​"So many books, so little time." - Frank Zappa

I have loved to read since I was little, and while that interest waned a little bit when I was in school (required reading sometimes puts a damper on fun), reading is one of the great joys of my life.

I have been pretty consistent in my reading habit for the last few years, but with a lot of extra time on my hands last year and a desire to not watch the news 24/7, I kicked things into high gear. In the process, I realized how much time I could waste faffing on stupid websites, social media, etc., and how many books I could read if I was more attentive to how I was spending my time. 

(Although, sometimes you just want to play Words With Friends, and that's ok!)

I use Goodreads to track what I read and it gives you a great summary at the end of the year showing all your books. (This is also a very satisfying way to celebrate yourself for reading!) After 21,051 pages in 2020, here are my top picks:

The Mindful Athlete by George Mumford
This book is one I know that I will visit over and over. I read this before I started meditating regularly, and I can't wait to read it again now that I have built a meditation habit. This book is a must for anyone with a high stakes job (like musicians!).

​Deep Work by Cal Newport
I read several of Newport's books last year, and they all really make you stop and evaluate the things you do without thinking. This one focused on the deep satisfaction of craftsmanship and the benefits of learning to focus and limit distractions (not something that is exactly encouraged in our current culture). I also have to give an honorable mention to Newport's book Digital Minimalism. Like Deep Work, it encourages us to consider that what is common is not necessarily best, and that we should exercise our discerning mind rather than blindly accepting the norm. 

Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
I love reading about history, and basically inhaled all of Larson's books last year. They are written like fiction, weaving you through the stories of a chosen few individuals, but provide the broader context to understand what was happening in the world during events like Hitler's rise to power and the creation of the cross-Atlantic telegraph. Devil in the White City was my favorite, but they're all worth reading.

Maybe you Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
This book gives you a glimpse of what therapy is really like, and the ways in which therapists are also human. It's an endearing approach and pulls some of the stigma out of therapy. Gottlieb shares about herself and about different types of clients, and there is someone or some struggle in this book that each of us can relate to.

10% Happier by Dan Harris
This is the book that convinced me to just try meditating. It's a very down to earth approach about the ways meditation can help us, even though most of us won't achieve enlightenment. I can't recommend the app by the same name (Ten Percent) enough. Meditation is changing my life. 

The Practice by Seth Godin
I have talked about Seth Godin's daily blogs before. I love the way he pulls information down into small, digestible, actionable thoughts. This book reads like one of his blogs with lots of very small chapters, but is an absolute MUST for creatives. After reading this on my Kindle, I plan to order a paper copy so I can go to town with sticky tabs and a highlighter!

The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi
My favorite type of reading to indulge in is fiction (usually with a tinge of history or fantasy), and this book was such a vivid read. The characters were realistic and easy to picture, and I loved the glimpse it provided into Indian culture, especially given my deep dive into yoga this year.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab
V. E. Schwab's books are amazing. She writes intricate and beautifully detailed plots and characters, and I love the way she uses language. I couldn't wait to read this book, and it didn't disappoint. The characters are exquisite and the story is both uplifting and heartbreaking. I actually lost my sense of time reading the end of this book and spent an unplanned hour in tears as the story resolved itself. Who doesn't want to read a story you can completely lose yourself in?

There were a few books I read last year that I didn't like at all, but even those were time well spent. I'm already excited about the books I'll read this year and the time they will help me spend not faffing around on social media! All the books below have links if you want to read more about them or the authors. Happy reading!

P.S. Leave a comment with some books you love - I'm always looking for more to read!

The chakra system originated in India around 1000 or 1500 BC. Chakra means "wheel" in Sanskrit, and refers to the energy points in the body. There are seven main chakras that run the length of the spine and work together when they are balanced.. 

In yoga, you can address the chakras through asana (physical poses). Considering the different chakras is also a great way to figure out where you might be overexerting in your life, or perhaps to find the things you are avoiding or bad habits you have developed. 

