Without our bodies, we could not play our instruments.


When I studied with Jean Ferrandis he would say that everything has a frequency, and we shouldn’t disrespect the natural frequencies. Meaning, for example, that if we blow way too much or too little we’re not respecting the frequency of the instrument. 


In the time since I studied with Jean, I’ve also come to realize that this also means we have to respect the frequencies of our body. 


I think about this concept a lot now. If we over or under use parts of the body in our playing, we will compensate somewhere else, creating tension, extra effort, and blocking resonance. 


If our body feels unnatural or is used inefficiently, it will translate not just to the way we sound, but also to our mind state. 


Elaborate briefly on movement benefits - concept from yoga of meeting yourself where you are. Perfect for building a warm up routine 


We’re all aware just how important exercise is for our health. At the root of it though, it doesn’t matter if you run, lift weights, hike, bike, or do water aerobics. 


Movement is what matters. 


There is an intersection here with yoga that I particularly love. Yoga encourages us to meet ourselves firmly where we are. It asks us to move with what we have, with acceptance and an understanding that we are not moving to change but to know ourselves better. It’s an approach to physical movement that is particularly relevant to playing an instrument. 


When we consider how our physical body impacts our playing, it is important to do so from this place of meeting. Meeting ourselves where we are, and understanding what we need.


Consider how it feels to play your instrument when you are in an optimum physical state - no tension, no restriction, everything is free and resonant. 


Now think about the difference when you feel tense. 


With those two different experiences in mind, imagine yourself performing. What happens to your body when you are on stage? Does your breathing remain free? Do you feel that familiar tension? Or, maybe something different happens entirely like shaky hands or dry mouth.


Most of us are intimately familiar with our physical ticks and habits as they relate to playing our instrument. Not very many of us have a regular movement routine that addresses our strengths and weaknesses as they relate to playing, though. 


Imagine the amount of concentration and brain power you could waste thinking about a tense muscle, or worrying you won’t get enough air in your next breath because your chest feels tight on stage. 


Not only do physical issues limit our actual performance, they limit our mind in performance. 


So how can you respect your frequencies? 


A good place to start is by simply noticing:

• Stand in a neutral posture and scan your body from the soles of your feet all the way to the top of your head. How and what do you feel?
• Still in that neutral posture, think about playing your instrument. Did thinking about playing change anything about your physical body?
• Pick up your instrument as if you were going to play. Scan the body again from the soles of the feet all the way to the top of the head. What changed?

Building a base level awareness of what’s happening in our bodies is the first step toward finding neutral and creating efficiency. 


I hope you’ll join me for the Warm Up to Flow workshop to meet yourself where you are, acknowledge yourself under pressure and identify helpful elements to add to your warm up to find your peak physical performance state.

If I don’t meditate - how could mindfulness become a regular part of my warm up?

Mindfulness and mindfulness meditation are huge, broad topics. There is a tremendous amount of information to digest. If you are a practitioner of mindfulness or mindfulness meditation you know that, like playing an instrument, it’s a slow and often internal journey that requires consistency and dedication. 

So how can we take these far-reaching concepts and pare them down to fit our specific needs as musicians, while still respecting these disciplines and what they have to teach us? 

As a practitioner of mindfulness meditation, I have a great appreciation for the amount of work it takes to meditate and grow a meditation practice, and for the ups and downs that come with such an introspective practice. 

However, the fundamentals of mindfulness practice are accessible to all of us, whether we are seasoned meditators or not. 

Conceptually, it’s not a far leap from the focus required to be a musician to mindfulness. We already have some experience wrangling the mind away from distractions so that we can get work done in the practice room and so that we can focus in performance. 

Even though as musicians we might be more mindful than the average person, I would guess that most of us still have plenty of distractions like self-critiques, concern about the judgment of others, or stress over the situation that bombard our experiences of practice and performance. Which is exactly why taking the time to address our mindfulness can greatly benefit our work. 

I would be remiss if I didn’t encourage the development of a regular mindfulness practice here. In recent years there has been a tremendous amount of research about how much practice, or how little, is required to make an impact. (Amishi P. Jha’s book Peak Mind is a great entry point, and suggests that about 12 minutes a day is all it takes to help create our peak state of mind more frequently).

But if you’re still skeptical, I understand. Most of us find the idea of sitting in stillness and silence with ourselves laughable.

