78 Wellness and Music Meditation with Pablo Esquivel Noel

Hello and welcome to the Top Down Brain Rx Chill Pill podcast, where you can boost your resilience just by listening. Resilience is about bouncing back from setbacks by adapting and learning through life's challenges. Each episode strives to leave you with an action or a meditation prescription that you can apply immediately to your life. I'm Dr. Juna Bobby MD. I'm a board-certified physician and a mom of two amazing kids. And my purpose is to make the neuroscience of wellness accessible to everyday life. Because when I became a mom, I wanted to do everything possible to empower my kids with healthy mental and physical habits. I'm definitely not aiming for perfection, but I can honestly say that the mind-body skills I learned transformed my family's life. After years of training, I fully transitioned into teaching mind-body medicine leaving one of the most prestigious private practices in New York City so I could dedicate my time to creating and teaching the science of resilience. My almost decade-long experience teaching high-performing students of all ages at many schools, universities, including for the last 5 years at the Juilliard Pre-College School in Manhattan, have led me to the creation of my newest courses, Plan to Soar and Soar Under Pressure. These are hybrid coaching and self-paced digital courses to make my tried and true courses widely accessible. They're available for partnering schools, organizations, and online for individuals on topdownbrain.com. A portion of all proceeds go to those students in need.

Hey everyone, I'm so excited to have Pablo Esquivel Noel here with me today.

He is a composer studying at the Mannes School of Music in Manhattan, and he was actually a student of mine at Juilliard when he was in high school. He was an awesome student, and he was always interested in becoming more self-aware and growing as a whole person beyond his musical talent. I'm so happy to say that Pablo is going to be joining me once a month to grace us with his beautiful music. And sharing with us his gift of music and meditation. And we'll talk about finding peace and happiness while you work to perform at your best.

Hello, how are you?

I'm good. Very good, actually.

Thank you for your beautiful piece that you sent.

My pleasure.

And so, and you're in Costa Rica? Yes.

I'm so excited that you're here on my podcast.

Yes, thank you for having me.

Pablo is a student of mine, or a past student. He was a student of mine at Juilliard when he was there for pre-college for piano. And recently, he contacted me to let me know that he's doing some amazing things related to wellness and meditation. So can you tell me a little bit about how you went this route? I mean, I know you love my class, right?

Yeah, I think we can start from how we met because everything started to unfold from that point. As you said, I was a student at the Juilliard School of Music Pre-College Division in New York at that time. I had been part of Juilliard for 7 years, and during all these years we had to perform so much. You know, there was a lot of competition between the students and a lot of pressure. And so when I reached 17 years of age, I had a little life crisis. I didn't really know how to manage my stress, and I felt very disconnected with myself. And so one day when I was coming back to school after the summer, I saw that Juilliard had just introduced a new class called Science of Resilience. And as soon as I saw that, I said, oh my God, I have to try that. I have always been super interested about meditation and its benefits. And I remember I was like the first one who signed up for this class and absolutely loved it. Uh, it was the first time somebody was explaining to me how to practice your conscious mind in order to be aware of your stress system and relaxation system. And not only this, but this class offered me tools on how to apply better habits in my life and how to be more present in the moment. Um, I remember that I later took your class again for my senior year of high school, and 3 years later, here I am in your podcast.

Yeah. And I was so happy to hear from you recently.

Yes.

I loved, I loved how you reached out to me and you were telling me about the these amazing things that you're doing now with your music.

Thank you.

Can you tell me how you came to fusion and what fusion is about?

Sure. Um, so after I just finished high school, after I had just gotten out of high school, I started college at Berklee School of Music. And yet once again, I fell in this trap where competition and pressure got to me.

Well, you are going to the top schools, right? I mean, that's a lot of stress and competition right there.

And that's the problem. I think that schools are not spending enough time, they're not focusing on your well-being as much as they should.

And you, you were one of those child prodigies, right?

Yes, yes.

Playing solo piano with orchestras when you were Like 9, 10?

