Meditation
Those of you who know me know that I like helping others and I like being productive. I like to be constantly doing something and I crave structure. I also get stressed out extremely easily. It is rare when I am not stressed about something. I had an opportunity to manage some of that stress over the school year. One of my gym teachers started a class called meditation and told me that I had to take it. And I loved it. I learned how to breath better, and I learned how to de-stress. It was the one our every other school day where I really became stress free. And I used his techniques even after school ended.
Now while I do get stressed a lot, what I do not get is nervous. I, for the most part, am confident in what I do, with one exception. The one thing that can make me nervous is while I play trumpet. Because trumpet is the one hobby I have that has not turned a profit. Everything else that I do I can say I am a professional at. But with trumpet I still have a lot to learn. So I get nervous. And since I don’t get nervous a lot, I have not fully learned how to deal with being nervous like I deal with being stressed. And if you get nervous while playing a brass instrument, it can really screw you over. So I tried using the same techniques that I used during the school year. Well actually I didn’t. See, those techniques are mainly around breathing, and you can’t use breathing exercises while playing a trumpet.
So I was stuck, until yesterday when I was introduced to the Alexander Technique. The purpose that I got out of it was to put you in a state where you relinquish yourself from the rest of the world. While lying on the floor, an instructor will put your arms, legs, and head in certain rotations to remove tension in your body. Once that is done, you let all of your muscles essentially go to sleep and you enter a state of, well I guess zen. And my trumpet playing has seriously benefitted from it. As you may have read, I recently completed the greatest concert of my life. Now the reason I was able to complete that task was because of both skill and practice. But neither of those would have done me any good if I wasn’t able to overcome that stress. So none of that would have been possible without meditation.
Live Life, Live It Hard, Let Nothing Stand In Your Way