As with most challenging undertakings, we need a relatable entry point. Something that is attainable, but also shows us the potential benefits. One of my favorite mindful practices is below. It’s short, simple, easily repeated, and never loses its impact. Even now as a more seasoned practitioner of mindfulness, I still use this one all the time.

Following the breath:

• Sit in an upright position that is not rigid. Take some time to settle into your seat
• Allow your attention to come to rest on your breathing without changing anything about the way you are breathing
• With as much detail as possible, follow your breath in and out
• When you get distracted, simply bring your attention back to the breath. Do this as many times as you need to.
• Try doing this for anywhere from 1 to 5 minutes to start (set a timer so you aren’t checking the clock constantly).

While at first this may seem like a breathing exercise, the breath is really just an anchor here. It is a place to rest our attention that doesn’t require any action from us. The breath provides somewhere to place your attention when you begin and when you realize you have become distracted again. It simply provides a resting place for your mind.

Try it out for yourself. Try not to judge your ability to follow the breath - that’s not the point of the exercise. Make sure you do this exercise a few times, for at least a few days before you pass judgment. Continue to note how you feel after each practice. 

There are many more ways to bring mindfulness into our warm ups and the way we approach our instruments. We’ll go in depth in the Warm Up to Flow workshop!

What does the breath have to do with finding a flow state?

Our health, both physical and mental, is deeply intertwined with our breath. Oxygen, quite literally, keeps us alive. Our breath circulates nutrients and removes toxins from our body. Science has backed up that breathing also stimulates our nervous system, specifically the vagus nerve, and can agitate or calm us depending on the stimulation. 

Anyone who sings or plays a wind instrument, enjoys long distance running, lifting weights, or practices yoga regularly understands the integral role the breath plays in helping us do some pretty amazing things from running marathons to performing concertos. 

Many of us, however, still don’t realize what an integral role our breath plays in our day-to-day sense of ease and the way we handle stress. 

It’s impossible to briefly state the impressive list of ways our breath affects us (I highly suggest reading Breath by James Nestor to develop a better understanding). So, to completely over-simplify, if we become participants in our breath instead of passive users, there is great potential for our overall health and performance. 

If you haven’t already gotten the impression that the breath can do impossible things, it’s also been shown that the practice of pranayama (one of the eight limbs of yoga) or other breathwork techniques can even help us rewrite neural patterns we have developed over time. 

It is common in our culture to over-breathe or breathe too quickly and rapidly, both of which are actually quite shallow. Mouth breathing is also wide spread. Both of these habits can negatively   impact our health and mindset, and while you would think most musicians would have a good handle on healthy breathing, how we function in real life is very different from how we play our instruments. 

Having gained just a little perspective on the major player the breath is in our overall wellbeing, it becomes easier to see how crucial it is for all of us and especially those in high performing or high stress situations to make sure their breath is working for them, not against them. Beyond that, learning how to use the breath to help regulate our nervous system and focus is something we all can and should do.

The absolute best thing about breathwork, though? We all breathe already. It’s something we can all do, with a tool that absolutely everyone has at no cost.

There are many types of breathwork, and you may have already learned some simple breathing exercises without realizing the potential scope of their impact. As with all disciplines, each exercise won’t speak to you, and it’s possible to find one that suits your specific sensations and needs but later connecting more with a different exercise. 

Box breathing is a common approach to learning how to meter our breath, extend our inhales and exhales, and build CO2 tolerance.

A simple box breath follows these steps:

• Breathe in through the nose for four counts
• Hold the breath for four counts
• Exhale for six or eight counts
• Hold for four counts
• Repeat several times

Another commonly used yogic breathing practice (pranayama) is alternate nostril breathing. 

Also known as Nadi Shodhana, alternate nostril breathing is a yogic pranayama (breathwork) practice known to help with stress and anxiety. The sanskrit name nadi shodhana translates to "subtle energy clearing.”