In the yoga teacher training I'm completing, our training weekends are organized by the chakras. We learn what each chakra represents, how it communicates with the other chakras, what sense and element are related to it, and what asana can help balance it.

Just before the holidays, we met for training based on the second chakra - "svadisthana" meaning the self dwelling place where our being is established, or the sacral chakra. The element of the second chakra is water, and it's right is the right to feel and enjoy without guilt. 

As you might expect, since the element is water, we discussed how water moves, its characteristics, and it's tendencies. Water can flow gently or violently, it can be a drip or a destructive current. It can create and destroy, depending on its intensity. 

The other interesting aspect of this for me was the concept of our right to feel and enjoy. How often have you (or I) limited our enjoyment of something because we were distracted by the need to do even better, be even more successful, or have even more of something?

Shortly after that training weekend I took a class with a friend and we spent time together after class discussing my goals for learning about yoga and teaching it, as well as talking through questions and concerns I have about teaching.

I mentioned that I have always struggled with perfectionism. It has always been difficult for me to take the leap into doing something new if I don't feel like it's exactly right or completely ready. I have grappled with a lot of these issues in my music career, but yoga teacher training has brought many of these issues back to the surface.

Participating in this training is the first time in a long time I am learning something completely new and then very quickly translating that new information into action. I'm grateful for the ways it has brought my struggles with perfectionism and my tendency to hesitate to light. 

By considering my habits through the lens of yoga , especially using the chakras, Ive also been able to develop new tools for feeling grounded, and for keeping myself moving.

When talking through this with my friend, she suggested a good mantra for me might be to "flow like water," and it was like a light bulb went off. 

After a lifetime of restricting myself because I want things to be "just right," and limiting so much creativity that might occur in the moment, I realized that exactly what I need is to be fluid. 

To flow.

To be open to possibility.

So, it seemed that my word of the year is obvious: fluid! 

Fluid: adjective

• able to flow easily
• not settled or stable; able or likely to change
• smoothly elegant or graceful
• using a liquid to transmit power

If you've spent time on the internet or social media lately, you might have noticed there's a small war being waged against New Years resolutions. 

Of course there's the usual "new year, new you!" junk floating around, but there is also a lot of negative attention being directed toward the idea of resolving to do something new or better to kick off this trip around the sun. 

The argument for this seems well-meaning: we have a lot on our plates, there's a pandemic, you are enough as you are, etc.. None of this is untrue, but it all reeks a bit of another well manicured internet "wellness" pitch.

Even if things out there are still a little scary, we're allowed to want to improve or become better, right?

I hope so.

I mentioned in my last post how much I love New Years Eve. I love the ability it gives us to be so much more present to the space between the past and future than we usually are. I often feel like I gain so much clarity around New Years Eve about where I've been and where I want to be. 

I have no shame in saying that I've made lots of New Years resolutions, some that I've kept and some that I haven't. My take on it has always been that, like regular goals (which, if we're being real, are resolutions without the holiday), resolutions give us a chance to verbalize our big desires.

This is important - we need things to feel attainable and real to be motivated to work toward them. 

Last year, though, I ditched the resolutions. Not because they were making me feel unworthy, but because I didn't know exactly what I wanted. I wasn't used to that and it freaked me out - how could I possibly be without a big goal? Maybe there was something wrong with me! 

Then I saw a friend post her "word of the year" and thought, surely I could chose a word. It would be like setting a theme for the year, and that sounded like a useful guide when I was feeling a little nebulous to begin with.

Coming off of a few very stressful years, not in the least because I was struggling with a lot of self criticism, perfectionism, and at least a little burnout, I knew what I needed was structure that would help alleviate some stress and encourage me to do the right kind of work.

My word for 2020 was "consistency," and although when I chose it I had daily practice of my instrument in mind, it turned out to be exactly the word I needed when the world shut down and I was stuck at home with a completely different landscape of goals available to me than I had imagined.

