Perfect Poise, Perfect Life
Bring your body into balance and revolutionise your life
By Noel Kingsley
Publisher Hodder Mobius
AVAILABLE HERE
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A break away, helps you play
On returning from holiday and confronting my violin for the first time in a fortnight I discover that I am unable to play to the same standard, the music that I was practicing before I left. Not that this was any great shakes, but my abilities in some ways seem less. Now I am relearning what I could do just a few weeks ago as the holiday break has been quite a disruption. At least that's how it seems on the surface. But not entirely.
It's easy to be discouraged in such situations and think ''ll never be able to do this" or something similar. But apart from remembering what I've often written here, about i.e. 'what you think is what you get' and I should think positively that "I will be able to do this easily again soon", I am also reminded of several experiences to support me in my quest.
Firstly, as a young child I remember my Dad, who was a professional flutist in the Scottish National Orchestra (now the Royal), when he came back from holiday it would take him several days to get back up to performance standard and he would allow time for this before his next scheduled concert. He said it was a natural thing to allow time for. As he says "One needs to warm up". I also remember as a young Alexander Technique teacher, coming back to work after a holiday it would take me a few days of practice to get the energy flowing and myself into teaching shape. This all normal. But it's sometimes hard to remember when we are no longer able to achieve the standard we were experiencing such a short time ago.
Secondly, It's good to remember that breaks away from an activity (provided that they are not too long) can help your progress. We may be a bit rusty and not at our best' when we return, but there are substantial changes that have been happening to us during the break. All the work that we have previously done in forming our technique and honing our skills has gone into our subconscious and become ingrained. We may slip back a bit and on the surface we may not be at our 'performance best' but there are fundamental positive changes underneath.
When we are practicing and improving our performance at anything, be it sport, art, music, riding, public speaking, we are building on our previous experiences all the time. We call it progress and consequently there is constant change. Change upon change. By stopping for a holiday, all this change has a chance to settle down and become established into our system. It gets a chance to become a new firm platform to move forward from. As an example, if you were standing on soft sand or mud, it would be difficult to jump or leap from. But if you move to solid ground or rock, you can jump very high. In other words you have a firm base from which to spring forwards. It's the same in learning. A break creates new bedrock from which to move forward and you will be able to achieve far more than you would have if you had not had a break.
So it is good to stop and rest from our activities to help us make progress. If there are no holidays planned that will create a natural break, it is sometimes good to schedule one, just in order to achieve the space in time for your previous learning to become established and help your further progress. So although it's good to practice, it is also good to stop. If you want to read more on this, see my previous blog 'Improvement without practice'.
So having given myself this gentle and positive reminder, I shall return to my violin playing with patience and optimism, that all is not lost, that further good progress is around the corner and I shall be making a better sound than ever before, very soon.
Hope you have a good day.
;-)