To try it:

• Sit in a comfortable position, somewhere you can focus. You want to be upright and alert, but relaxed. Close your eyes if you feel comfortable doing so. 
• Place the index and middle finger of the right hand on the forehead between the eyebrows, allowing the ring finger and pinky to rest on the left nostril and the thumb to rest on the right nostril.
• Inhale through both nostrils.
• On the exhale, close the right nostril with the thumb and breathe out through the left nostril.
• On the following inhale breathe in through the same side, the left nostril.
• When you exhale, release the right nostril and close the left with the ring finger and pinky. Exhale through the right side. 
• Breathe in through the same side, the right nostril. Close the right nostril to breathe out through the left, releasing the ring finger and pinky. 
• This completes the cycle, which always begins and ends on the left. Remember to always breathe in through the same nostril you have just exhaled from.
• Keep your breath even and gentle throughout.
• Repeat the whole sequence 3-5 times

You can test out both of these techniques for yourself - how do you feel afterwards? What changed in your mind or body? How does your breathing feel after trying these compared to before? 

We’ll explore several more breathwork techniques in the Warm Up to Flow workshop, and also how to discern what practice might best suit your individual needs and warm up routine as you build your way to a flow state. I hope you’ll join me! 

Anyone with hypertension, a history of aneurysms, osteoporosis, cardiovascular issues, or vision issues should consult a doctor before seriously undertaking breathwork.

I’ve learned a lot as a musician about anatomy, movement, mindfulness, and how our brains work, especially over the last two years since being trained in yoga and mindfulness meditation. These are endlessly fascinating topics to me, and they have completely rejuvenated my experience of being a musician and a teacher. As I’ve contemplated the connections between these topics and music making that could help my students, certain ideas stick in my mind as being useful for all of us.

One of those “sticky” ideas turned into my Body of Sound workshop, which incorporates movement into some of our standard flute warm ups with the intention of helping us understand what truly creates resonance in our sound, and how we generate our unique tone quality at a fundamental level.

Another idea that has truly stuck for the last few years combines my fascination with the feeling of playing when we’re in the zone and my experiences of struggling to find an optimum head space under pressure. The intersection of these two things? Warm ups.

When I decided to host a workshop online it seemed obvious to address this idea of warm ups, the relationship we know they have to the flow state, and how we can tweak our individual warm up to serve us best in our quest for an optimal mind state.

What is a warm up?

A warm up is the signal to your body and mind that it’s time to wake up and do what you have trained to do.  

Even for seasoned musicians, remaining in the moment during challenging rehearsals, performances, recording sessions, or even practice can feel elusive.

On top of this dodgy attention, we might layer self criticism about the fact that we’re not being more focused, accomplished, productive, or achieving. This self criticism is often not fully founded, but just another distraction. 

There’s more to it, though, than just being “distracted.” Have you ever considered whether it’s realistic that we expect ourselves to hop out of real life and straight into a hyper-focused rehearsal or practice session?  

We expect a lot from ourselves when it’s time to perform and spend hours preparing the music, but prepping ourselves for performance requires more than just learning the notes. 

It is possible to get into the flow state more consistently. Athletes do it all the time. Dancers. Popular bands and singers. High performing classical musicians and opera singers.

So what do they all have in common? 

Warm ups. 

Not the same one across disciplines, but likely the same principals, and above all the consistency of the warm ups they do.

These performers have found something that works for them and revisit it every time they need to be “on.”

It could be a conscious action like a particular muscle or vocal warm up, or an unconscious action like a tick (think of a baseball player who might always tap their shoe with the bat twice before batting). On a deep, subconscious level the performer relates this action to the task at hand. At the end of completing the warm up, their mind and body know what is about to happen and are primed for right effort toward the goal.

Creating a useful warm up is not unlike the habit stacking that James Clear discusses in his book Atomic Habits. It’s building incrementally on something that we know is successful and capitalizing on the outcomes.

In fact, the basis of this workshop was inspired by Clear’s writing on using a pre-game routine to get motivated. One of the best points that Clear makes on this topic is that when we are required to do something (like practice or rehearsal) so often there are bound to be days that we’re not motivated or focused. 

According to Clear, every action that is part of the pre-game routine matters (even how you put on the baseball glove, or, how you put your instrument together), and the routine should be done in the same way every time. 

From Clear’s perspective there are a few non-negotiables to this routine: starting with something so easy you can’t avoid it (like getting out your instrument) and following that with actions that move you toward your goal.

The first time I read about this pre-game routine, my mind instantly went to my warm-up. The methodical way I put the flute together each time I play, and the playing warm ups I repeat daily because they feel good, and effective. There was way more to it than I had ever realized!