"Consistency" turned out to be so beneficial for me last year, in ways I could not have ever predicted when I picked it as my word of the year. It led me back to yoga, helped me learn to meditate, brought me back to my instrument when there were no gigs to be seen, and helped me take better care of myself as the year kept throwing punches. 

As you might guess, I am convinced about the power of choosing a word instead of a resolution. Your word might apply to your work, your personal life, a specific project, or all of the above. 

If you're interested in choosing a word of the year with me, I'd love to have company.

Here are some suggestions for choosing your word wisely:

•  What do you want to accomplish this year? Do you want to start a business? Apply for school or take an audition? It's ok if you can't think of a grand achievement, maybe you just want to make the bed more often.
• What is something you struggle with? Maybe you don't communicate very well, or you fall behind on a specific thing all the time.
• What is something you are good at? Generally, I like to use this time to consider improving, but your strengths can help you do that. Take something you are good at and consider its opposite - it might shed some light on a good word for your year, not to mention it's healthy to consider our strengths and not just our weaknesses.
• What feels right? Forgive me if this seems a little woo-woo, but usually we know in our gut when we hit the nail on the head. (Perhaps you are familiar with that slightly queasy, uncomfortable feeling when you think about something you need to improve on?) 

Leave a comment if you're going to choose a word -  I'm going to share mine in another post.

The way I see it, setting a word for 2021 is the perfect way to thoughtfully guide myself into the new year. 

When we wrapped up lessons in December I encouraged my students to listen to their gut when it came to practicing over the holiday break. 

Often on a long-ish break from lessons I encourage my students to be diligent. Some time off can be healthy, but we all benefit from the routine of regular practice, even if the amount of time we play is reduced. I'm known to assign lots of extra materials to keep my students busy over a break (sorry, not sorry!).

Not to sound cliché, but the end of 2020 was different.  (You're thinking, duh, we know, so what?)

So, we all need to pay attention to how we're actually feeling, is what. 

I typically love New Years Eve. There's that extra feeling of excitement for new unknowns, and the adrenaline of possibility. There is a duality we feel at New Years that other holidays and events just don't provide. The sense that we are both in the past and the future all at once. On a precipice between what we have been and what we will be, with a startlingly clear view of each.

Of course, we have that duality available to us all the time. It would be awesome if we lived between the past and future, in that truly present moment, more often. 

We all spent some time avoiding reality this year. Maybe it was too many snacks and virtual happy hours at the beginning of quarantine, or shutting the news off when you wanted to pretend it didn't feel like the world was busting open. It could have been a good escape like lots of reading or exercise, or maybe it was numbing out in front of the tv or on social media. Most of us probably did some version of all of those. 

So when we logged off for the holidays to close out 2020, after months of actually slogging through whatever insane things the last year continued to require from us, I encouraged my students to do what felt right. Practice if it sounds fun, or don't if you don't feel like it.

Try to listen to yourself. Not tune out to something distracting, actually listen.

I had grand plans for my break. Lots of reading to do, practicing for fun, and working ahead on things for my yoga teacher training. But, as the break went on, it became pretty clear that some of it just wasn't going to happen.

For once though, instead of berating myself ("I CANNOT BELIEVE that you didn't finish these eight thousand projects you came up with for yourself", etc.), I was ok with it. It's what I needed. Instead of duking it out with myself, I'll pick up refreshed when the break is over, with the energy I need to do a good job on the important stuff instead of a bunch of things that are half baked.

(This isn't a post about stopping everything for lazy "self care.")

As we go into this year with renewed energy and optimism, this is the lesson to take from 2020 - listen to yourself.

Check in with yourself. Regularly.

How do you feel?

What are you working toward?

Is what you're doing getting you somewhere?

Do you still want the same things?

Once you've asked the questions, you just have to give yourself the space to listen. 

You might have a plan you meant to stick to but changed your mind, and sometimes that's actually the right answer. 

I know that I have hesitated to move forward with good ideas because I felt I didn't have things worked out quite yet. I also know that I have stopped short of sharing new ideas or skills because I didn't think I knew enough to share yet. 

