” Things like:
Listen deeply to the sounds around you.
Pay attention to the internal sensations in your body.
Be very aware of the motions of your body and the intention to move.
Be aware of relaxation and tension in your body.
How do the different parts of the body connect as you're moving?
Pay attention to where your mind goes and, when it wanders, gently bring it back to where you want it to be.
Stay present, in a non-judgmental, neutral awareness of whatever is there.
When we practice we need to evaluate both practicing and playing - “I was flat here, I rushed there” - because that's where our ability to play comes from. But, as Eugene says, that technical ability is not where music comes from.
Practicing requires a non-judgmental, neutral awareness that involves changing things without getting emotional about them. The emotion usually comes from that critical voice we all have. But that voice, however human it may be, gets in the way, so we have to practice quieting it. That (as I understand it) is at the heart of meditation. I have a mind, and I have thoughts, but I am not my mind or my thoughts; I can stand aside and observe them, and I can redirect my attention when it wanders. Meditation is how we learn to do that, and then practice it.
Before Barbara got into meditation, her pre-performance routine was to sit backstage and practice the hardest parts of whatever she was going to perform. After she got into meditation, she came to understand that her purpose in going onstage was to share her love of music with the audience; this last-minute cramming did not put her in a good state of mind to do that. Getting into a calm, meditative headspace before performing turned out to work better for her. Her way there was through metta medition – also called “loving kindness meditation” - and using the repeated phrase “May I greet every moment fully. May I greet it as a friend” to settle into a calm, uncritical state.
About 30 minutes into the podcast, Barbara talks about starting practicing with a meditation. “When I teach seminars to music students, I suggest something very simple. Before you start your practice... take the first 5 minutes before you start, even before you pick up your instrument, and just settle into your body. It helps if you close your eyes, because when we cut off stimulation to the visual system our other senses become more acute... Spend a few minutes listening to the sounds that you hear and noticing what they are.
“And then, bringing you attention from the external to the internal world... notice if there'd anyplace in your body that's holding tension... Relax into that. Then notice your breath. Is it shallow? Is it deep? Is it fast? Is it slow? Stay present following that breath for five or ten breaths. When your mind wanders – which it will... gently bring it back to the breath, to a specific focus...
“When I do a meditation before practicing... even ten minutes makes a huge difference in our listening and our listening awareness.”
This comes from Barbara's teacher and mentor, Sylvia Boorstein:
Each moment of conscious awareness erases a moment of conditioned response.
Barbara sees technical practicing in terms of four components:
Awareness and Observation – how am I playing? What am I doing with my body? What's my relationship to the instrument?
Analysis – what could I do differently? How am I preventing myself from making a beautiful sound?
Alteration – let me make a change or two and see what happens.
Repetition and Awareness – once I've found something that works, repeat it, staying aware, over and over.
This is a loop that sometimes happen in a second, and sometimes over a much longer time.
(I have written about my own version of this as one of the fundamental descriptions of practicing:
Decide what to.
Attempt it.
Notice what the result is.
Adjust.
Repeat.
It feels good to think I'm on the same page as Barbara Bogotin.)
Finally: the calm, quiet state of mind that both Eugene and Barbara talk about as being ideal for performing is something that has to be practiced, just like the music we want to perform. Neither one appears magically just because we're about to go onstage. And, while we can practice them individually, they are really two versions of the same thing.