Yes. I was put into a lot of pressure since I was 9 years old. And I remember that before concerts, I just wanted to faint because I didn't have any experience on how I could control my breathing, how I could stay put in the present moment. And every time I would hear, like, 5 minutes until concert, I would be like, oh my God, I don't want to be a pianist anymore.

Pablo, you were saying that you felt like that even when you were like 9, 10 sometimes?

100%.

So what did you do? Like, how did you manage it from then until— I mean, when I met you, you were dealing with the same kind of stressors when you were going on stage to perform then?

You mean back when I was 9 years old?

Yeah, all the way up to 17, I guess, when I met you.

Yeah, well, uh, Really, some of the times, uh, I couldn't manage it and I thought that I didn't want to be a pianist and I thought that I didn't want to perform anymore.

But you did go on stage and play.

I did, but sometimes it's because I had to, because I had needed to finish, you know, the requirements for my school.

Right. But you would be able to perform though, right? That's so interesting because you were able to, you were talented, you worked hard enough that you had that muscle memory. That you could actually play. But when you were actually playing on stage, how did you feel? Did you still feel nervous while you were playing or would you start to feel more into the music once you started?

No, of course, when I started to play, I felt like all of this nervous and all of this stress would go away because I would be in my own little world.

Okay.

Really enjoying music. And this is why I never stopped, even though I had a huge, uh, amount of stress before going on stage. I never quit because of the love for music. Still, you know, when you love something so much and it's bringing you so much stress, you're always finding for help, you're always seeking for help, right? Yeah, because, because you don't want to stop doing this. You love doing this.

So you loved playing, you love music, you love practicing, but it was those moments before you had to go on stage?

Correct.

So those were like brief moments, but they're so intensely, um, I guess terrifying or nerve-wracking that it would color your whole experience. Is that what was happening?

Okay. Yes, correct. I love, um, this example that I explained to my students, uh, I tell them that whatever you do at practice is a reflection on how you perform, even how you feel before performing. So if you take a plane pilot, right, they need to go through tremendous amounts of practice before they reach the level of actually flying a plane, right? And through that practice They're given so many tools that are gonna prepare them to be ready and in the present moment, no matter what happens in that plane, right? So it's like—

Yeah, that's a great analogy.

You know how the pilots need a couple of hours before they fly the plane to check if everything is on check? To go through all the little buttons the plane has, and they need to double-check everything. And until they're super sure that everything is done, then they can fly the plane, right? And I feel like we don't do that in practice a lot. Us as musicians, that we go through so much stress, we only concentrate on performing, performing, performing. But when do we stop for a moment and say, okay, how do I feel? Can I double-check my emotions first? You know, and I think it's like you got to make it a little harder in practice. So when you perform, it feels very naturally to you.

Right.

And the thing about all these big institutions that I think they're great, you know, I love Juilliard, I love Berklee, I think they're awesome, is that during practice we focus so much on the technical parts, getting the notes right, getting the rhythm right, everything.

Mm-hmm.

There was an element we were forgetting. How do we feel? How can we manage our emotions during the practice time?

Mm-hmm.

And I feel that's a big component, uh, big institutions are still lacking.

You know, I'm so excited that you brought this up because mm-hmm, we're, what we've been doing in class for the last couple of lessons is going through, um, routines. So setting yourself up mentally and mental practicing. In fact, this is exactly what we talked about this last class. Was setting up a mental routine to activate those emotional— the emotional memory and muscle memory so that they can practice before they go on. And I literally am recording a meditation for them right now, really, based on what they told me in the last classes, so that they can have this. And I told them, do it every practice. And I do with my athlete students as well. Really?

I love that.

So I love that you're doing this. I, you know what I want to do next time when you're on? I want to go into your process and we could talk about the process of setting up a routine and what that means for our brains. What do you think?

Yes, I would love to. I would love to.

I love it. So I'm so excited for your original composition that we're going to use as a meditation piece for this podcast episode. And I just want to complete our interview today by saying that you are now fusing wellness and music, and you're doing all these meditations with your original compositions as well as playing piano, and I think voice, right? And you have live audiences who you are helping to meditate through music.

