Creating Stillness When You Need It Most - PHH 134

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Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to experience more harp happiness. Over my decades long harp journey, I've had lots of successes and more than a few failures. And I know firsthand what it's like to feel that playing the harp the way you want may not be possible for you. Now, I play and teach all over the world, and I know what most harpists are never taught the secrets to gaining the skills and confidence you need to play the harp with beauty, freedom and joy. That's what the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast is all about. Showing you simple steps to help you play the music you want the way you want. If you're an experienced harpist looking for that next level, or a harp newbie anxious to avoid the pitfalls, or a harpist who just wants more fulfillment and a little encouragement, you're in the right place, my friend. So let's get started. Welcome to the show. As I look back over 11 or so years of blogging and podcasting, there are some trends I notice, topics I talk about with regularity and even predictability according to the seasons. Of course, it's not a surprise that in December, one of the topics that is on my mind, and I'm guessing on yours too, is about keeping your sanity during the holiday rush. Last week's podcast, the Christmas Snowball that was episode 133, dealt with the holiday music onslaught. And a few episodes before that, in episode 130, I talked about preventing overwhelm. Timely topics, yes, but today I'd like to look at this from the other side. I want to talk about stillness. Now here's an example of the value of stillness. I was in an opera orchestra rehearsal with a conductor who was famous for his temper. There were days when he was complimentary to the players, but on the days when no one could do anything that pleased him, he was not shy about venting his displeasure. Sometimes the entire orchestra fell under his wrath. Sometimes he it was one particular player. Obviously, this could make rehearsals less than pleasant.

