Chapter 1: Statement of the Problem
Introduction
The inspiration to investigate mindfulness applied to music arose during my time at the Spanish National Distance University (UNED) in Madrid, where I did a master's degree in psychology and music and wrote a thesis titled: “A Literature Review of Attentional Processes in Musical Performance: Choking, Flow and Mental Strategies”. Mindfulness was included in the "mental strategies" section of my thesis.
After having investigated mindfulness for a couple of years, I decided to focus on it in a much deeper way for my master's degree in classical violin at The Royal Conservatory in The Hague. However, researching mindfulness in a purely scientific way did not seem fulfilling enough to me and I concluded that I had to experience meditation myself. I, therefore, decided to apply to different schools where mindfulness courses are held in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, and to my surprise, the two courses I applied to were canceled due to a lack of participants. However, I persevered and found a mindfulness course through Mindful Leader. To my surprise, out of the many instructors that work in this organization, my instructor was an ex-freelance classical musician and had obtained a Master's in Music Education before becoming an MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stressed Reduction) instructor. By taking part in a formal MBSR course, I wanted to find out if mindfulness could benefit me as a musician. During the course, I immediately realized some benefits of meditating regularly both in my behavior and in my playing. After completing the course, I wanted to reach out to everyone including family, friends, and fellow musicians to let them know about my experience and try to make them meditate. Thanks to the MBSR course, I was able to acquire notions that are allowing me to get to know myself better as a person and as an artist and to help others become more familiar with mindfulness and its benefits, like with this study.
The “10,000-hour rule” (Ericsson et al., 1993) refers to the amount of practice necessary to have great success in any performing field. In theory, a violinist who spends hundreds of hours perfecting a specific skill will have a higher likelihood of accomplishing it than one that does not. However, it may not be enough to spend extensive hours developing a simple body motion, a musical idea, or any high-level skill to perform accurately. According to Anders Ericson in an interview with Daniel Goleman (2014): “you don’t get benefits from mechanical repetition, but by adjusting your execution over and over to get closer to your goal.” (p. 164). To do so, how much attention we pay and how well we refocus it when practicing might make a crucial difference in our performance.
Scenario 1
Imagine a musician, Matilda, entering her practice room and thinking about an upcoming concert. She quickly takes her instrument out of the case and, without wasting a second, starts playing the first notes of the day. As soon as Matilda produces her first sounds, she instantly starts judging them, which leads her to a stream of doubt and negative self-criticism: “this arpeggio is still not in tune, maybe I should have quit violin years ago…”; “my bow feels different, always the same …”; “I cannot get rid of the tension on my left hand…”; “my back keeps hurting”, etc…All of this judgment occurring within the first 10 minutes of practice has saturated Matilda’s brain with obtrusive thoughts that are now lingering on her awareness. Without her being conscious of it, they are stealing much of the cognitive bandwidth and needed attentional resources for the goals she needed to tackle during her practice session. She tries to regain her composure and focus on the music, but, as hard as she tries, she is unable to get rid of emerging disruptive thoughts. Faced with the impotence of not being able to control her thoughts, she stops studying and gives up for that day.
Scenario 2
Matilda starts her practice, and she is not pleased with the quality of the first notes. Catastrophic scenarios regarding her next concert are hovering in her mind. However, thanks to the power of dereification, she can bring her attention back to her sound. She decides to retune to her sound. She is not pleased with the quality of the first notes, but that thought does not disturb her. Instead, she faces challenges with serenity and perspective, thinking of the best solution, and tackling one problem at a time. Sometimes, rumination comes back and takes control over her focus, but now these thoughts do not stick to her mind. Rather, she is more self-aware and can let go of them. At the moment she detects she is distracted, she comes back to her breath, sound, body, and musical goals with a non-judgmental attitude, constructive criticism, and kindness.
"Scenario 1" is a very typical example of a musician suffering the consequences of negative rumination, not being able to let go of distractions, redirect attention, and regulate cognitive and affective states. However, when musicians pay attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally (Kabat-Zinn, 1994, p. 4) to the learning of a piece, as in "Scenario 2", they are likely to be practicing mindfully. Mindfulness is the process of maintaining focus while simultaneously monitoring for and disengaging from unwanted thoughts and feelings (Bishop et al., 2004) that feature mind-wandering Scenario 1). Furthermore, mindfulness is a mental state of non-judgmental monitoring of experience, and self-inquiry (Diaz, 2022).
Steinfeld and Brewer (2015) suggest that the manner through which an experienced meditator comes back to the object of meditation when distracted resembles how musicians come back to a sound in mind, body feeling, or rhythm. Despite this, we often find ourselves struggling with our thoughts during practice, and this is partly due to an overabundance of mental stimuli. An excess of distractions often prevents musicians’ minds from being focused and in control of their thinking; digital advertising, social media, and worries and thoughts about the past and future create a cognitive overload that shrinks musicians’ concentration and ability to live in the moment. Performing musicians spend a great percentage of their days practicing in isolation, with the only company of their instrument and thoughts. Interestingly, there is a paucity of research regarding students’ mental states such as mind-wandering and mindfulness, including their causes and effects on subsequent practice behaviors and performance outcomes. Seemingly, there is a dearth of studies examining how mindfulness training programs may help musicians enhance their ability to focus and become more resilient to distraction. These issues will be addressed in this paper.
