A natural, quiet and effortless breathing counts in every\nserious musician’s agenda as a main topic to address, often right after healthy\nposture. However, it is rarely considered as one which they can use for problem\nsolving. In this article I discuss the value of observing the breathing for\nmusicians, and what I have learned from my experience with the Feldenkrais\nmethod. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The way to use breathing to our full benefit as musicians\nis to first bring the process itself to the foreground, then to notice all the places\nwe feel the breathing, like the lungs and ribcage, the belly, throat and all\nthe way to the mouth and nose, and finally to realize where and when the\nquality of the natural process is compromised. As challenging as it may be in\nthe beginning, you can choose a challenging passage, repeat it multiple times, each\ntime with increasing attention to these details. As a result, much of the\ntension will be gone once you find an uninterrupted mode of breathing. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n During the work of practicing and essentially getting things\ndone progressively better, like everyone in the field I often face obstacles.\nAsking myself “why does it not work? I have been practicing it for a while\nnow”, I find that the answer is often related to the way that I breathe. Quite\nfar from the thought that it is the finger that isn’t fast enough, or that\nbetter coordination has yet to be learnt, the breathing is happening all the\ntime, and at the core of our body – and this is why it can be relevant to just\nabout anything that we prepare for performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zoom into breathing <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It is well known that what we learn during the practice time\nis what we have available during our performance. And just as obvious, we should\nisolate the challenging phrases or passages from the larger piece in order to\nfind the most effortless way to perform them. We take time for this search, and\nduring that time the way that we breathe plays a main role in bringing us\ncloser to what we wish to achieve.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I would like to give an example from my own experience, in\norder to clarify the steps toward a constructive practice session that is\nfocused on the breathing. Like in any learning experience that is structured or\ninspired by the Feldenkrais method, taking rests in between the steps is very\nhelpful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Start: <\/strong>here I am in a practice session, learning a\npiece for an upcoming concert. It’s not the most demanding piece in my program,\nbut after some sessions of studying it, I feel that there are still tough nuts\nto crack before I can present it on stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Overview: <\/strong>I play it once from the beginning to the\nend, and notice where exactly these places which require more work are. It\nboils down to some complex passages that I then mark in the score.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. First evaluation: <\/strong>I start playing again from the\nbeginning, with a purpose not to practice anymore, but to run-through just\nuntil the end of the first challenging passage<\/strong> that I just marked. Then I\ndecide whether this passage is indeed not yet effortless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. Isolation: <\/strong>If I still failed to play that passage\nin the short run-through, even after dedicating some time during several days\nto learn it, I would run through it once more time, this time not from the\nbeginning of the piece, but from the beginning of the passage itself, now attending\nmainly to the way my breathing changes as I play it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. Inner observation: <\/strong>It’s always worth attending to\nvarious locations where the breathing happens: the lungs, the ribcage, the\nthroat, and the mouth, tongue and lips, and finally the nose. Yes, breathing\nalways happens in all these places.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 6. Insight: <\/strong>It is so surprising to realize that there\nis very often an indication, almost a reflection, of a musically challenging\ntask in the quality of the breathing.<\/strong> The two are so well connected, that I\nfeel that if I could follow only the breathing itself, detached from the performed\ntask – I would be able to tell where the tough passages are happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7. Integration:<\/strong> the session is done and I take a\ncouple of minutes to recap. Taking the time to think about one new detail that\nI could notice during the session, and then moving on to the next detail and so\non. I see them once again without the instrument in my hands, in order to\nconsolidate the lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Back to our natural breathing patterns <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We all know that breathing is a natural process, and that it\nhappens in every moment whether we decide to be aware of it or not. Assuming\nthat we stay in a room with available air to take in, we can actively hold our\nbreath, but not for longer than the time oxygen will need to flow in again. Our\nbody will then decide for us that it is time to inhale again and inhaling will\nindeed happen. Many levels and qualities of inhaling can be addressed to, from\nhigher breath, where the chest is expanding more than the other active parts,\nto lower, where most movement occurs in the belly. But what each of us does\nwhen we breathe in a way that is natural to us depends on our habits and\npreferences.