So one day, as he ranted at the entire orchestra, you could feel the collective blood pressure rise. In that moment, each of us had to decide how we were going to bear up under his words. Would we let it affect our playing or our mood? Or could we let it go and and just continue to do our jobs? That was the day I got one of my very favorite compliments. When we finally got to a break in the rehearsal, the double bass player who was next to Me leaned over and told me how glad he was to be next to me because I was like an island of serenity in the middle of the chaos. Now, I don't think I was ever complimented on my serenity before or since, but his comment showed me the value of creating the calm you want, of not reflecting a negative environment around you, of not being stressed. The value of stillness. Stillness is something that is in your power to create. Now, you may have tried before without much success, but I think the strategies that we will cover today will give you a new approach. We aren't going to start with meditation or breathing or giving up caffeine or any of those kinds of things. We're going to start from the outside and work our way to the core of the matter. I'm going to show you how to create stillness, first in your hands, then in your mind, and finally in your heart. And who doesn't need that kind of stillness now or at any time of year? Now, obviously we're going to be talking about creating stillness in your music as you play today, but I want to also have you think about stillness in, in another aspect of your harp life and that's in your music learning. Now, sometimes it can be very frustrating, very annoying, very, I don't know, anxiety producing to think about all the things that we need to learn and how we're going to get them all done, how do we approach it? It can be a really hard journey and part of the difficulty is that we're taking it by ourselves. So think about this for just a second. Imagine that you were invited to a party and you really wanted to go, but you weren't sure that you would know anybody there. And so you ask your best friend to go along to the party with you. They say, sure. So all of a sudden going to the party becomes fun. It becomes a lot easier to think about and you can just concentrate on what you're going to wear and all that good stuff instead of worrying that you're not going to have anybody to talk to when you get there. This is what I would like you to think about for your harp journey. Having a buddy. A buddy to go along on that ride with you and along that line of thought. Registration for our winter coaching session is now open. I know you knew I was going somewhere with this, right? But this is what our coaches are. They're buddies. They're not just your buddies, of course. They're there to challenge you. They're there to make sure that your heart playing goes in the direction you want it to go, but they're going to keep you moving forward and having them as your champions along the way. This is what they do best and it's going to enable you to enjoy more of your harp journey. So if you have things you're thinking about you, you know that you want to accomplish Harp wise in 2024. Getting off to a great start with one of our Heart Mastery certified coaches is is probably something you need to consider and since registration is now open, this is the time to do it. The session begins the week of January 8th, but you can register now and get everything set. You'll have a planning call where you'll help sort of start those goals. You'll get started with your coach and you'll be ready to go by the time the session starts in the beginning of January. So the link to join our Our coaching session is on the Heart Mastery homepage. I've also of course linked to it in today's show notes. But registration is open. It is open until Christmas Eve until December 24th, but we'll close it as soon as our coaches slots are filled. So don't think you're going to wait and you know, sign up for it at the last moment because the spots may not be there. This is the the session of the year that fills up the fastest. So we do want to get you in the door and if you're interested in coaching, this is the time to it. Registration's open. We'd love to have you join this coaching cohort so you can register right now. Now also of course we are finishing up our 12 days of harp happiness promotion. Today's Day 11 and so the where you have just today's piece that's coming out and one more new arrangement coming out tomorrow. And you can easily get a hold of those by being on our mailing list. Our email list is the easy way to do that. You'll find these things linked all over social media as well. But I want to thank everybody who's been purchasing the arrangements at their 50% off on the day they go live and enjoying them and letting me know that they are enjoying them. So I'm so pleased and looking forward to doing this again next year. Um, the one favor that you could do for me is if you are enjoying the podcast, be sure to share that with a harp friend. It's a great way to sort of pass along the Harp Happiness, so I certainly would appreciate you just sharing your favorite episode, sharing this one, whatever it is, just send the link, get them in, get them on board because they are, you know, ready for some harp happiness too, I'm sure. So that's all I needed to speak with you about before we get onto the topic of stillness. So we're just gonn dial back the energy level just a little bit and start feeling the calm. It's so easy to get stressed, to get tense, to get uptight, whatever words seem to apply to you. It's so easy to do that in our playing this time of year. We have so many demands on us, so many musical demands, non musical demands. And it's just really hard to be able to sit at the harp and feel calm. And I really, truly believe that finding that calmness is easiest if you start from the outside in. In other words, trying to make yourself calm. It's kind of like having somebody shout at you, relax. There's no way you can relax when somebody's shouting at you. No matter what it is they're saying and how wonderful their intentions are, that's not going to work. So working at this from the outside in is nice because it gives you something that you can pretty easily control to start with. And so that's why I want to start our discussion about stillness talking about still hands. And we're not just talking about relaxation here, but that's going to be part of what we talk about for sure. But remember that for your hands to be still, they do need to be relaxed. They need not to be tense and tight. So we don't need to make their jobs harder for them. And the way to fix this, the way to help support your hands in their calmness is to be sure that you are literally supporting your hands. Remember that the support, support for your hands comes from your upper arms. It also comes from your back and your legs. You want to be sure that you're sitting properly. And it's worth starting every practice session, even if you only have 10 minutes to practice. It's worth taking a few seconds to sit at your harp, sit straight, take a couple of nice breaths, let them go in and out. It only takes a few seconds, but you're going to feel better. And think about your core muscles as supporting your sitting. Then lift your arms, you can put your hands on the harp and think about those, your upper arms being nice and strong.

This is where we have our muscles, right, Our biceps and our triceps. We've got our shoulder muscles helping us hold our arms up more or less, right? So you don't, I mean, you don't need to hold your arms up super high hold them wherever your technique is comfortable. But remember that it's your arms that are holding your hands in place. Your hands aren't being held up by the strings. They're not gripping the strings in order to stay there. Your arms are letting your hands just be in front of the strings that they need to be in front of in order to play. Your arms are helping your hands do that. So thinking about that support coming from those big muscle groups can be very helpful in just relieving your hands of tension. Now, of course, the other big key to relaxation is to remember that you need to slow down.

