Practice Wellness
Make It Part of Your Day
This statement really rang a bell for me this week. Making time for wellness is about making choices. Choices to care for your mind and body. Attention in the present ultimately saves time in the future. Let’s look at this on two levels, the first relating to your craft and the second in your life.
Music-making, well okay any type of work is based in movement. For any craft, movement is at the heart of skill development. This is often overlooked for the product or outcome of a pursuit. i.e. “Did I play it right?” “Was I in tune?”
Overlooking the movement foundation overlooks the beautiful process of creating, which in my opinion is where joy is found.
How you do anything matters. What we are talking about here, matters for your health as well as for the quality of your “product.” When you move well you honor the body’s intrinsic design to be upright and to coordinate the plethora of movements that create. When you move well, you play well, you create well, and bonus…you enjoy the process. It is within the process where you encounter new inspiration and surprising options that can guide development and the outcome.
Now as wellness relates to your life. Not honoring the needs of mind and body leads to burnout, diminished returns, maybe including a disappointing performance or audition. Pursuing a passion is tiring and is accompanied by emotional ups and downs. It is important to acknowledge these feelings and respond to your needs.
A common question is, “How do I make time for another thing, wellness?” I contend, how can you not make time. Mindlessly chugging along can lead to pain that can derail your career temporarily or permanently.
There are ways to incorporate wellness into your process. I will share some of my approaches. Awareness is key!
For example, is the way I am sitting as I write this easy and effortless, or am I stiff, not breathing, and is my head position putting a lot of strain on my upper spine (neck.). I know that when I can sense and adjust the way I sit, I think better equally important is less wear and tear on the soft tissue in my body, muscles, and connective tissue. I also breathe better.
I do Parkour!
While I have to be conscious of what I am doing in Parkour and of the choices I make about the level of risk, Parkour connects me with people from all different walks of life that inspire me.
Coaches challenge me, help me learn, and inspire me through their teaching and approach to learning.
I challenge my own paradigm of what I think I am capable of. (I can do 245 squats in 8 minutes.)
I also have to keenly tune in to my body so that I don’t push it too far and injure myself.
It is just pure fun to run, jump, climb, and balance. Parkour serves to care for me as a musician and a human.
In practicing my craft, I incorporate breaks and intentional movement to promote wellness with the added benefit of an enhanced process. I know that it is not healthy to hammer away at music mindlessly. So I bring wellness practice into every phrase…
How I play the phrase directly relates to the quality of the phrase.
I reflect on how I move as I play.
“Getting it” isn’t about more practice its about the quality of the practice.
Regularly resetting the body through movements that remind me of the connectedness of the body and awareness throughout practice yields better outcomes.
It’s not the amount of time, it is the quality of use.
While some of the things I describe require carving out a block of time, they also propel the quality of the time used in your fine-tuning skills. In other words, yes I spend 2 hours doing parkour, meditating, walking, resting in my day, but that investment makes the remaining hours way more productive.
I recognize this can be a huge paradigm shift. Start small, the intention of Practicing Turned Upside Down is to inspire small changes and new perspectives in what you do.
Be curious…
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