Explore Mindful Musician: Mental Skills For Peak Performance Documented By Vanessa Cornett Formatted As Digital

book puts into one reference volume all of the different coexisting threads of my journey reconciling myself to myself: not just as a striving musician but also as someone recovering from trauma who is a late start to the classical world.


For my past experience in mindfulness: I had taken meditation classes since I worked at a university in Boston, roughly seven or eight years ago.
In fact, I believe I took two separate mindfulness courses there that were geared towards staff, When I moved to LA, the university I work at here also provided mindfulness classes that staff could apply to.
I dropped in on Wednesday afternoon meditation practice sessions,

My current development in classical guitar has been quite a whirlwind, My curiosity was piqued when I stumbled across Segovia's transcription for the Bach Chaconne, and a year and some change later, I've performed Bach, VillaLobos, Tedesco, Ponce, Mertz, and Poulenc.
An instructor was gracious enough to take me on as a student after hearing me in a trial lesson.
It's been quick, and I'm super thankful for the opportunity, The problem is dealing with those feelings of impostor syndrome incurred by being a late starter, or watching master classes where the students are fraternizing afterward in such an 'insidebaseball' way, and so on.
And as someone who can organize themselves and enjoys some of the therapeutic side of administrative organization, this book lends itself to some cultivated talents from my day job as well.


So in some way this book is a great tool that puts different aspects of my practice musical, administrative, and meditative together to further streamline and render more efficient my practice time.
This is critical for me as a fulltime staffer who is a latestarter at something as consuming as classical guitar.


There have been significant changes already to the alertness I have to deficiencies in my technique, the quickness with which I can remedy them, and as well it's been very helpful to keep me settled and calm during what I can admittedly turn into a highpressure, makeorbreak lesson.
It's a way forward to make practice work for your brain the way your brain works for you, And it provides an incentive to continue a meditation practice I've let atrophy here and there that I know is good for me, because it's in the service of creating more 'wholeness of self' with my music.
What a tremendous gift this book is, and I'm very pleased it is affable and not as queasily preachy as some other advice out there.
In this immediately useful resource for performing musicians and teachers of performing musicians, Keyboard Studies Professor and meditation instructor Vanessa Cornett has assembled an array of exercises and practices that can instantly be applied to the daily life of students wishing to address issues of stress, anxiety, mindfulness, distractedness, and negativity.


The first four chapters effectively summarize what it is that we are trying to achieve through study of this area of performance and also catalogues a likely number of student/personality types with which we will all be familiar in music schools.
Through this wonderful summation, any sentient young student will likely find their issue and their specific personality discussed and more importantly, they will find it effectively related to in a very positive and productive light.
There are many performers who either through luck, great early teaching, or their own constant practice, have actually stumbled upon many of the habits listed in these early chapters on effective musicians.
For many others, there are a myriad of selfdestructive habits with which they unwittingly engage which are well teased out by Cornett.


Chaptersandbegin some great discussion and dissemination of strategies as pertains to effective breathing and also the use of imagery in practice.
Breathing is something all musicians talk about and may have heard anecdotal exercises from various pedagogues, the breathtaking pun intended amount of strategies to try included in this volume will surely help many for whom this is unfamiliar territory.
Likewise the use of imagery in practice, especially away from the instrument, is a technique very common to the discussion and one that we see frequently incorporating elements from effective sports psychologists.
The crossover in disciplines is undeniable and again the reader will leave this chapter with several effective techniques to try.


Before beginning the final chapters on mindfulness, Cornett gives a very appropriate segue to highlight the change in usage of these techniques:
"In the next chapter, we will begin to explore mental skills development from a completely different perspective, a perspective that is contradictory in many ways.
Now that you are armed with a comprehensive and possibly overwhelming summary of ideas and information on using imagery to create the reality you want, I am now going to suggest that you simultaneously learn to let all of that go.
We can often find a larger truth between two seemingly opposite practices, "

Following a wonderful summary of the principles of mindfulness, the reader is given no fewer thandozen different techniques and strategies that aim at various aspects of being a practicing and performing musician.
This is again, as she indicated in the statement listed above, overwhelming to read straight through so I would encourage a fair amount of

time be taken with these final two chapters in particular to actually and genuinely engage with the techniques and meditations she offers.
Along with some of the mindfulness exercises are some very straightforward and practical suggestions that will seem quotidian in comparison, but nevertheless just as helpful to ensuring a successful and healthy mindset leading up to and on the day of performance.


This is a wonderful volume for all musicians to have, perhaps most especially so for students, Written only just last year,, this is one of the first books geared for music students that effectively engages with the ridiculously distracted environment in which modern students find themselves, an environment that did not exist even for me during my own university study.
There are many discussions every year at conferences and in faculty meetings about the use of breathing techniques, imagery, mindfulness, meditation, and anxiety management it is so refreshing and efficient to have the techniques of these discussions available in a single volume.
I first heard of this volume from a music and stress management coach I respect very much, Dinka MigicVlatković, and she was absolutely correct, great reading for, as I mentioned above, students, teachers, and teachers of teachers! In The Mindful Musician: Mental Skills for Peak Performance, author Vanessa Cornett offers guidelines to help musicians cultivate artistic vision, objectivity, freedom, quiet awareness, and selfcompassion, both on and offstage in order to become more resilient performers.
Contrary to modern culture's embrace of busyness and divided attention, Cornett's contemplative techniques provide greater space for artistic selfexpression and satisfaction.
With the aid of a companion website that includes audio files and downloadable templates, The Mindful Musician provides a method to promote attentional focus, selfassessment, emotional awareness, and creativity.
The first of its kind to combine mindfulness practices with research in cognitive and sport psychology, this book helps musicians explore the roots of anxiety and other challenges related to performance, all through the deliberate focus of awareness.

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