And this is the perfect time to remind you that practicing slowly can do that. Just because you're practicing something slowly doesn't mean you're not going to be able to play it at tempo. I mean, let's say you've been practicing Silent Night and you've been practicing it and you know how to play it, and you know it goes at a particular metronome marking and you want to have it there because you know that that's what the church choir director is going to want. So you know what the tempo is. Well, you've been practicing, you can play it at that tempo, but that doesn't mean that slow practice isn't going to still help. So slow practice, where you're doing it, oh, maybe 60% of Tempo, I mean, that's pretty slowly. It's going to give you a way to think about being relaxed, to think about breathing. It's amazing how many times we hold our breath when we play and we're not even noticing. Right. So it will give you a way to calm everything down and it's not going to make you forget how to play it fast. In fact, if this is a piece that you've been working on, and really all you need to do is keep it in your fingers, play it once at tempo, and then play it once very slowly and you're done. Right. You don't need to over practice something that's only going to add to your stress level here. Another tip is to end your practice with some slow practice so that whatever it was you've been practicing, I mean, maybe you have something you really need to work on and it's, you know, it's still quite hard for you. Well, then go ahead and practice it. But end your practice with something that's slow, whether it's the same part you've been working on, but just at half tempo or something that you like to play that's very slow or even just a Very slow exercise. Any of that is good, but it's wonderful to get up from your practice and feel refreshed. And once again, doesn't have to be long. I was going to say a little bit of slow practice. It only has to be 30 seconds. It's amazing what that 30 seconds can do and how you'll get up feeling refreshed and relaxed instead of worried.

It's a wonderful thing to think that you can just slow down and let the vibrations of the harp soothe you just to enjoy playing your harp. Enjoy the way it feels, enjoy the way it sounds. That's worth it right there. Okay, so let's talk about some practicalities here. So if you are thinking, okay, I'm gonna support from my upper arms and I'm seated. Well, and, and I'm gonna remember to breathe and I'm going to remember to, to, to relax. Yeah, there you go. It made you tense already, didn't it? Well, here are a couple of ways you can do this. These are things that I like to do just to relax and refresh myself. You can do them as a warmup at the end of your practice. You can do them as a cool down at the end of your practice. You know, beginning or end, whichever. You can do these things in the middle of your practice. You can do them instead of, you know, practice. If you're looking at the clock and saying, gosh, I only have five minutes to go over this piece, well, maybe you don't really need to go over it. Maybe you just need a little bit of this kind of calmness and stillness instead. So let's talk about these couple of techniques. One is accounted scale. So I'm going to show you exactly what I mean. It's a one octave scale and you can even divide it so that the first four notes are left hand, the second four notes are right hand. Because this isn't a technical exercise. This is all about reminding your fingers how to play, how to close, what they're, what you want them to sound like, how you want them to feel. It's about thinking about the support that your arms are giving them and, and about just calming down your hand motion. So it's just about that. And all we have to do is play that one octave scale and we're going to count to four after each note. So it goes like this. Here's a little C major scale. Once again, I'm playing the first four notes left hand, second four notes right hand. So it's not hard. That's not right. Hard would not Be the point here. We want this to be easy. So here we go.

So I've got 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4 dot 1, 2, 3, 4 Dot 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 3, 4. 1, two, three, four. 1, 2, 3, four.

Okay, so it doesn't get any easier. Yes, you could do it hands together, an octave apart. You could do it up and down. There are lots of variations you could add to this. But here's the key.

