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.

In the short time I have been studying to teach yoga, I have learned so much about the history of yoga and the spiritual practice and beliefs that are the basis for the physical practice we are all so familiar with.

The poses that we practice in what you would picture as a typical yoga class are called "asana." This term refers to the physical postures that we take when doing yoga. While asana is often the only part of a yoga practice many of us are familiar with, it is one of the eight limbs of yoga that make up the spiritual and physical practice.

You may already notice that there is often a focus on the breath in yoga classes you have taken. If you've never tried yoga, it is common for a teacher to help you sync your breath to your movements, cueing you to inhale and exhale when it makes sense with your physical movements. 

The breath is an integral part of yoga, and as I am learning more about the foundations of yoga I am fascinated by the way this ties in with my perception of the breath as a wind player, and specifically as a flutist.

Prana is the life force energy, a universal energy which flows in currents in and around the body. Yoga often divides it into five distinct vayus. In Sanskrit, vayu means "wind", while the root of the word (va) translates to "that which flows." Vayus are also thought of as energies.

​Already, you may sense the connection to playing your instrument - we are often trying to communicate something about ourselves or connect through our sound as made by our own wind.

There are distinct differences between the five vayus, and a familiarity with them can allow us to be more perceptive to subtleties of the body - something musicians are used to doing and need to be quite skilled at.

Prana-vayu is inward moving breath which flows in and up from the heart through the head.

Take a breath in and notice how you can feel opened, lifted and energized by this energy going up through your body.

Apana-vayu is downward moving breath, which flows down and out through the body taking toxins or unwanted substances like carbon dioxide with it.

Breathe in and notice how you can feel opened, grounded, and rooted as the breath travels down through the body.

Now. take a moment to breathe with your focus on prana and apana, allowing yourself to be energized by each breath in and releasing anything that is not serving you on each out-breath.

Samana-vayu translates to "balancing air" and unites the upward and downward energy of prana and apana. Samana energy swirls around your midsection where it brings us balance.

Take a moment to breathe in and out, noticing the way you expand through the front, back, and sides of your midsection. 

Vyana-vayu is outward moving and travels from the center of the body through the limbs at the borders of the body.

Breathe and notice how you can feel your breath reach your arms and legs, hands and feet.

Take several long breaths in and out, noticing how you can feel expansion and release in your midsection as the air travels in to the center of the body and out through your limbs.

Udana-vayu is "that which travels upward" and is centered around the neck and head. It's expression is verbal (or, in the case of a musician, based in our tone or musical voice).

Breathe in and out, noticing the way you feel the breath move through your throat - try sighing audibly on the out-breath. 

Now that you've given yourself a moment to consider all the ways the breath energizes us, and helps us release and verbalize, consider how this relates to your use of air when playing your instrument.

Our air energizes us to play (prana and apana), allowing us to feel both the energy to create sound and the grounding that we need to resonate. Our air also opens us to being resonant while carrying our sound away from us (samana and viyana).

Finally, our air carries our true expression as we communicate through the sound of our instrument (udana). It radiates out from our heart with the messages we hope our music will project.

There is a Buddhist scripture titled Udana that is translated as "inspired utterances," and I love the connotation of that translation in relation to music.

The next time you warm up on your instrument, use some long tones to consider the five vayus: 
- Spend time focusing on each vayu individually as you do your long tone exercise.
- Do you notice anything new about the breath moving through your body or your perception of the breath?
- Does focusing on the breath in this way make you more aware of subtle movements or changes in the body? What about subtle changes in your sound or resonance?

The five vayus can help us balance ourselves in life, but I believe they can help us balance ourselves especially while playing our instruments where our attention often gets swept away as we overexert ourselves in the musical task at hand.

A simple and effective way to start warming up:

Pick one note (if you're a flutist, B in the staff is quite nice for this exercise).

Hold the instrument with as little tension as possible. Maybe even with just one hand if you can, letting the other arm relax at your side.

Focus on moving your air freely and finding optimal resonance. Don't try too hard. 

Be open.

Stay with this note as long as you need until you feel the resonance and vibration and notice warmth in the sound.

Try relaxing your knees, bending one at a time or shifting your weight side to side. Can you keep the resonance and ease of playing while you do this?

As long as you can maintain the quality of air movement, try walking around your space, making sure none of your joints are locked and your movements are fluid.

Now carry this ease of air and movement as well as the beautiful quality of sound you have created through any long tone exercise you like, beginning on the note you started with.

​Enjoy.

I had a bit of a technology melt down last week.

It was spurred on by several things that coalesced into slight (major) loss of calm. I don't think it should have surprised me - months of learning or using new skills you're not necessarily interested in can be tough, and then when things don't come together because you're not quite good enough at editing yet or that microphone wasn't in the right spot, etc., we're bound to feel a little defeated.

Alas, my technological struggles are not the point here. 

We have some options when we get frustrated. We can wallow in our sorrows (sometimes, a good therapeutic wallow is good for the soul). We can keep banging our head against the wall (this would be an example of efforting in the wrong way) and try to hash something, anything, out of our frustrations. Or, we can put it down and come back later. 

I have long been an advocate of "bad practice is worse than no practice." If you are fighting yourself, then you are definitely not getting anything done and you might be creating some nasty habits.

So, my usual reaction, when I am thinking clearly, is to walk away, cool off, and come back to it. 

But, beyond giving the task space, we need to make space. 

Perhaps even if you give yourself some time to cool off you may have residual frustration when you come back to the task. You may sit down to a flood of emotions remembering how peeved you were at the problem when you stopped. 

To bring yourself back around from the space you gave to your task, you now need to create space in and around yourself so you can work. 

This will likely mean: 
- Giving yourself room to focus (no phone in the room, not cramming the activity in between other tasks, picking a productive time of day to work)
- Checking in with yourself before you get started: What do you want to accomplish? How are you feeling? (It's hard to work when you are hungry, for example.)
- How are you sitting? Find your feet on the floor and your sit bones, check in with your spine.
- What is the most specific thing you could focus on that would help fix your problem? If I'm practicing, that could be just my stance, just my air, just one note that will resonate the way I want. If I am working on the computer, that could be figuring out how to create a template from an effect I want to reuse in a video
- Taking some deep breaths. Have you ever caught yourself holding your breath when you are concentrating? Yeah, me too. Make sure you are breathing (and blinking if you're working at the computer).
- Reevaluating your task entirely. Are you making things too complicated? We usually are.

I definitely wallowed a bit last week. Once I got it out of my system, though, I came up with a plan. I adjusted some goals to make things more reasonable. bought a pair of bluelight glasses (who knows if they actually work, but even if the relief I'm noticing is all in my mind, sign me up!), AND found a way to  make space for myself.

If I'm being honest, making space did mean some time completely unrelated to the problem playing as many meditative long tones and technique exercises as I wanted, but I know that will allow me to come back open to my work. Making space for yourself will look different for everyone.

As you approach your next big task, how can you give and make space to/for yourself?

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)