I pluck a string...as the sound waves drift out into the rest of the house, so does my attention. Can anyone hear me? Are the boys in the kitchen or the game room? If they're in the game room, is the TV loud enough to drown out my music? Are they listening? Do they think it sounds good? Can the neighbors hear me? What if I sing louder? This is embarrassing. Ahhh....All this time I've been so focused on feeling, understanding & overcoming fear. I've continually challenged myself to do what scares me (sing louder, sing LIVE on Facebook, sing when I'm walking down the street, sing at stoplights etc...) and still I'm held back by this tense feeling of stuckness that I call fear. But maybe it's not fear anymore. Maybe it's distraction. Although there are still a couple butterflies in my belly, I'm totally able to sing loudly when I know people are listening. But it's almost impossible for me to sing loudly when I'm THINKING about the people who are listening. It's like multi-tasking; I'm focusing 10% on singing and 90% on where everyone else is and whether they can hear me or not. Simple mathmatics tells me that if I can switch this ratio around, I might have more fun making music. And how, Miss. Yoga Teacher, do you propose flipping this ratio? Me thinks the answer is simple meditation. Mediation in general (like sitting my tushie on a cushion each morning and breathing while the timer ticks down) AND meditation while playing. Every time I catch my mind wandering through the house with the sound waves, can I pull it back to the origin of the sound...me and the instrument. I tell my yoga students that yoga is meditation while moving your body. Perhaps, creating music is meditation while 'moving' sound. // Cha