As you play the scale. And perhaps you noticed this in what I was doing. The idea is to just let things start to go, let the tension start to go. You might have noticed that my voice changed as I was counting. The tempo didn't change, but I took the urgency out of my voice. I let my voice relax. I wasn't 1, 2, 3, 4. I started a little bit that way, but then it quickly changed. And having the time to notice that is part of what will make you still. So this is an easy, easy thing to do. But what happens when you're closing? You know, you're playing each note, and you're playing a note only every four beats, right? So it's going to close fully. You're going to be able to relax it, check your posture, check your arms, and then you can go on to the next note. There's time to think. Think about all those things that we don't have time to think about when we're playing. So it's really very luxurious, kind of like a little bubble bath almost. So you could light a candle, maybe then it would smell like a bubble bath. I don't know. But. But it's very, very relaxing when you let it be. Now you. There's a. A variation that I sometimes add. And I can't do this really exactly when I count, at least not counting out loud, I have to count to myself. But I will add breathing to it. Now, you have to be careful that you're counting at a speed that allows you to do this. We don't want you either hyperventilating because you're breathing too fast or passing out because you're not getting enough air. So. But the idea is that with those four beats, you can breathe in for the first four beats, and then you play the next note, breathe out for the next four beats. Breathe in and breathe out. Controlling your breath is a wonderful way to relax. Once again, we don't want this to be stressful. You shouldn't be, you know, working hard. And it's not about holding your breath. It's about Truly breathing in for an entire four beats and breathing out for an entire four beats. You want that airflow to be paced over the entire course of those beats. Do be careful when you do this. As I said, I don't want you falling over, passing out. That's not what we want. But four beats, even I. I don't have great breath capacity, but even I can handle four beats. You're breathing in and you're breathing out. This was a technique that I used to practice because it was part of how my flutist friends would warm up. And they would warm up before a concert with these counted breathing exercises. Now, they could go a lot longer than I could. As far as, you know, breathing in for 15 counts and out 15 counts. I can't do that. But I was smart and I knew when to stop. But it's very, very calming. It was also something I did as part of my martial arts studies back when I was doing karate. We would do this. And when you control your breath, you can relax and control a situation. That's sort of how it plays into martial arts, sort of. But it's really wonderful for us. So you can add your counted breathing to your counted scale. Another thing that you can do, which I can' demonstrate very well here with that video, is you can count raising. So, for instance, if you're doing a scale of thirds like this.

I'm playing two and one.

Right?

I can count in between those, and I can be sure that I'm raising my hand for two and lowering it for two. So one and up, down, down. One and up, down, down, one and up, down, down. It's even nicer if you do bigger jumps like one, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

And I'm jumping an octave each time, making a slow motion raises that may be too slow for you. You may not be as comfortable raising, but it's a terrific way to just calm everything down. There's a real key here behind keeping your hands still. And that is this. It's the triple E. It's. You want to eliminate extraneous effort. We're keeping our hands still so we don't want extra finger motion. We want exactly the finger motion that we need to play, and that includes closing. So we want all that finger motion that we need to play, but nothing more. We don't want extra motion with our arms, we don't want extra motion with our body. So taking the time to pay attention to this is really, really valuable. Now, I've spent a lot of time talking about these things. They'll only take you a moment to do it. Takes very little time to do a counted scale and to add breathing to it. And you'll just feel so good when you do it. Another quick little tip here. While you do it, you might every once in a while try just gently smiling while you do it. Now, I know that we try to eliminate weird, you know, distracting facial expressions when we're performing, but the fact is that smiling releases endorphins. Smiling makes you feel good. It's another outside in kind of technique, right? So smiling makes you feel good, and using those muscles to smile will help you relax. And you know, people might think that you're enjoying your music, but that's okay. It's okay if you only do it in practice too, but you'll find it makes you feel better. Okay, so there are some tips for keeping your hands still, for reminding your hands how to be still. Does this mean that they're going to be still when you're playing and you're in the, in the midst of a performance?

Possibly not. You know, you're going to do whatever it takes to make that music happen in the moment, but your hands will be coming, starting from a place of stillness. And that's the best starting place we can give them. Make sense. Okay, so in our process here to work from the outside in, the next thing we're going to talk about is perhaps the trickiest one, and that's how to still your mind. You might have already guessed then, when it comes to having a still mind, the key word here is going to be focus. And that's another word like relax, right? We end up sort of yelling at ourselves, focus, focus. And that's totally self defeating. It's another thing that just doesn't work. So let's talk about what focus can be so that you don't have to yell at yourself to focus. The core of a still mind is that it is in the moment, which means that you have to decide and you get to decide in advance, and then you get to decide in the moment as well what really matters. Because we want your focus, we want your attention on what matters. And you have to let go of everything else. Now the good news is that what you focus on, you will achieve. And I always remember the great explanation that I heard. I remember when I started driving as a teenager, if you were driving on ice and growing up here in the northeast of the United States, you know, we had ice, and the idea was if your car was starting to skid, you were supposed to steer into the skid. Well, that particular phrase meant nothing to me. I couldn't understand exactly what they meant by steer into the skid. Years later, somebody explained it to me. Fortunately, I didn't have, you know, accidents in the meantime, while I didn't understand steering into the skid. But.

