The temple remains.

Fragments of past transmissions echo below.

Category: Email Archives

  • When deep practice makes you feel like a failure

    I gotta get something off my chest. It’s about deep practice.

    Deep practice is the kind that involves real introspection.

    • Paying close attention to your physical movements.
    • Noticing your thoughts.
    • Being aware of your habits.

    Deep practice is required if you want to change things.

    • Exercises that involve reconditioning basic movement patterns.
    • Adjusting what you eat to have better health.
    • Changing habits that aren’t working as well as you want them to.

    Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?

    However, deep practice is off-limits to many people, and that’s not fair.

    When you look closely at yourself, you will see problems. Furthermore, since you’re a smart person, you’ll know there’s a problem.

    Yet, you’re powerless to change it. That’s because you recognize that deep practice is hard work.

    But here’s the thing…

    “Hard work” doesn’t come easily to everyone.

    Some people are diligent and conscientious and can change routines merely through an act of willpower (or so they think). Others can’t.

    Yet, the diligent-conscientious people have a monopoly on deep practice.

    They’ve somehow convinced the rest of us that there’s something deeply wrong with us if we can’t maintain deep focus on our deep selves for extended periods of time at will.

    As a result, when we look deeply, we freak out. We’ve been taught that when we notice a deep problem, we’re responsible for fixing it (after all, that’s what a diligent-conscientious person would do).

    So, we avoid practicing deeply.

    This is horribly unfair.

    You should have the right to look deeply at your own habits, even for a moment.

    Even if you never change anything, you should still have the right to look.

    (who knows what you’ll find?)

     

    —Michael

  • Why your body hurts when you play the piano

    Your body doesn’t hurt because you were taught wrong.

    It hurts because you’re doing it wrong.

    You are the only one who can fix it. There’s no teacher out there who can fix it for you.

    It doesn’t matter what a teacher says to you. At the end of the day, you are the one who has to fix it.

    Teachers are only going to reference their checklists and make sure your body “looks” correct based on their interpretation of the checklist.

    But, it’s easily possible that you could “look right” and still be screwing yourself over. After all, these things happen deep inside your body.

    It’s not intellectual. It’s physical.

    There’s a reason piano teachers spend so much time arguing over which virtuosos have the “correct posture” and which don’t. It’s because there are many ways to do it right.

    Every point in the body is physically connected to every other point. When you move one part, all the others move. You can’t isolate them.

    The only way to prevent injuries and get rid of pain and fatigue is to find a way of playing that works for the body as a whole.

    —Michael

  • Loving and Accepting Yourself – Practical Tips

    “I suck at piano and I know I should give myself more love and acceptance. But, I don’t know how.”

    Usually, these problems can be sorted out by getting clear on what exactly you’re trying to do and why you’re trying to do it. So, let’s unpack this a bit.

    I’m going to define three words: “love”, “acceptance”, and “compassion”:

    • Love is when you encourage something you want more of. Like watering a plant.
    • Acceptance is when you stop fighting something you don’t like.
    • Compassion is when you recognize suffering and wish it were gone.

    You can love (encourage) the parts of you that are responsible for sucking at the piano. For example, suppose you suck at piano because you just started playing last week (because you enjoy picking up new skills every week). You can have fun playing the piano for a week and then love yourself by letting yourself pick up a new skill next week.

    (Why would you love yourself for sucking at piano??? Don’t you want to be good at piano?)

    You can accept the fact that you suck at piano. This doesn’t mean you’re happy about it and it doesn’t mean you can’t try to get better. It just means you stop expecting yourself to be better than you are. And, it’s done concretely: if you accept how much you suck, you won’t hide from it. So, for example, you’ll let yourself perform on the piano, even if you suck.

    Also, you can accept the thought “I will always suck at piano” without accepting the reality of it. Thoughts aren’t reality. They’re just images and sounds.

    You can have compassion for your suffering. Meaning, you wish you suffered less than you do. This is recognition of the suffering. (Most people don’t go that far. They just wish they were better at piano without recognizing the suffering.)

    In conclusion, love, acceptance, and compassion are three different skills and you should practice them independently.

    Whatever you do, make sure it’s practical, not philosophical.

    —Michael

  • Why it’s easier to push yourself when the stakes are high

    At my last workshop, this question was asked by Rachel, an opera singer:

    “In performance, the stakes are higher. In practice, it’s hard for me to prioritize. There’s like a roadblock in my practicing, but in real life I’d handle it better.”

    It’s normal for real-life performance situations to make us perform better. More is on the line. There’s adrenaline.

    Your performance in real life matters. So, you block out distractions. You let yourself take risks. Because you have to.

    The SELF turns OFF and you become absorbed in the task.

    When you’re practicing, however, it’s a different story…

    There’s no urgency, so you take your time.

    Everything becomes future-focused (because the present doesn’t matter so much), and the SELF turns ON.

    These are not ideal practice conditions.

    Athletes train themselves past the point where they know they will have to perform.

    Training should be difficult so that performance is easy.

    —Michael

  • When your playing sounds “mechanical”

    When your playing sounds “mechanical”

    First, let’s get one thing out of the way: just because a teacher told you that your playing sounds mechanical doesn’t mean it does.

    (the teacher might not be expressing themselves very well)

    While we’re at it, let’s get another thing out of the way: your mechanical-sounding playing is not the fault of the metronome.

    Metronomes are convenient scapegoats here, because after all, they are machines. But, yeah. No.

    There are two reasons your playing might sound “mechanical”:

    1. You’re not playing all the features of the music.
    2. You’re struggling with the mechanics of playing.

    These are totally different.

    1. You’re not playing all the features of the music.

    If you don’t recognize that there’s a phrase of music, you won’t play it as a phrase. If you don’t recognize a cadence, you won’t play it as a cadence.

    When you don’t notice the details that are in the music, you won’t play them. You’ll only play what you do recognize.

    This doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It only means you’re not doing enough right things.

    2. You’re struggling with the mechanics of playing.

    When you’re fighting with your body trying to get it to do what you want it to do, you’re not giving your attention to the music.

    This doesn’t mean you aren’t being “musical”. It only means you’re too distracted by other things to allow your musicality to express itself.

    It is wrong to think of playing as being on a continuum with “musical” on one end and “mechanical” on the other end.

    That continuum might be useful for the music critic, but it’s not useful for the player.

    —Michael

  • Why Music Practice is No Fun

    I was looking through some old notebooks the other night, and I wanted to share this:

    I’ve noticed that when most people practice music, they don’t have fun. When I practice, however, I do have fun.

    So…why don’t you have fun while practicing?

    (It’s not because you suck at music.)

    Westerners view music as an intellectual activity. In this way of looking at it, the goal is to:

    • Understand how to play

    • Make progress

    • Be correct

    • Have social status

    • Be redeemed for your sins

    • Ensure security for the future

    • Improve

    The whole thing is future-based. No wonder it’s no fun.

    But…there are other ways to view music practice.

    If we focus on the present, rather than the future, the goal is to:

    • Enjoy the process

    • Manipulate energy

    • Learn about yourself

    • Suffer less by untying knots

    • Find freedom

    • Uncover self-compassion

    • Explore

    When you’re fixated on the future, it’s impossible to enjoy the present.

    This is why practice is no fun.

    —Michael

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