NOTE:
Please cut and paste into Google Translate to listen if needed
I stopped giving private flute lessons at the very end of
2010, and I wrote earlier about my goal of getting back to teaching; I know I'm
not ready to give an actual, half hour (much less hour) lesson right now. I also said that I knew there would be
small steps - steps that I will work on in Vision Therapy - VT - and
Feldenkrais Therapy - FT - that will build toward this goal. I have some ideas about what I need to work
on, what will be involved in teaching that will present challenges for me, and
I'll need to do some experimenting. I also
know that I'll need to expose my body and brain to actual bits and pieces of
teaching.
Before I go any further, I want to share a bit of back
story on my flute. I began playing flute back in fourth
grade. This is still the age when many
schools introduce instrumental music. I
remember being really bored in regular music class, and then in fourth grade,
being offered the chance to play an instrument.
I didn't know anything about instruments; neither my parents, older
brother, or anyone else I knew played one.
But I was interested, and it was better than being bored. By the time I was in high school, and playing
in the band, my parents thought that getting me a good flute (not a student
flute) was appropriate, so I was given a silver, open-hole, Gemeinhardt
flute.
My friends said to me "well, now that you have a
good flute, you need to learn how to play it really well." I was a bit bothered by these comments, but
fortunately a wonderful teacher, Susan Levitin, lived a few houses away. And so my weekly private lessons began. My lessons with Mrs. Levitin were definitely
a high light of my week each week... not only did I soak up everything she
taught me, but I also really liked her.
It was cool to get to know another adult who wasn't a teacher at my
school.
I took private lessons for about a year in college, and
played in a small ensemble, but I was also singing in choir, and doing some
writing, so my flute lessons came to an end.
Once I graduated, I looked for a group to play with, and to make a long
story short, I helped co-found an all flute choir - Lakeside Flutes - in 1988.
I'm proud to say, though I haven't performed with Lakeside since 1997, Lakeside
is still in existence.
I never gave up playing my flute, and when my older
daughter was in 4th grade, I taught her to play the flute. This was how I discovered how much I enjoyed
teaching people to play, and I began to do just that. I gave private flute lessons until I had to
stop in December of 2010 when I developed hand problems. When I started working with Joyce (FT) in May
of 2012, I really wanted to be able to play again. Not being able to play was horrible.
It took me about a year, and the first thing I did was to
simply hold my flute, feel the weight of it in my hands, and arms. Then I finally began to make music. Only a few notes at a time in the beginning,
but I was officially playing again. Even
now, remembering, the memory is absolutely amazing. But this was just the beginning. For a long time I played just random
notes. Then I began to string notes
together, into what I still call "free form." Not following any particular improv rules,
but listening, feeling how my body moved.
It was - and still is - really important not to go back to non-functional
habits. Doing FT has been, and continues
to be incredibly important, because it helps me to break up old habits that did
not work well. I refuse to give up
playing my flute, but I will no longer tolerate physical pain or injury.
Playing "free form" music is wonderful, but it's
not enough for me. I eventually started
sounding out simple, familiar melodies.
The combination of years of playing, so that music is in me like grooves
in a record, in addition to my now much better listening skills, meant that
this sounding out of simple melodies was possible. Definitely mentally challenging, but to me that's
a good thing. But I still wasn't reading
any sheet music. Before I got sick, I
used reading glasses, and now in VT I went through a whole selection process
with the help of Ann (my vision therapist) to figure out what frames felt best,
because on a sensory level this was very important. I also had to decide whether or not I wanted
tinted lenses, and if so, what color. The
answer was yes, and the color a shade of light blue.
I've written this before, but it's worth repeating - you
can't tell I have a vision problem by looking at my eyes. I don't think the tint of my reading glasses is
very obvious. I've mentioned before that
using glasses is now visually challenging for me. Even if glasses have NO prescription, lenses
still change the way light and images come into your eyes. So using glasses - in my case low level
reading glasses - is a vision exercise for me.
I now wear my reading glasses when I play sheet music, and want to
slowly build towards playing more music, for longer periods of time. The sheet music I am working with is musically
at a level I would have played many years ago, but that's appropriate for my brain
re-training.
There are skills I need to improve in order to teach flute
again, which are involved in doing other activities as well. This means when I identify and work on
certain core skills, I get more benefit from the effort. This is really important to me; otherwise I
feel like there are far too many pieces to work on, requiring too much effort,
and I don't want to feel overwhelmed.
Tracking, eye gaze switching, dealing with movement - whether mine or
someone else's - are all very important, and none of these is specifically a vestibular
or vision issue. My vision and
vestibular systems are interconnected,
and one issue affects another. Another overriding
variable, which I think a lot of people can relate to even if they're not
trying to teach an instrument, is dealing with the unexpected. Changing up my environment, even in small
ways, is important. Being able to
handle, both in terms of my vestibular system and my vision, a slight degree of
surprise matters a great deal.
Before I try doing something new with my flute (and this
applies to some other activities as well), I will try to visualize what I'm
going to do. Visualization, something
I've talked about both in VT and FT, is a way not just to prepare for an event,
but to learn something without actually doing it. My brain - if I do the visualization well -
learns from the process of visualizing; really imagining myself doing an
activity, really putting myself into the situation. It's another way to practice a new skill,
change an old one that didn't work well for me - it's all part of the
re-training. I know that athletes do
this, and I think musicians do it as well - running through music in their
minds as a form of practice. For me,
it's not just about the actual music.
It's about where I'll be in a room, how I move, how I'm shifting my eye
gaze, what kind of tracking I'll be doing, what movement or other sounds may be
going on.
I'm just starting to think about how I'll deal with my
vision and vestibular disorders in terms of giving lessons. I don't know if anyone will ask me why I took
a break - however long it ends up being - from teaching. This is something I'll need to give thought
to, and when I'm closer to being ready, I suspect I'll have a better handle on
how to approach the subject. I know I
don't plan to teach a real student again until I can do it without my disorders
presenting problems during a lesson. I
want to be able to enjoy teaching, as opposed to feeling too much stress or
anxiety. However, one thing I'm very
sure of is that I want to teach students to treat flute playing (this really
applies to any instrument) like a sport.
Bodies need to be warmed up, just like instruments do. I want to teach my students how to play the
flute in the most functional way possible, so they can enjoy making music
without causing trauma to their bodies.
