Welcome to the October online edition of the Well-Tempered Musician. This month, read about Dr. Jacqueline Leclair's take on awareness, check out a book at the new Wellness Library, try some tips to combat stagefright and bake falafel.
Upcoming event:
Melissa Falb, president of the BGSU Mindfulness Club and PhD candidate in Psychology, will give a talk at the end of October. Stay tuned for dates and times. She will discuss acceptance and commitment therapy, which is loosely based on concepts of Buddhism and mindfulness. According to Falb, if we can accept our anxiety and listen to it in the right way, it can actually be a useful tool. Then, commitment means making the decision to move forward with things that give our life meaning despite any anxiety we may have. This is particularly relevant and liberating for us as musicians, since we may have to perform whether we feel confident or not.
Seasonal Tips: Preparing for Performance
By Drew Sevel
With recitals and gigs in full swing for the remainder of the year, here are a few suggestions that may improve your performance.
Performance Day Meal:
-Avoid large meals two to four hours before your performance. Less work digesting means more energy available for your performance.
-An ideal pre-performance meal is high in complex carbohydrates, with a small amount of protein, and low in sugar and fat.
Get to know the space: Get used to the acoustics of the room and consider how you will enter and exit stage.
-Visualizing yourself in the performance situation beforehand can increase confidence in the moment.
Relaxation techniques for combating nerves:
-Progressive muscle relaxation: Deeply inhale through your nose. Slowly exhale for 5 seconds while continuously contracting one muscle or muscle group. Repeat 2 or 3 times for each group. Start with toes and work your way up. Be careful not to tense enough to cause pain.
-Mindful breathing: While sitting, close your eyes and allow a breath to enter through your nose (do not force). When the breath stops, mentally say “one.” Allow the breath to exit and mentally say “two.” Focus on your breath and count to ten.
Meet a Professor: Dr. Jacqueline Leclair, oboeBy Sarah Puckett
What did you eat for breakfast? Did you fight with your roommate this morning? How aware of your lifestyle are you? Dr. Jacqueline Leclair believes the path to wellness lies in answering these questions. “If we don’t know we’re out of tune, how are we going to fix it?” she says. “The first step is to be aware.”
Awareness should not be limited to the sounds coming out of our instruments. Over the years, Leclair has learned to pay attention to everything, from how her body feels after eating a bag of potato chips to the yoga her friends practice to the kinds of restaurants her fellow wellness-minded musicians choose to go to. She cautions: “Everything goes with you on stage. You don’t just take the good practice on stage; you don’t just take the good food you eat on stage.”
The importance of diet in particular became clear for Leclair when she was 24 and got a kitten. “I fed him the worst possible food—worse than bad—so he was six months old and already he was fat and had a bad attitude and would just lie around grumpy.” She didn’t realize the cheap dry cat food was to blame. But she read a book, The New Natural Cat, which explains feline nutrition. “I started making my cat’s food for him with raw meat and vegetables and he became super-kitty. I thought, ‘Gee, what am I eating?’”
Leclair recommends building awareness and effective practice techniques by considering all aspects of yourself when you’re in the practice room. “Negative attitudes and fear and stop you dead in your tracks,” says Leclair. “That’s bad technique. A weak emotional approach to practicing is poor technique. We need a good emotional approach, a good psychological approach and a good physical approach.” According to Leclair, what we need to work on personally is right there in the music we create, if we really listen. She says, “Music is like a mirror; it reflects back on you. Our daily practice reveals ourselves to ourselves.”
The good news is that as students of music, we are poised to improve. Just by choosing a career in music, we are surrounded by friends and colleagues who, in order to gain awareness and become better players, really think about their general health and wellness. “It’s a very happy unforeseen condition of being a performing musician—we bring our whole selves to it because we’re looking for long careers,” Leclair says. “It’s this happy, very beneficial part of our world.”
Healthy Recipe: Baked Falafel
From Drew Sevel
Ingredients:
15oz can chickpeas or equivalent dried chickpeas soaked overnight
½ onion, chopped
2 ½ teaspoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped
2 large cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon chili powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
dash red pepper flakes
olive oil
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix together all ingredients except olive oil in a large bowl. Transfer mixture into food processor or blender. Don’t have either? The mixture can be mashed together with a fork, just make sure it isn’t too chunky. Form into balls 2-3 inches in diameter, gently press down to form a patty. Brush each falafel with olive oil and place on a baking sheet. Bake for 8-12 minutes or until bottom of falafel begins to brown. Flip each falafel and bake for an additional 8-12 minutes. Let cool and serve on top of a salad or inside pita bread.
Musician Wellness Library October Titles
The Wellness Library (located in the Curriculum Lab) is officially up and running. Currently these books are available:
Fit As A Fiddle: The Musician’s Guide to Playing Healthy
William J. Dawson
William J. Dawson
Body Learning: An Introduction to the Alexander Technique
Michael J. Gelb
How to Learn the Alexander Technique: A Manual for Students
Barbara Conable
Indirect Procedures: A Musician’s Guide to the Alexander Technique
Pedro De Alcantara
The Musician’s Body: A Maintenance Manual for Peak Performers
Jaume Rosset I Llobet and George Odam
Awareness Heals: The Feldenkrais Method for Dynamic Health
Steven Shafarman
The Musician as Athlete: Alternative Approaches to Healthy Performance
Dorothy Bishop
Playing (less) Hurt: An Injury Prevention Guide for Musicians
Janet Horvath
The Athletic Musician: A Guide to Playing Without Pain
Barbara Paull and Christine Herrison
What Every Musician Needs to Know about the Body: The Practical Application of Body Mapping to Making Music
Barbara Conable