Yeah, so I think that a lot of people think that in order to meditate you need to believe in some religion or you need to be— or you need to have a superpower. But in reality, meditation is really about training your mind how to remain in the present moment. And once you are in that present moment, you can observe your emotions from an objective point of view. And a couple of months ago, I took a course of music entrepreneurship And I said to myself, wait a minute, what if I combine two of my biggest passions, music and wellness, right? And that is exactly what I did. So instead of organizing traditional classical music concerts, which I, again, I love, I thought it would be nice to offer space to individuals where music would be a medium that would help the public meditate. In other words, practice the power of the conscious mind through music. The project is relatively new, but it has attained great interest. And through music, it's incredible how much you can guide others to connecting with their inner self.

Mm-hmm.

You know, how you can bring a moment of peace and how you can connect with them in the present moment. And we have done this for all ages, and it has been quite beautiful to spread this music— I mean, this message— all through music.

I love it. And I experienced it because you came to my last lecture that I did on Zoom, and all of the participants loved it, loved meditating to your music. And for this original piece today, which is amazing. You can listen to it with, uh, using mindfulness meditation, which actually is from the Buddhist tradition. And I myself am not a Buddhist, but it is something that came down from Buddha himself. And Buddha was actually a person. He was one of the first scientists of the mind.

I love that.

So wanna attribute it rightly to who this practice is from. And especially in the world today, I mean, I just love that you're in Costa Rica and I'm in New York, and the world is a smaller place. There's so much beautiful diversity, and there's so many different people contributing in different ways. And I used to just kind of water down mindfulness as something more from a scientific angle, but now I realize the importance of really attributing it to where it originated. And it was Buddha.

I love that.

So now we're going to attribute this beautiful meditative piece to Pablo Esquivel Noel. So this is an original composition, right, Pablo? Yes. And I know that this is a little bit of ASMR, which stands for—

ASMR, as I believe it, it's Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response.

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. Yes.

And it's basically a feeling of well-being combined with a tingling sensation that usually starts in your scalp, in your neck, and sometimes goes down through your back spine. For example, imagine that you're super cold, it's a chilly night, and and you're going in the hot shower or into a hot bath, right? The first thing you do is you put your little toe on the hot water and you feel this like tingling sensation all over your body, and it feels like really good. It feels like really comforting, right? Mm-hmm. You can obtain that sensation through many different through many different inputs, I guess. And one of them is through specific sounds. So what I thought is it would be nice to combine ASMR sounds. There are specific sounds that are known to trigger the relaxation response, right? So I thought it would be good to have a fusion of those two things.

It's really cool. And I would say the instructions for listening to this beautiful music is to, as always, pay attention with all of your senses— your heart, your listening, and your vision— whatever comes up for you in your vision if you close your eyes. And then listen to the sounds, including the, um, the ASMR sounds. And if— just notice how you feel about them. Perhaps some of them will feel more pleasant than others. And then you can also notice whether you have different reactions to different sounds that you hear, and then just try to sit with those reactions, whether they're pleasant or not.

Yes, and I also recommend using headphones.

Awesome. And here it is, Pablo Esquivel Noel. And what is the name of this piece?

It's called Interlude.

Interlude. It's beautiful, and you're so talented, Pablo, and I'm so lucky to have you joining me once a month.

Thank you for having me.

With your music meditations.

Yes, it's a pleasure to share this message through music, and as always, I'm very grateful to be here.

And I'm so grateful that you reached out to me. Nothing makes me happier than my students coming back to me and talking to me again.

I'm only doing this so you can change my score from a B to an A.

You know I never give anybody B.

No, I'm just messing.

Alright, thank you.

Thank you.

So without further ado, here's Pablo's original composition, "Interlude." Use your 3 steps to elicit your relaxation response by choosing to focus on listening to each note and sound, noticing when your mind wanders, and then gently, non-judgmentally bringing your mind back to his music. Close your eyes, relax, please enjoy.