So over the years after making this connection between pre-game routine and performance, I kept thinking about how it applied to musicians. How we all already warm up to play, and how it’s at least somewhat the same warm up each time we put the instrument together. Also on my mind was how performances went when I did and didn’t allow time to warm up in the way I like and know is useful. 

The next obvious question was, can we tweak our warm ups to be even more preparatory? 

Of course we can!

By way of our training we can identify what we need on a large (long term goals) and small scale (specific to the day) to be successful players. Our warm ups already naturally address our personal needs, strengths and weaknesses. For example, if I am feeling sluggish I will play something that really gets my air moving, or do some physical exercises. 

The act of warming up already primes us to be in the zone by the nature of its repetition, but based on what we know from self inquiry, we can actively prime the warm up to produce our optimum flow state.

Doing something like warming up without a plan can be helpful even if we lack a clear intention or goal. Similar to repeating a section in the music over and over without listening carefully, we might end up with some positive results but there is a better way to get there (and beyond) if we spend a little time in reflection prior to beginning.

There are three pillars of a musician’s warm up that can help us reach an optimum state of body and mind:

• Breath - breathing exercises related to our physiological state, not the length of phrase we can play
• Mind/Mindfulness - addressing things like attention, focus, and concepts like visualization
• Body - physical wellbeing, stretching/movement, warming up on the instrument

By addressing our strengths and weaknesses in these areas and exploring proven exercises, approaches to mindfulness, and specific physical aspects of playing we can discern what our individual "pre-game routine" needs.

I hope you’ll join me on March 5th to deep dive into your warm up. Using self inquiry and these guide posts we will each craft a unique warm up that is highly functional, repeatable, and can continue to be developed over time to meet our evolving needs.

There is a lot of conversation on the internet about all the things music school doesn’t teach us. The ways that it perpetuates unhealthy cycles that have been solidified over generations. 

We don’t see a lot of discussion about what in our is right or good about the time we spend in music school. I don’t want to undermine what needs to change, but as I look back and reflect I’m realizing that one of the most valuable things about the time I spent in school was something I took completely for granted at the time.

Community.

It was so obvious to me as a freshman moving into an arts dorm - the joy of being surrounded by so many people who value the arts so deeply was new and exciting, and it spawned so many friendships. 

Over the four, six, or even more years we spend in school we easily grow accustomed to having access to all the perks. Music libraries, musicians playing every instrument and style of music, amazing teachers and mentors, and friends who are also fully entrenched in figuring out how to be a musician. 

When we leave school, it’s a sneaky shock to be removed from this artistic bubble. In my case, I was busy figuring out how to be a regular adult, not a student. I still had some connections to my previous school, was still traveling to take lessons, and was working as a musician.

Music hadn’t evaporated from my life by any means, but as time went on there was a growing sense of loneliness and disconnect. As a recent graduate working on my own most of the time, for the first time in years I was living in a world of mostly non-musicians.

As time has gone on I’ve been lucky to maintain friendships and find new belonging, but life often becomes fuller as we get older and if we’re going to find community in our lives it requires becoming much more intentional. 

Research also tells us the benefit of being in a community, including that feeling supported by those around us helps calm and regulate our nervous system and create a deep, lasting feeling of safety. 

While it would be ideal for all of us to find a community of people with our exact situation (for example, musicians who are also self-employed or freelancing) that’s not always possible. It can be just as good for our well-being to find communities around our other interests (exercise, mindfulness, cooking, coding … the list is endless). 

In the way that friendships sometimes can as adults, making time for this type of community in your life can feel like work. It will require you to reach out to old friends, talk to new people, and leave the house at times when you would just like to curl up with a blanket and Netflix. 

But, how much better would our art (and lives) be if we prioritized community? If we created a space for ourselves and those like us to rest in work or leisure? To commiserate over the difficulties of our work or forget them entirely and go for a hike, or to brainstorm crazy ideas with people are willing to genuinely encourage our creativity?

If I look back on the times that I really felt unmoored, I can see now the lack of community. When I took my yoga teacher training I was shocked at how having a group of friends I saw regularly and related to easily changed my day to day sense of wellbeing. Since then I do my best to remember the importance and value, even when it would be easier not to prioritize it. 

Having a community reminds us of the big picture, what’s truly important, and affirms to us who we are at our core. 