My students sometimes hesitate to finish a phrase because they think it's not (or isn't going to turn out) good enough. They will stop and restart, only to stop and restart again in the same exact place. 

Is it that they know they have a lack of knowledge or ability that makes them do this? Or, is it fear? Fear of being seen and heard "in progress." 

It's almost always fear. A self-protect mechanism that somehow makes them feel confident that they can predict how badly, how unfortunately the future will turn out if they keep playing.

Professionals do it all the time - not sharing something we wrote, or a recording that will life a long internet life that is just not quite up to our standard.

How many things have you started and not finished because you're just not good enough, yet?

One of my favorite things to remind my students when they stop before they can make a mistake or as soon as something doesn't quite please them  is that "gross is good." Gross means you are trying. Gross means you took a risk (you could replace the word "gross" with "mistakes"). Gross is human.

I don't know anyone who is perfect - as a person, or a musician, or in any other profession. We are all constantly learning, and we can actively choose our attitude by limiting ourselves and not trying, or trying and growing. But, if you never try you will never grow.

If you never let it be gross, it will never be good. 

No one but you expects you to be perfect - they are too busy placing the same expectations on themselves.

What we all need to do is remember that we are the only ones who remember each event in our lives - the only ones who remember every single wrong note, every nervous moment - and that it is always more important to grow. 

If you gave your best possible performance of a piece today and then performed the same piece in five years, they would be very different performances. Hopefully you would do it better - wouldn't you hate to be stagnant or move backwards?

But knowing you will be better in five years is no reason to avoid giving your best now. 

Do what you can with what you have and you will grow.

When in your musical journey did you first learn to be attentive to your whole body as you played your instrument?

When was the first time you realized you needed to be mindful of how you were breathing? When did you realize that the way you stood and distributed your weight through your legs and feet mattered?

Most of us were young when we learned how to play, and so our self awareness was limited. I have yet to meet a beginner that doesn't need at least some time to focus on each element independently - the placement of the head joint, the way they are blowing, the exact spots where the flute will rest in their hands, which keys belong to which fingers, etc.. 

We pick up bits and pieces of the whole picture as our playing matures, but most of us are slow to put together the image of our whole body as it relates to our instrument.

My first bigger glimpse of this was in high school as a student at the Flute Workshop at The Ohio State University, taught by Katherine Borst Jones (who would later become my undergraduate teacher and a dear mentor and friend).

KBJ showed us how the whole rib cage and upper body is involved in breathing by having us breathe while hugging an enormous exercise ball. She taught us to ground our feet but stay flexible, "like a tree," and to find the strength of our legs and body in a warrior pose. 

I learned even more as my time in KBJ's studio continued, I played in masterclasses for a variety of teachers, and went on to grad school. I ran with this knowledge for quite some time, knowing that I could always learn more but feeling like I had a pretty good foundation.

Then I met Jean Ferrandis, and a completely different vision of how the body influences flute playing came to light. My first lesson with Jean was spent learning about his approach to freeing the whole body in order to focus on the air.  One of the first things I remember learning from him in that lesson is that if you lock your hips, it cuts off the freedom, resonance, and movement of your upper body.

You can test this freedom of movement in yourself by miming tossing a ball gently underhand:
- Stepping forward, gently underhand toss your imaginary ball with the opposite hand as you continue to step through the movement.
- Do it with the left and the right no matter which is your dominant hand.
- Feel the way the movement connects (or maybe, doesn't connect) from your hips to your shoulders as you step into the toss.
- What do you notice?
- Where is it fluid and natural? Where could it improve?

(I should note that we did this for at least 30 minutes in my first lesson with Jean - none of us are as aware as we think!)

Jean's teaching expanded my view of the physicality of playing. He always made sure we were aware of the ways we blocked fluidity, or when we made movements a habit that were not natural. 

