Unlocking Creativity: Becoming mBODYed, Not Bulletproof

 I’m so grateful for the inspirational presence of Lea Pearson in my life.  This post comes from a recent conversation that we had.

Why do you need Alexander Technique and Body Mapping?

One of the greatest challenges we face as teachers of Alexander Technique and Body Mapping is that these modalities have been labeled as “cures” for injuries and the injured.  That’s a great outcome of the study of these modalities, but they are both educational techniques first and foremost.  They provide pathways for learning about oneself and developing your true performance potential.

This category creates two barriers that are difficult to overcome .

First, sadly, many don’t find Alexander Technique or Body Mapping until they are already injured or well on their way to becoming injured.  Thus, the reason why these modalities are thought to be in the category of injury therapy and recovery. 

The goal of AT and BMG is educational in nature.  We ultimately want to “secure (music) education on a somatic plane.”  This is difficult to do in our field currently because wellness and injury prevention are pretty far down on the list of priorities in our educational process.  We don’t talk about the prevalence of injury in our field, or by the time we do, it is too late.  The barrier to moving this up in our attention is related to the second barrier that we face.

Many teachers don’t think that they need this work or that this work would be helpful in their teaching.  Perhaps you teach young students or have a prescribed curriculum that you follow like Suzuki. Perhaps you teach an instrument where injury isn’t as common.  Maybe you’re a large ensemble director at a school and don’t directly interface one-on-one with students like a private teacher does.  There’s a plethora of reasons as to why you may think it isn’t useful for you. 

At a very basic level, musicians are movers.  We must move to make sound; this is simple physics.  It also turns out that the quality of that sound is directly related and dependent on the quality of the movement that created it.  If we want to talk about all the creative possibilities for sound, we must have a huge palette of movement from which to draw from in our work.  It’s the difference between the box of 8 crayons or the box of 64!  If we aren’t talking about the importance of movement in our work, then we are sticking to the box of 8, thus, limiting the creative possibilities.  Dancers and actors know this, but it is sometimes hard for musicians to grasp fully. We spend most of our time learning how to use the tool of our music-making – the instrument.  We don’t know that our body is the first instrument that we need to learn to use well.

It turns out that one of the essential parts of learning – in particular, learning an art form where our bodies are involved – is safety and the space that we are learning in.  Inclusion and belonging are both prerequisites for learning Alexander Technique and Body Mapping and are woven into the mBODYed curriculum and training materials. 

Teaching and learning in a way that fosters belonging to oneself is the starting point of your journey to knowing yourself, and teaching in a way that not only prevents injury, but also unlocks the creative potential in each of your students.

Last week, I wrote a post on social media following my class on wellness and injury prevention.  That afternoon I was bombarded the advertisements for “becoming mentally bulletproof.”  (should be noted that this is not from The BulletProof Musician.  Noa Kageyama is doing great work in bringing well researched psychology to musicians!).  I was talking in the class about the importance of developing emotional literacy and resiliency to the struggles that we face in the artistic field.  We were talking about numbing as a strategy and the danger that when we numb from the negatives, we also limit our emotional experience of our triumphs and our joy.  If we are busy placing our attention on denying our physical or emotional response, we have very little mental prowess left for our creative endeavors. 

The journey of emotional resiliency starts in our bodies.  Knowing our body and giving ourselves the time and the space to safely feel into the emotion to learn how we are physically responding to the experience.  Only then can we exercise our choice to change.

The mBODYed journey gives you the time and the tools for this process.  We not only create the spaces for you to explore for yourself, we help you develop the skills for creating similar spaces for your students.

Become mBODYed, not bulletproof!