I had somebody explain it to me years later, and they explained it easily this way. You just want to steer where you want the car to go. And they give similar advice. If you're in one of those. One of those skidding sort of moments, don't focus on the tree that's in front of you because you don't want to hit that. And if you're focused on the tree, that's what you're going to hit. You want to be focusing on the place you actually want the car to go. So when you take those kinds of thoughts and those ideas and you apply them to your heart plan, you can see how wrong our focus is. So much of the time we're focusing on our mistakes. We're focusing on the mistakes that we've just made, which is pointless because we've already made them. And we're focusing on the mistakes we think we're about to make, which means that, yes, we are going to make them. So that's not where we want our focus to be. So we can't tell ourselves, don't focus on mistakes. Once again, doesn't work. Here's what I want you to consider. It's not about perfection. We know that. It's about presence. And this is the kind of. Not, not gifts, presence, but being there. You know, P, R, E, S, E, N, C, E. Right. This is about presence. It's about your presence in the moment. Your. The way you bring your presence to the music. And when you just decide that the only thing that matters is that the music continues, that the music serve. That you are serving the music, that the music is, you know, sent out into the universe, however you like to talk about, that.

You become present in the right way.

It's not about the notes, it's about something bigger than that. And you. You need to set an intention for what you really want to do.

So many times we think about our performances in terms of. Especially ahead of time. And then certainly afterward, we think about them in terms of how many wrong notes or how. Or what. What didn't work well or what might not work well. Oh, those two measures. I don't know that I'll ever get through those two measures, but. And that's not going to keep your mind still and if you're worried about those two measures, you're not present in the moment, are you? Because the whole, you know, the other 42 measures or however many there are, you're not thinking about those, you're still thinking about those two. And probably when you get to those two measures, you're already busy regretting them and you're not actually present in them either. So it's, it's a little bit like mental blinders where you just are putting one figurative foot in front of the other. That's a lot of metaphors I just confused for you. But there you go, that's the idea. You're just looking at what is right in front of you. You've already practiced this. You don't need to dread anything. You know what's coming up.

All you need to do is just meet the fences when you get there, to use yet another metaphor. So what you need to do, don't worry so much about focus. Think about presence, that being in that moment and making that one moment special, whether it's a whole note or anything else, right? It can be lovely and then moving right along, not anticipating, not regretting, just being present. It doesn't sound perhaps like it's very different, but I think you will find that when you start thinking about just being present and banishing the other thoughts.

That it's much easier to be calm, to have your mind be still, because all it needs to do is think about what is right in front of it. That's all very simple.

May not sound simple, but give it a try. I think you'll, I think you'll like it and it certainly will still your mind.

But then how do you steal your heart? Well, your heart can be agitated. It can be worried about things, it can be concerned about things that are music related, harp related, things that are personal.

But to be able to still the stress, to still the worry, once again, this is.

A choice that you can make.

And there are things that you can do to find what it is you're choosing. Are you choosing to feel the music? Are you choosing to enjoy the moment? Are you choosing just to relish the environment where you are.

The people that you're playing for?

All of those things can warm your heart and make it calm. Now there are some techniques you can use here. You can have a photograph on your music stand. You can do this in practice, you can do this in performance. And it can be a photograph of a favorite loved one. The person that just makes your heart just go pitter patter, just makes you smile, it can be something, something beautiful, maybe something in nature, maybe the seashore. If you're a seashore person.

A mountaintop, if that's what inspires you, something that just.

