Quick recap: In Part 1, I described how I came to mindfulness practice and in Part 2, I talked about what mindfulness is and isn't. But you may be asking yourself why you should care. Great question. In this post, I'll talk a bit about how mindfulness works and why I think it can be so helpful for musicians.
In Part 1 I threw around terms like "mindfulness", "yoga", and "meditation" as if they were all the same thing. But they're not. I'll devote this post to describing what mindfulness is as well as dispelling some common myths about mindfulness.
In a nutshell, mindfulness is a particular way of paying attention. It is the capacity to purposefully bring your awareness to your present moment experience with an attitude of openness, curiosity, and non-judgement. Let's break that down a bit:
Hello and welcome to Let's all meet in child's pose, a blog about the connections between music and mindfulness. I'm glad you're here.
So far, writing a blog is weird. Where do you start? I read a lot of blogs and I know that how I start will absolutely not matter once I get going. After all, nobody goes to a blog, starts at the first post, and then proceeds to read all the posts chronologically...right? But still, I feel compelled to set up some sort of context. So, I'm starting with a 3-part introductory series. Here, in Part 1, I'll briefly chronicle my own introduction to mindfulness and how it has changed my relationship to music practice and performance. Part 2 will provide a quick overview of mindfulness, describing what it is and what it isn't. Part 3 will explore how mindfulness works and why it might be useful for musicians. What happens after that is anyone's guess.