This year, with a little extra time on my hands (an actual silver lining of the pandemic) I invested in expanding my interest in the whole body as it relates to being a musician and enrolled in a 200 hour yoga teacher training. Yoga has made a tremendous impact for me when I practice it regularly - the focus on correct body alignment, muscle and joint movement, and the attention to patience and mindfulness are so incredibly beneficial to performance and practice of a musical instrument. 

During a recent training weekend, I heard something that instantly struck a chord: 

"The body is the home of your creativity."

I knew immediately how true this is from the way my own sense of embodiment has developed through my musical journey. I know from experience how small bad habits can grow into difficult physical blocks, and how small amounts of awareness in the right places can create tremendous freedom. 

Yet even though I know how to care for my creative home when playing the flute, I don't always do a good job. And if all of my eye opening experiences of finding new awareness have taught me anything, it's that we are always learning. We can always have a better or more detailed mental image of our whole self, whether we're just sitting or doing something as athletic (yes, athletic!) as playing our instrument.

I often wonder how all of this would have sunk in when I was first learning to be self aware in my playing and how it might have changed my abilities and opened up creativity.

From teaching, I know that it can be difficult for my students to retain awareness, even if they are able to find and identify it. If we lock in on loosening the knees and distributing the weight evenly between the feet, that attention often vanishes in a few minutes. 

Some of that awareness develops along with maturity and skill, but what I think works against us ALL is the disembodiment created by staring at a phone (and the way we hold it!) or a computer screen constantly. 

How often do you think about the way you are sitting when you work at the computer for an hour or two?

When was the last time you were aware of the space around you as you worked?

Do you find yourself craning your neck afterward and desperately stretching?

What about the last time you practiced - were you trying to stretch out all the stiffness afterward?

Here's a simple exercise to try the next time you are sitting at a desk and typing (or looking at your phone when you should be typing):
- Start by noticing your shape, and where you feel curves in your spine and weight distributed in your seat.
- Locate your sit bones (also known as the ischial tuberosity, or the two pointy bones in your seat that you can feel against the chair) . Are they pointing forward?
- Tilt your sit bones back and widen them. Notice what changes. Now where does your spine curve? Where is the weight distributed in your seat?
- Take a deep breath and exhale, allowing gravity to work. Make sure you are not using your upper body to hold yourself up - allow your shoulder blades to slide down your back.
- Move between your two postures slowly, noting the sensations that follow and how unconsciously you can slip into the first posture.

At first it may feel awkward and rigid to widen your sit bones back because it will change the way you are curving your spine. It should bring the curve of your spine at the sacrum in to the midline and a more anatomically neutral position, allowing you to stack your ribs and head over your hips while you sit. Make sure you are not lifting yourself up with your upper body (lower your shoulders, please!) and it will feel a lot less rigid. 

Once you feel good doing this seated, try doing it the next time you are preparing to practice. Even standing, we can all allow gravity to gently work while widening the lower back and sit bones to find openness in our stance and a natural curve of the spine. Can you keep that posture when you pick your instrument up?

This is just one small way to clean your creative house. The more physical space you create, the more mental space you will find. 

It was easy to practice when I was in music school. My major required me to show continued progress each week in rehearsals, lessons, and performances.

I knew that there was an expectation I would be prepared and playing better at each rehearsal, so I went straight to the practice room every day, usually first thing in the morning before there was so much chaotic distraction from other practicing students.

When I have a gig coming up, it's easy to practice. I squeeze it in between lessons, listen to pieces I'm going to perform while I do other tasks. No problem, there is a deadline ahead to be ready for.

When I'm not a student, there are no performances, AND there is a global pandemic, it's harder to prioritize practice. Oh, I'll do it later.....well, I could answer those emails....whoops it's time to teach.

Usually if this happens I have a lot of guilt for being lazy or unorganized, but I actually think it's deeper than that. 

I have played the flute long enough to know that if I start to play and really (I mean REALLY, like no phone in the room really) get focused I will feel better. Not because I'm proud of myself or busy thinking how great I am, or how I'll win some audition, or "look at me I'm so productive" - no, better because it is amazing to focus on just one thing. One physical thing that can be almost meditative when you get into your practice groove.

