Kirk C Ferguson Trombonist

Meditation and Music:

The Art of Practicing is an approach to performance that blends being a musician with meditation, all while using a student centered approach to teaching. The effect of this is to allow the performer more freedom, ease and expressive capability while performing. This approach is taught from the viewpoint that new perspectives are learned most thoroughly not when dropped on the student from above but when the student realizes that perspective for themselves. This is all done with the attitude that people are basically good. Simply by being a human being, we are worthy of dignity and respect; our situation is workable.

Meditation practice is part of this process because it allows us to make friends with ourselves and our experience. So often in our modern society we are disconnected from our own experience. We're proverbial "heads on sticks". More importantly, we become disconnected from our own hearts. We forget why we put so much time, effort and energy into our music. We become distracted by our hopes and fears. We have hopes about how our performances should go. There are things we want others to say about us. We desire a certain result. Conversely, we fear giving a bad performance. We become paralysed by the criticism that will come from ourselves and others. Meditation practice gives us a tool to interrupt this cycle of hope and fear. It allows us to have some space to simply be. In that space we can find the freedom to express our true selves.