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What I have learned from the practice sessions in which I\nplaced focus on the breath, is that during the time I practice on my\ninstrument, I would repeatedly have moments in which my natural breathing\npattern is disrupted, as if I hold my breath in order to help myself achieve a better\nquality in the movement. Somehow, this compromised breathing is built into the\nmore challenging elements in the musical piece that I practice, and as this\nrepeats itself enough times, the new breathing pattern is established and it\nis this pattern that I eventually might find having on stage. <\/strong>It is no surprise\nthat the actual performance contains all the short moments in which the\nbreathing is no longer as smooth as it could be; these moments have been\npracticed well enough to be present there in connection with the music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The days at the Feldenkrais training allow me to define\nbreathing as a main theme for myself from time to time. Since I started focusing\non breathing, I can say that the ATM lessons really provide space to elaborate\non that theme to the level that often the breathing itself becomes the most\neffective way to overcome many obstacles.<\/strong> Interestingly, the way to react\nto a sudden challenge by suddenly holding the breath is so evident in ATM\nclasses and it seems to be everyone’s “default choice” and intuitive\nway to feel that they would have now an additional resource (even if this does\nnot help). As the trainer reminds us to find back our natural breathing pattern,\nmany of us suddenly find an improvement in the movement right after the smooth\nbreathing is regained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Putting conscious breathing into practice<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n These days I split my practice time into multiple, daily short\nsessions of ten minutes, with each session being goal-oriented. During this time\nI let the breathing be in the center of my attention for at least once a day. I\nwould like to share the following ideas, rather than the workflow itself that\nwas given above, for a constructive practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As soon as an impossible moment or a passage is recognized\nin the practice session, we can pause and attend to how our breathing has\nchanged on that passage. It is worth playing it over again in order to attend mainly\nto the breathing. As soon as we focus on the breathing, we at the same time\nshift the attention away from the fingers, or in general from the distal parts,\ngradually seeing more of the proximal part that is the core, where the\nbreathing movement is initiated. In this way, we are also less stressed about quickly\nimproving the “faults in the movement sequence”, and instead we\nsimply stay curious about what changed in the breathing pattern and why. We\nbypass the offensive process of seeing a problem and searching for its local cure,\nand instead we are involved in a creative process of raising curiosity to what\nfeels different on a certain moment and why it does.<\/strong> Besides this benefit,\nthe improvement of breathing will allow us to regain comfort as there is never\na disadvantage in finding a smoother breathing mode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From what I personally experience, I am more and more\nconvinced that if we learn more about our breathing patterns and habits as\nthey are related to our practice and performance activities, we can use it as a\ntool to improve our learning and developing musicianship. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As a musician, I dedicate time almost every day in\npracticing, reaching for better technique and expression, and testing what I\nreached in rehearsals and on stage. This is a very general description of what\nI do, but it already gives two essential phases in the workflow: learning the\npart by myself at the highest level, and presenting myself and the results of\nmy work to others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To conclude this fascinating theme of breathing as a tool\nfor musicians, I wish to say that we can always choose to observe our breathing\nas we practice, and use it to spot points along the piece which still contain\neffort or tension, as the way we breathe on these points will reflect that.\nMoreover, we can use breathing as an effective tool to initiate promote an\neffortless mode of learning. And finally, we can even find out that some technical\nsolutions become suddenly within our reach, as soon as we allow ourselves to\nbreathe naturally and smoothly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading Breathing for Musicians<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/musicandfeldenkrais.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/musicandfeldenkrais.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/musicandfeldenkrais.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/musicandfeldenkrais.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/musicandfeldenkrais.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/musicandfeldenkrais.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6,"href":"http:\/\/musicandfeldenkrais.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/6"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/musicandfeldenkrais.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/musicandfeldenkrais.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/musicandfeldenkrais.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}