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How Cueing and Breath Work Impact the Music Lesson
As a piano teacher and practitioner of yoga for an equal number of years, I have long been aware of yoga's benefits for the performing musician. A few years ago, I began to feel a calling to share a practice that had instilled awareness, joy and calm in my life and completed an RYT-200 teaching certification in yoga. I had already been incorporating mindful movement in piano lessons and wellness classes for music majors and wanted to deepen my practice because of the positive results I had witnessed. Amid the ravages of a worldwide pandemic, I have been grateful for a tool I could share with students who were facing fear, anxiety and isolation-students whose ability to share music with others in person had been largely stolen from them. As teaching yoga has become a more consistent part of my life, its influence has woven its way into my interactions with students, my physical approach to playing and the way I help students prepare for performance.
Something I immediately loved when I first started teaching yoga was how my students took time to thank me after class, often adding comments such as "I feel so good!" and "That was wonderful!" I could not remember the last time that I had taught a music lesson where a student told me they felt good afterward. Not just physically, but emotionally and mentally, in performance and practice we should enjoy the same clarity and headspace that results from mindfulness practices. I realized that in particular, two elements in a yoga class-the breath as a tool for awareness and relaxation, and the language that we use to deepen our students' understanding of their mental, physical and emotional state-could just as easily be integrated into a piano lesson. Such awareness not only increases focus and progress in a lesson but also evokes joy.
With the onslaught of the pandemic and the mental health crisis it has created in young people, the need to build relationships and share coping tools for stress has only become more urgent. Evidence from fields like neuro-science and cognitive psychology shows that a challenging yet supportive environment of mutual respect boosts learning, with memory and cognition...