So, why do I avoid practice and then give myself guilt trips? 

Because when there isn't a goal on the horizon, practice takes on a whole different spin. You can start to think, what's the point? I have nothing to prepare for. Or, you start to wonder what opportunities could even exist in the future (this is a strange time, after all).

Newsflash: the future is none of your business.

You have no way of knowing what tomorrow, next month or ten years from now will bring (if you do know that you should be making millions on predictions and not pursuing a music career!).

We cannot base our lives on desperately planning for or imagining things that are completely out of our control (please note, this is different than having goals). This will only leave us constantly distracted and desperately grasping at whatever thought or project looks most tangible.

Now is when sheer willpower needs to take over. Not the kind of willpower where you wait for inspiration to strike, but the kind you build through taking consistent daily actions. The willpower you have because you know what is best for yourself.

The pandemic won't last forever. You won't lack for somewhere to perform forever. How can you stay in touch with yourself and your music if you don't explore, play and keep moving? 

This is the time to do it anyway.

We all know it's scary to try new things. There was also a time for all of us that it wasn't so scary. Maybe that was just a year ago for you, or ten years ago. Maybe it hasn't been that way since you were very, very little. Perhaps you can't even remember that time.

Over the course of our lives we've all learned new things, even in "safe" ways. We've started new jobs and been trained to do new tasks. Maybe you became a parent or got married - those are definitely new skills. If you're a student, you learn new things all the time. 

So, what's the tipping point where we lose our willingness to do these new things? For some it's when we are young and we realize that someone might be watching, or a kid at school makes fun of us for something mundane we've never paid attention to. For others, we are older and realize that we don't want to do anything we don't feel absolutely sure of because we might fail.

In my case, it crept in when I reached a certain amount of "success" with work - suddenly I became aware that if anything I did didn't reach my standard someone else might judge it and think me less capable. 

As that feeling crept into my work life, from the outside you might not have noticed anything different. I coasted along at my regular activities doing mostly the same quality of work as always, and to some extent that presents like success. At the same time, I stopped putting my neck out when something new and interesting popped into my head. 

Eventually, this feeling that someone might notice me failing was spreading like a weed into my previously reliable endeavors. What if someone notices that high F# wasn't just right? What if they know I am nervous and can't remember what other instruments play this chord with me? What if they can tell I feel nervous?

So it went, as I continued to stuff these thoughts and feelings further and further down until a lot of previously comfortable situations made me very, very nervous.

Ironically, the pandemic and the ensuing shut downs gave me the best opportunity yet to evaluate my perspective and what started this vicious cycle of doubt. 

Our mind and our body build support systems for our habits, so when I started to doubt myself a little, those thought pathways became stronger. Over time, they became body-builder thoughts. Tough, hard to move, and persistent. 

I'm currently reading The Practice by Seth Godin (if you don't read his daily blog, you are missing out big time: https://seths.blog), and he delves into the reality of creating in the most digestible way I have seen yet. As the title of the book implies it is the practice, not the ensuing result, that matters.

Good decisions can still have bad outcomes, and this is where most of us run astray. We are so obsessed with the outcomes that we lose sight of building the skills and habits for our own personal goals.

We forget that we have no control over the outcomes.

We become disillusioned by what we have been taught - to be a successful musician you must be a college professor or full time orchestra musician, to be a successful learner you must produce straight A's, etc - that we stop thinking about what matters most to us. 

What do you really want to achieve or do to make a difference? What do you want to create?

Reflecting on this thought pattern and cycle has give me a new energy to focus on the goals and projects I have created for myself and can create for myself, and to stop expecting external validation or criticism to provide much besides self doubt and distraction. 

(Sticker and inspiration for the title from ​https://www.thegraymuse.com, artwork by https://morganharpernichols.com, The Practice by Seth Godin https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53479927-the-practice)