If you’re feeling frustrated in your work or pessimistic about your creative ventures, shift your focus and engage your community. If you’re not sure whether you have have one, start small and reach out to an old friend or mentor and ask how they’ve been. Make small talk with someone at your weekly yoga class or find a run club. Find a few people, or even just one, who can see you through your shared interests and then take note of the changes in your sense of safety and comfort.

A regularly updated list of books that are excellent for musicians, yogis, mindfulness practitioners, and humans.

Music:

The Music Lesson by Victor Wooten
The Flute Book by Nancy Toff
The Listening Book by W. A. Mathieu
Uncommon Measure by Natalie Hodges

Self Development for Creatives:

​The Practice by Seth Godin
Deep Work by Cal Newport
Essentialism by Greg McKeown
​Originals by Adam Grant
When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink
​Drive by Daniel Pink
Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
In Pursuit of Excellence by Terry Orlick
Range by David Epstein

Mindfulness & Meditation:
10% Happier by Dan Harris
The Mindful Athlete by George Mumford
The Posture of Meditation by Will Johnson
Lighter by Yung Pueblo
Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer
Peak Mind by Amishi Jha

Yoga:
​Eastern Body Western Mind by Anodea Judith
Wheels of Life by Anodea Judith

Miscellaneous:
Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
Breath by James Nestor

I’ve been doing a “best books of” post for several years now (here are 2021 and 2020), and it was fun to take a look back at what my favorites have been in previous years. I always read a mix of fiction and non-fiction, but my previous lists of favorites lean heavily toward non-fiction. I felt like I really indulged in fiction in 2022, so let’s see what this past year’s list of favorite turns out like!

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
​
Most of us are familiar with John Green because of the YA novels he’s written (The Fault in Our Stars, Turtles All the Way Down, etc.). He has a podcast with his brother, Hank Green (also an author), that’s quite popular that I haven’t explored yet. This book is a series of short essays where Green rates the regular everyday occurrences of the Anthropocene period (our current geological age) a la Google. He shares personal anecdotes that remind us all we’re having the same human experience in an enjoyable and relatable way. I give The Anthropocene Reviewed four and a half stars.

Uncommon Measure by Natalie Hodges
​
I found Hodges book to be extremely thoughtful, and at times quite challenging to read because of the way it points out the inadequacies of how many of us are taught to become musicians. Natalie Hodges spent her young life working hard to be a virtuoso violinist. She chronicles her experiences through our perception of time and consciousness, and how her experiences in music might have shaped her or been shaped by her. Hodges touches eloquently on so many of the challenges of becoming and being a musician, while including neuroscience and quantum physics, by taking us along on her own journey of imagining her life outside of being a classical violinist. 

Presence by Amy Cuddy

Amy Cuddy gained noteriety for her TED talk that has been viewed by millions. The overarching message of this book is that we don’t have to make grand changes to approach scary situations, nor should we continue to approach them with one eye closed in fear. I loved the stories Cuddy shares in Presence about people who took simple moment to moment approaches to intimidating situations, and her practical advice on how we can show for ourselves up over and over again.

The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams

This was a really enjoyable read. The characters felt rich, and Williams writing created such a vivid picture for me of this story as it unfolded. As someone who loves words, this story of lexicographers creating and editing the dictionary opened up a history I had never considered of who defined our language and how.

Range by David Epstein

Range takes a fascinating look at how we learn and grow our skills in a culture that says we must focus fast and early. Especially for those of us in fields like music where it can always feel like we started too late, I found this book refreshing. Epstein unpacks how being hyper focused can box us in, and how the paths that highly successful people take are often much more winding than we think. The information in this book is important for anyone who teaches or interacts with children and young adults to consider.

We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman

This novel is a beautifully painted picture of what it’s like to grieve with someone with terminal cancer, and was my favorite novel of 2022. It was not an easy read, especially if you’ve lost someone, but I was so moved by the way this book expresses how deeply we feel in the close relationships we build and how both the most joyful and saddest moments can be painful in their extremes.

Quiet by Susan Cain

Quiet, for me, was one of those rare books that clearly lays out things you have never been able to find the words to express. Cain redefines what it means to be an introvert, and to be a highly sensitive person. She takes the cultural labels out of the equation and makes it relatable for the reader to consider what it would be like to be introverted, or what it would be like to find balance as an introvert in an extroverted culture. There is concrete, functional advice in the book for how to work with introverted adults or children, and I think this book could help all of us consider and become more receptive to how each person’s experience is unique.

Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman

Four Thousand Weeks sits at the top of my list for 2022 for the way it genuinely challenged my concept of time and the way we are taught to treat it as a manageable, moldable commodity. It is both factual and philosophical, and explored our growing collective sense of anxiety and urgency. I appreciated that Burkeman didn’t take a negative perspective on the way our relationship with time has developed and took a more positive and reflective approach to how we might proceed differently.

​So now I want to know - what books did you love in 2022?

One of the most impactful skills mindfulness meditation can help us develop is a true exploratory mindset, but for many of us, and for a variety of reasons, it can feel challenging to cultivate an approach based in exploration.

Thinking in an exploratory way requires curiosity and an ability to detach from desired outcomes, which might feel unnatural. We grow up in a school system that doesn’t always encourage curiosity and uses testing outcomes to show value. We are performance and outcome driven in our society, and being a musician has the potential to make us even more so. 
​
Even though being a musician at its core requires us to be exploratory in getting to know our instruments and the styles of music we play in, it’s hard not to have an end result or potential accolades in mind. If you’ve ever given a jury in college, that’s the perfect example of where exploration and outcome lock horns.

If we encounter a limit or problem in our practice or daily life, we may immediately start to be hard on ourselves and judgmental. Perhaps we know how to fix the issue in our playing but can’t execute it just yet, or we can identify a conflict but not the solution. It’s easy to become distracted by the “right” or “wrong” way we’re approaching the situation, or by how much we do or don’t know.

When we start to assign quality or judge ourselves, the problem we’ve encountered is no longer a three dimensional issue that includes perspective, experience and prior knowledge, and exploration, but a very one dimensional view of what we’re doing correctly or incorrectly. Getting stuck ruminating on how we’ll get to a successful outcome leads to a shortsighted view of the challenge we’re facing.

Our gut reaction to gauge and label what we are doing wrong can feel so natural we don’t even question it, but it is less instinctual than you think. Our approach to problem solving is directly linked to the way our mind has been shaped by our personal experiences, education, and what the culture around us values. 

Our experience and culture based perspective was explained to me once as “conceptual baggage.” I think it’s the perfect way to describe how we unavoidably (and without any fault) bring all the messages we have received, perceptions we have built, and experiences we’ve had into each roadblock we face. 

The example that comes to mind so easily for me is when we’re doing something in our playing that no longer creates the desired result and we need to make an important fundamental change (think air use, embouchure, hand position, etc.). It can feel impossible for a time to release our old method, our critiques, our conceptual baggage, and yet slowly through perseverance and building new perspectives we are able to adjust and adapt.

We all have conceptual baggage, and it is also possible for all of us to bring more ease to how we approach challenges. 

The next time you encounter a frustrating situation in the practice room (or in life), rather than getting caught up in right or wrong or obsessing over the outcome, try encouraging yourself in an exploratory mindset by keeping the following in mind:

Ascribing meaning to something is an internal value - can you take a step back and notice what you are assigning meaning and value to? How does it make you feel to consider that the meaning and value could be different than what you assumed? What might they also mean to someone looking in from the outside? 

Harsh judgements we make about ourselves are not coming from our true self - they come from our judgement of how well we are doing something based on an outside metric and expectations that are often external. Could you view the task at hand without assigning good or bad? Could you see yourself with no judgement at all?

Holding something lightly is just a suggestion - meditation practices will often invite us to hold something lightly, instead of becoming attached to a feeling or outcome. Even this is an invitation, though. You can try it, but maybe just consider what it would mean or how it would feel if you could let go of the outcomes, even just a little. 

You don’t have to solve the problem. 

The awareness is enough. Knowing what you’d like to change, or even knowing how but not being able to execute it yet is ok - things need time to sink in, percolate, and come to life. What would it be like to sit with your awareness?

Taking a step back and challenging your view, looking at things from a new angle, checking your intentions, and encouraging yourself not to cling are just as valuable as fixing the problem. They create lightness and space around whatever it is we are dealing with, and that’s helpful for all of us.

It’s no secret I love to read.

My monthly newsletter always includes a book recommendation, I share my “what I read list” on Instagram every month, and many of the “small joys” photos I share include a book (with a cat or coffee always close by). I could spend hours in bookstores just browsing and thinking about what to read next.