Speaks to your soul. There you go. That's what we're looking for. Maybe it's an animal, maybe it's your favorite pet. This is all. This is a wonderful thing to do, something that makes you smile, to come back to something we talked about earlier.

But just having that reminder right next to your music on your music stand can be so helpful to just put yourself in the right place.

Another more music related thing that can help calm your heart, take rid of, take care of the worry and the stress and the nerves is to think ahead of time. What is the, what is the result? What do you. What would be wonderful if it happened because of your playing? If this is what you're worried, this is a pre performance thing, a nerves thing that can, can help, you know, if you're worried, particularly, particularly if you're worried about how you might play a piece. You know, it's like, oh, I don't know, I'm worried that I'm not going to play it right. Well, what would your ideal result would be? Would it be that.

Someone was so touched by the music that it warmed their heart or that it made them think of their favorite person or their favorite place or a fond memory?

That your music touched another person.

That you could enjoy playing it? Maybe that's what your best result would be. But notice these aren't results that we're going to measure in terms of notes or in terms of right or wrong. It's just thinking about what could I convey?

What would.

Be a gift for the people who are here listening to it.

That does remarkable things for your insides, for your heart, for the way you feel about anything to think about. What could you do for someone else through your music?

It's a wonderful, wonderful thought.

Now you could also think of a phrase that just helps you calm down. I know some people use lines of poetry or just mottos from the, from the self help world. Which are, which can be wonderful Bible verses. I came across one myself by accident. Just yesterday I was talking to, to someone and talking about how busy I've been. Okay. You know that sounds familiar to you, right? You've all been busy. So I was saying, gosh, I'm so busy and I've got these concerts and you know, I'm know I'm going to enjoy the concerts when I get there, but I've got all this stuff to do. And so then I remembered I was talking and, you know, we were talking about all these kinds of things, and I say, I have to do this. I have to do this. And I said, but, you know, my favorite moment is going to be this when I get the harp in the car. I get in the car and I, you know, I'm on the road on my way to the concert. It's great because all I have to do from then on is play. All I have to do is play. Now, this should sound familiar to you if you're a regular podcast listener, because this is at the end of every podcast episode. And when I realized what I had told my friend, all I have to do is play, and I realized this is something that I say here on the podcast every week, I just started laughing.

It was just, well, all right, I'm nothing, I guess, if not consistent. And at least it's showing me that I can practice what I preach. Because this is a stillness phrase for me to know that once I am on the way to the concert, all I have to do is play. There's nothing else I have to do. That's my job and how much fun it is. So I leave you with that today. Lots of techniques here for stilling your hands, some nice ideas. Presence, not perfection, for stilling your mind. Focus on what you want to have happen. That's where your mind is going to be still.

And your heart. What kind of a gift can you give? Your music will be a gift to someone. Whether you feel like it's a gift or not, it's going to be a gift. What kind of gift do you want to give that's going to bring the warmth to everything that you play? Not just in this holiday season, but anytime. Next week on the podcast, something a little bit more practical. But it's my 2023 year in review. On this podcast, I'm going to share what my year looked like from my perspective. You might have seen quite a bit of it from your perspective, but I'll share what it looked like from mine, and I'll give you some tips for ways to look at yours, too. Here's a quick teaser. It's not about measuring what you've accomplished. There's a whole different way to look at your year. Then coming up on December 25, which is a Monday this year, the podcast will be a special Christmas music episode so that it'll be just filled with some of my favorite music that I've recorded that you'll be able to listen to. On December 25th. So that's coming up. Remember too, we have coaching registration open for our winter session, which begins in January. That registration is open now in and if you're interested in working with one of our certified coaches, don't delay. Get get registered now before the spots fill up. You'll find more information about the coaching program on the coaching page. Go. Just go to heartmastery.com and look under our programs and you will see the link to the coaching page and you can register right there. Sign up for your planning call with Coach Caitlin and we'll get you started. I look forward to being with you next week here on the podcast. And no surprise here. Remember, in the meantime, every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.