Nearly every single professional musician has some degrees of "practicing disorder"
Everyone is talking about eating and sleeping disorder, but how about practicing disorder? Nearly every single musician is combating with it in daily life from the moment they begin the instruments, and very few realizes that it is the very same mechanism with eating disorder.
The moment a kid start learning an instrument, there would be all kinds well-intended advices about how and how much one should practice reinforced into the child . Should we adopt the Asian way or Danish way? And usually the adults are very confused themselves.
For me, playing music is very much a physical, mental, and spiritual need, and the imbalance of it reflects directly in my health. After my first injury when I was 18 years old, I developed a complicated relationship with practicing. I was very afraid to lose the ability to play, and I was either practicing until it hurts or not practicing at all for a long time, in between I would be caught by tremendous guilt and self-blaming especially when I have pain. I found out by surprise, that this is quite common among musicians.
My second injury which happened when I was 28 years old - in which I couldn't lift my left shoulder-was a wake up call for me to look deep into my "practicing disorder." Luckily I was very much helped by the natural discipline and wisdom of Feldenkrais Method. I re-discovered "somatic practicing", which I actually have experienced as a kid.
The audiences see my bright side on stage, but behind that, I was a master of self-sabotaging in many years. Luckily due to years of looking inward and making experiments with myself and my students, I have gotten more and more insights and therefore I have more or less have gotten myself out from it...but still working on it!
Having also come through an eating disorder in my teenage life, I would like to do a deeper research on it and create this funny yet profound book. I hope to have the book out in about 3 years.
Feb 17, 2017 in Copenhagen, revised on Jan.25, 2018
Everyone is talking about eating and sleeping disorder, but how about practicing disorder? Nearly every single musician is combating with it in daily life from the moment they begin the instruments, and very few realizes that it is the very same mechanism with eating disorder.
The moment a kid start learning an instrument, there would be all kinds well-intended advices about how and how much one should practice reinforced into the child . Should we adopt the Asian way or Danish way? And usually the adults are very confused themselves.
For me, playing music is very much a physical, mental, and spiritual need, and the imbalance of it reflects directly in my health. After my first injury when I was 18 years old, I developed a complicated relationship with practicing. I was very afraid to lose the ability to play, and I was either practicing until it hurts or not practicing at all for a long time, in between I would be caught by tremendous guilt and self-blaming especially when I have pain. I found out by surprise, that this is quite common among musicians.
My second injury which happened when I was 28 years old - in which I couldn't lift my left shoulder-was a wake up call for me to look deep into my "practicing disorder." Luckily I was very much helped by the natural discipline and wisdom of Feldenkrais Method. I re-discovered "somatic practicing", which I actually have experienced as a kid.
The audiences see my bright side on stage, but behind that, I was a master of self-sabotaging in many years. Luckily due to years of looking inward and making experiments with myself and my students, I have gotten more and more insights and therefore I have more or less have gotten myself out from it...but still working on it!
Having also come through an eating disorder in my teenage life, I would like to do a deeper research on it and create this funny yet profound book. I hope to have the book out in about 3 years.
Feb 17, 2017 in Copenhagen, revised on Jan.25, 2018
