Breathing and Feldenkrais for musicians of all instruments
A natural, quiet and effortless breathing counts in every
serious musician’s agenda as a main topic to address, often right after healthy
posture. However, it is rarely considered as one which they can use for problem
solving. In this article I discuss the value of observing the breathing for
musicians, and what I have learned from my experience with the Feldenkrais
method.
The way to use breathing to our full benefit as musicians
is to first bring the process itself to the foreground, then to notice all the places
we feel the breathing, like the lungs and ribcage, the belly, throat and all
the way to the mouth and nose, and finally to realize where and when the
quality of the natural process is compromised. As challenging as it may be in
the beginning, you can choose a challenging passage, repeat it multiple times, each
time with increasing attention to these details. As a result, much of the
tension will be gone once you find an uninterrupted mode of breathing.
During the work of practicing and essentially getting things
done progressively better, like everyone in the field I often face obstacles.
Asking myself “why does it not work? I have been practicing it for a while
now”, I find that the answer is often related to the way that I breathe. Quite
far from the thought that it is the finger that isn’t fast enough, or that
better coordination has yet to be learnt, the breathing is happening all the
time, and at the core of our body – and this is why it can be relevant to just
about anything that we prepare for performance.
Zoom into breathing
It is well known that what we learn during the practice time
is what we have available during our performance. And just as obvious, we should
isolate the challenging phrases or passages from the larger piece in order to
find the most effortless way to perform them. We take time for this search, and
during that time the way that we breathe plays a main role in bringing us
closer to what we wish to achieve.
I would like to give an example from my own experience, in
order to clarify the steps toward a constructive practice session that is
focused on the breathing. Like in any learning experience that is structured or
inspired by the Feldenkrais method, taking rests in between the steps is very
helpful.
1. Start: here I am in a practice session, learning a
piece for an upcoming concert. It’s not the most demanding piece in my program,
but after some sessions of studying it, I feel that there are still tough nuts
to crack before I can present it on stage.
2. Overview: I play it once from the beginning to the
end, and notice where exactly these places which require more work are. It
boils down to some complex passages that I then mark in the score.
3. First evaluation: I start playing again from the
beginning, with a purpose not to practice anymore, but to run-through just
until the end of the first challenging passage that I just marked. Then I
decide whether this passage is indeed not yet effortless.
4. Isolation: If I still failed to play that passage
in the short run-through, even after dedicating some time during several days
to learn it, I would run through it once more time, this time not from the
beginning of the piece, but from the beginning of the passage itself, now attending
mainly to the way my breathing changes as I play it.
5. Inner observation: It’s always worth attending to
various locations where the breathing happens: the lungs, the ribcage, the
throat, and the mouth, tongue and lips, and finally the nose. Yes, breathing
always happens in all these places.
6. Insight: It is so surprising to realize that there
is very often an indication, almost a reflection, of a musically challenging
task in the quality of the breathing. The two are so well connected, that I
feel that if I could follow only the breathing itself, detached from the performed
task – I would be able to tell where the tough passages are happening.
7. Integration: the session is done and I take a
couple of minutes to recap. Taking the time to think about one new detail that
I could notice during the session, and then moving on to the next detail and so
on. I see them once again without the instrument in my hands, in order to
consolidate the lesson.
Back to our natural breathing patterns
We all know that breathing is a natural process, and that it
happens in every moment whether we decide to be aware of it or not. Assuming
that we stay in a room with available air to take in, we can actively hold our
breath, but not for longer than the time oxygen will need to flow in again. Our
body will then decide for us that it is time to inhale again and inhaling will
indeed happen. Many levels and qualities of inhaling can be addressed to, from
higher breath, where the chest is expanding more than the other active parts,
to lower, where most movement occurs in the belly. But what each of us does
when we breathe in a way that is natural to us depends on our habits and
preferences.
What I have learned from the practice sessions in which I
placed focus on the breath, is that during the time I practice on my
instrument, I would repeatedly have moments in which my natural breathing
pattern is disrupted, as if I hold my breath in order to help myself achieve a better
quality in the movement. Somehow, this compromised breathing is built into the
more challenging elements in the musical piece that I practice, and as this
repeats itself enough times, the new breathing pattern is established and it
is this pattern that I eventually might find having on stage. It is no surprise
that the actual performance contains all the short moments in which the
breathing is no longer as smooth as it could be; these moments have been
practiced well enough to be present there in connection with the music.
The days at the Feldenkrais training allow me to define
breathing as a main theme for myself from time to time. Since I started focusing
on breathing, I can say that the ATM lessons really provide space to elaborate
on that theme to the level that often the breathing itself becomes the most
effective way to overcome many obstacles. Interestingly, the way to react
to a sudden challenge by suddenly holding the breath is so evident in ATM
classes and it seems to be everyone’s “default choice” and intuitive
way to feel that they would have now an additional resource (even if this does
not help). As the trainer reminds us to find back our natural breathing pattern,
many of us suddenly find an improvement in the movement right after the smooth
breathing is regained.
Putting conscious breathing into practice
These days I split my practice time into multiple, daily short
sessions of ten minutes, with each session being goal-oriented. During this time
I let the breathing be in the center of my attention for at least once a day. I
would like to share the following ideas, rather than the workflow itself that
was given above, for a constructive practice.
As soon as an impossible moment or a passage is recognized
in the practice session, we can pause and attend to how our breathing has
changed on that passage. It is worth playing it over again in order to attend mainly
to the breathing. As soon as we focus on the breathing, we at the same time
shift the attention away from the fingers, or in general from the distal parts,
gradually seeing more of the proximal part that is the core, where the
breathing movement is initiated. In this way, we are also less stressed about quickly
improving the “faults in the movement sequence”, and instead we
simply stay curious about what changed in the breathing pattern and why. We
bypass the offensive process of seeing a problem and searching for its local cure,
and instead we are involved in a creative process of raising curiosity to what
feels different on a certain moment and why it does. Besides this benefit,
the improvement of breathing will allow us to regain comfort as there is never
a disadvantage in finding a smoother breathing mode.
From what I personally experience, I am more and more
convinced that if we learn more about our breathing patterns and habits as
they are related to our practice and performance activities, we can use it as a
tool to improve our learning and developing musicianship.
As a musician, I dedicate time almost every day in
practicing, reaching for better technique and expression, and testing what I
reached in rehearsals and on stage. This is a very general description of what
I do, but it already gives two essential phases in the workflow: learning the
part by myself at the highest level, and presenting myself and the results of
my work to others.
To conclude this fascinating theme of breathing as a tool
for musicians, I wish to say that we can always choose to observe our breathing
as we practice, and use it to spot points along the piece which still contain
effort or tension, as the way we breathe on these points will reflect that.
Moreover, we can use breathing as an effective tool to initiate promote an
effortless mode of learning. And finally, we can even find out that some technical
solutions become suddenly within our reach, as soon as we allow ourselves to
breathe naturally and smoothly.
