September 9, 2021 - One decade... be present.

It’s been a decade since I got sick. I didn’t know then, that night, that my life was dramatically changed. I’ve done therapies, and they’ve...

June 18th 2013 - Thoughts on my Journey Back to Music

My blog is called my journey back to music and I am playing, and I thought I would start sharing some of the things I've been thinking about, comparing how I play now to how I used to play.  And how I've been influenced by Feldenkrais. 
I think two things that I think about a lot are what musicians put up with, and how we think about our bodies.  As a musician I no longer think it is acceptable to play with pain or even discomfort.  This means I am much more aware now when I play.  When I feel something that isn't good, I stop and move around instead of just pushing through.  I think there are far too many people who do any number of things without paying attention to the signals that we get from our bodies.  Personally I think that's a mistake.  Our bodies are pretty smart if we just listen to them really pay attention. 
It's interesting since I am a woodwind musician that there is a strong connection as I have learned between the mouth and the brain and the hands which brings me to the other thing that I think about.  When I used to warm up it was always about warming up my flute my mouth and my fingers, my entire body.  But playing flute is actually a full body experience.  So now, when I warm up, I walked around, and I do an arm swinging thing that my Feldenkrais therapist Joyce showed me.  I usually feel stiff when I first start and then things start to move a little more.  I wonder what musicians are rehearsing how the music would sound and how the musicians would feel if they would take a break after let's say 15 min. and get up and move and stretch. 

I told somebody once that I was doing freeform improv and her response was oh I took a class in that but I wasn't very good.  To which I responded no when I say freeform I really mean freeform – I just play whatever I play and let my fingers move where they want.  I think she was surprised by that and she also felt motivated – she said it made her want to actually try that.  Which I thought was pretty cool.   

Bookmark the permalink. RSS feed for this post.

Leave a Reply

© 2014 - 2019 Tamar Schwartz, Visible Person Invisible Problem (VPIP). Powered by Blogger.

Search

Swedish Greys - a WordPress theme from Nordic Themepark. Converted by LiteThemes.com.