The Benefits of Mindful Practice for Flute Players
Mindful practice is an incredibly versatile and helpful technique that will help you become a better flute player. Utilizing mindfulness practices such as active listening, body scanning, and journalling can not just allow you to channel emotions into your playing, but also help you master techniques that require tension to be resolved in the body, such as fast and resonant flute playing. Mindfulness also helps curb performance anxiety and build a love for playing your instrument. In this article, we will delve into the world of mindfulness, why it’s important to creating a great relationship with your flute - one that will grow over time - and how to integrate it into your personal routine.
Understanding Mindful Practice
Mindfulness means a lot of things, but in the context of flute playing, a lot of it comes down to paying attention to your practice, knowing where you want to go, being conscious of where you are currently, and knowing the steps to take to get there. Traditionally, we’ve encouraged students to spend hours in the practice room - quantity over quality - in terms of time. We’ve encouraged students of all levels to simply spend hours in the practice room without any extra guidance for how to practice, what to practice, when to practice, etc. Through mindfulness, we become more efficient with our practice, therefore needing to spend less time in mindless repetition in order to master a concept. With mindfulness, we make plans, we set goals, we work on sections, and we use all of our senses to understand where we are and how to fix problems as they arise. Mindfulness is particularly important in music because music requires interpretation, a keen understanding of what a composer is looking for in their writing, and a very detailed understanding on how we can make that happen with our instruments. Mindfulness can also help you build a practice routine that allows you to spend less time in the practice room and get further in your playing than without.
Benefits of Mindful Practice
Improved focus and concentration
Practicing mindfulness throughout your life as well as in your flute practice, you can enhance your focus, allowing for more growth during practice time. By learning how to pay more attention to what’s going on in your mind and body, you’re able to pinpoint your needs for growth, feel tension, and reach goals quicker.
Begin your practice with a small reflection moment, setting goals for your session, and making a plan. Deep breathing is another great way to cultivate concentration at the beginning of a practice session.
Enhanced Musical Expression
Practicing mindfulness can help you to analyze to a deeper level the emotional nuances in the pieces you’re looking to play. Being in deeper connection with your own emotions can help you to channel them accurately and appropriately in your music.
Reduced Performance Anxiety
Being able to ground yourself in the present as a performance is coming up can help you reframe your anxious thoughts and get through performances more easily.
Deep breathing (box breathing, ujjayi breath, etc), thought reframing, thought stopping, and visualizing are a great way to help combat performance anxiety with mindfulness.
Better Tone and Technique
Critical listening can help diagnose tone and technique issues, giving you a greater understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses. This can help you make practical fixes in your own playing that you might not necessarily have been able to diagnose without a teacher before.
You can also improve your technique with body scanning for tension, active releasing and repositioning of the hands, the embouchure, and more. Making mindful changes to the position of your hands, fingers, wrists, embouchure, throat, etc. and being able to label those changes can help make you a better, more informed and in-tune flute player.
Joy and Satisfaction of Music
Mindful practice can help you enjoy your music more. Not only are you more in-tune with your practice, requiring less tedium, but it also gives you the opportunity to see improvements faster.
Incorporating Mindful Practice into Your Routine
Building mindfulness into your practice routine isn’t terribly difficult, but adding these steps into your routine are a great way to begin.
Begin each of your practice sessions with some focus practice, deep breathing, and then goal setting.
Decide on 2-3 big goals you’d like to achieve in your practice session that day.
While practicing flute tone, focus on tension in the throat, in the shoulders, neck, jaw, and fingers. Actively release the tension as you find it. Consider doing a full body scan while practicing long tones.
During technique practice, you can make mental notes of what fingers seem to be moving slower, also paying attention to the tension arising in your fingers.
Don’t forget to create a space where you can be mindful. A calm and focused environment can be built by having a dedicated space for practice, one that you can preferably close the door to avoid distractions. Leave your phone outside or turn it off/to Do Not Disturb, and be sure to let everyone around you know that you’ll be practicing. Keep your music and supplies within reaching distance. Create a space where you’re comfortable and keep items of comfort nearby. Make sure you have water, a sweater or blanket, a chair (if you like), and adequate lighting. This will make your practice easier and more comfortable.
Conclusion
The key benefits of mindful practice are ultimately higher levels of enjoyment and faster improvement. The mind-body connection of playing an instrument is extremely important, therefore mindfulness will do nothing but help your practice. I would encourage you to begin incorporating mindfulness into your practice routine to see bigger gains in your flute playing faster and to start connecting with your person on a deeper level.
If you’d like to learn more about this, I offer workshops, drop-in flute lessons, 1:1 weekly private lessons, and mindfulness coaching to help you get better at flute and feel better all at the same time. Scroll to book and be sure to subscribe to emails for more information on mindfulness and flute practice.