The title of this blog might seem transparent - there’s clearly lots to be learned from reading. In fact, I had to learn so much via textbook in school that for the years I was enrolled in higher education I hardly ever read for fun.

As I reflect on another year of reading though, I’m aware that my hobby of reading has become about so much more than collecting “book smarts.”

These are the things I learn from reading: 

Make Room for Rest
In this day and age, rest often means mindlessly scrolling or bingeing Netflix. Don’t get me wrong, both of those activities really can help us decompress…but there’s a limit. Sitting down to read means I am setting aside the possibility of noticing a new email or notification on my phone. I am consciously tucking in with my lunch, or on the couch to end the evening. Allowing myself the option to doze off in the most gentle of ways, somewhere in the passages of a good book, is its own kind of permission to rest (and beats falling asleep to blue light any day).

Be Gentle with Yourself
None of us are strangers to the feeling that we must be accomplishing something, and at all times, to be good or useful. Reading in this way is like a mini rebellion. Maybe I’m learning, or maybe I’m not, but for the time I’m holding the book it doesn’t matter.

Enjoyment Belongs In Every Day of our Everyday Life
Do you ever catch yourself escaping into your phone or Netflix? That nagging feeling of not completing something important is there, and yet you slink off into blissful scrolling oblivion anyway? It might not be a bad thing to allow yourself those moments of respite - although not if you catch yourself picking your phone up or checking your notifications right in the middle of an important task, and I do think they’re better spent with a book…

Ideas Take Time to Come Together
I love to read for pleasure, but I also enjoy reading about subjects that fascinate me. I go through phases of both each year, but am always struck by how much space I need for information to start to knit together into new ideas. It could be days or weeks after I finish something interesting and I will find myself struck with how it relates to teaching or performing. Suddenly, and almost out of nowhere, a very clear idea will pop up tying all sorts of seemingly random but relevant information together.

Pausing is Not a Reward, Not Everything Needs a Purpose
If I’m being honest, I initially “allowed” myself my reading habit because although I loved it, it was also productive. It had purpose, and heaven forbid that I do anything simply because I love it. Even my outlets had to be well, outlets. They were a relief from something, meant to get me back on track with my responsible and acceptable goals. (I’m rolling my eyes at myself as I type). I still struggle with that mindset, but no matter what our hustle culture tells you, pausing for fun and leisure is not something we have to earn somehow.

I could learn these lessons from any hobby or pastime, it just happens that one of my favorites is reading. I have others that bring me joy, and I would guess that you do, too. Maybe like me you resurrected them during the pandemic. Did you set them aside when you went back to work, though? Maybe those pandemic projects deserve a cherished spot in your regular life, too.

I chose to use “learn” instead of “learned” in the title of this blog because reading, for me, isn’t about what new info I walk away from each book with, although that’s an obvious benefit. At its core, reading has come to represent how we intertwine work, pleasure, and the demands of every day life in a way that is fulfilling and enriching. It points out that we never know what’s ahead, and I want to end each day with a balance of effort and joy that feels good.

How often have you looked back at things you wish you would have done? 

Laying awake at night thinking about what we wish we hadn’t said or done has become a bit of a standard joke, but in an achievement driven culture or field it can feel awfully relatable. 

Even if it’s not keeping you up at night, I think it’s safe to say that most of us have choices we wish we would have made differently or situations we wish we would have handled differently in our past. 

Regardless of how often you find yourself thinking about these past experiences, most of us probably spend much more time with the negative ones than the positive ones. To some extent, that’s likely for a positive reason. We all have a desire to grow, and using previous failures is a valid way to consider how we would like to move forward. 

However, it might also be healthy to do the opposite.

When was the last time you drew some inspiration from yourself? 

When was the last time you really thought about something you did that took courage, or something you prepared well for that had a positive outcome? 

Even if your look back at yourself is neutral, rather than negative, there is a lot to be gained. It might be as simple as realizing that you weren’t as far behind as you thought.

As with most things, balance is key. Always seeing yourself with a super negative view would be unhelpful, but the same is true for viewing yourself in an inflated positive way all the time.

The next time you feel motivated to critique your past behaviors, consider also what you did right. Could you list both things and see them as just that…a list? Objective data on the situation that might come in handy later is a lot easier to work with in the future than a late night binge of self judgement.