Stop, Breathe, Think.

Ok, so my intention for the year is self-care, and so much of this has to do with mindfulness. As I'm working to be more mindful in my own life, (in my mental health, in my eating, etc, I could go on and on!) I started to wonder how I can bring this same practice to my students. 

Now, I always try to encourage mindfulness in the studio, and this year my goal is to be even more intentional. 

One of the things that my students always do when they sing something they didn't love is just jump in and try again without any thought on it. (I mean, come on, we're all guilty of this, aren't we??) What usually ends up happening is they take a quick breath (yes, it's almost always a tense breath, and it raises all.the.things in the throat!!) and then they jump in and do the exact.same.thing. Only worse. 

Now, I know if they're doing this in a lesson that it's deeeefinitely coming up in their practice making sure it's a big ol' ingrained habit. 

So, I teach: Stop. Breathe. Think. Then (and only then), try again. 

​The breath is always more relaxed, they feel less frantic, and they have an idea of what they didn't like from the previous attempt AND how they'd like to change it up. 

This is actually something I picked up when I practiced Aikido what feels like a million years ago. So often in life when we try something and it doesn't do what we want, we just bang our heads against the wall creating all kinds of anxiety and unhappiness. 

This is something I'm trying to practice in so many aspects of my life: Stop. Breathe. Think. And then, try again.

I've got a whole slew of them, but I'd love to hear how you all use mindfulness in the studio! And I'm guessing that you all see soooo many correlations between how to live a content life and what we teach in the voice studio!! I'd love to hear them!!!