In late 2020, we officially started Zen Strength & Conditioning. As you probably remember, that year was a pretty big shock to almost everyone. Change was in the air.
For my personal experience, it was an initial increase in intensity of all aspects of my life, and then…a release. When I stepped out of my crazy work hours running a gym, pretty quickly I had more time, even with starting a new business. What would I do with it?
At first I was still, idle, searching. But then it hit me. All those years where I said “someday I’ll try that, when I have more time” – that day was now.
I’ve always been fascinated by music, particularly the playing and creating part of it. How do they do that? I had a couple friends in my teens and twenties who could make amazing sounds on the piano, from Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu to Brian McKnight covers (check out @arelwashere on YouTube).
I did a bunch of searching online to see what my options were for courses and apps. Besides the pandemic complications of in-person anything, I knew it would still be a lot for me to travel and schedule appointments for this, and wanted to explore it at my own pace. I found an online course called Piano in 21 Days that seemed the most inviting and appropriate for me.
The teacher, Jaques, was warm and made jokes, my style. He was also an engineer formerly, and came at piano from a “we’re going to make this fun and skip all the traditional, boring stuff.”
I really enjoyed it, and his approach was so much more playful and engaging than what I expected. Only the minimum amount of drills to get me playing actual songs. I was having fun pretty quickly. And I even did the drills that worked my brain and made me tired, because this wasn’t my job, this was me pursuing something for myself.
It still took me about 4 months to complete, practicing mostly in the evenings for 30-45 minutes, 1-2 times per week. “Piano In 21 Weeks” was my little running joke.
The interesting thing to me about playing and listening to instrumental music is that it can happen largely without language. Learning the notes like A,B,C#,E♭, etc. involves some symbols of course, and learning from a person is all language based. But once you get to the playing, fundamentally musical notes are sound waves. Beep. Series or combinations of notes are sound patterns. Beep, boop, bop. When playing in a certain key, there are relationships between the notes, so that some combinations sound more pleasant than others. This is music theory. Interestingly, certain keys are known to evoke certain feelings as well.
Once I had enough of an understanding of fundamentals, I quickly fell in love with improvisation, as I can simply come up with patterns as I go. Beepity, boop, boop, boppity, beep. As long as I’m staying within the key, it all sounds pretty good. I hear something that sounds nice musically on Spotify, I save it and go try to play it later. Besides random popular music and covers I come across, I’m really into Ludovico Einaudi these days. He makes such amazing sounds with simple patterns that are accessible at my current skill level. I get a lot out of starting from an inspiring piece, then adopting it into my own version.
In a previous blog, An Inspired Practice, I talked about connecting your health and fitness practice to your daily experience, and how that can expand your well of inspiration to engage with your body on those otherwise sluggish days.
In a similar way, playing music for me is like a journal. It can evoke emotions without words, express so much, and nothing at all too.
I’ll have some recordings coming out on social media soon, as sharing music is something I enjoy as well. I joke with my therapist that I’m having fun doing something with no purpose. She corrects me that healing oneself and others around us by experiencing music is very purposeful.
How does it work? I’m still learning to be honest. Rhythmicity and attunement are concepts I’m exploring through my practice. Playing music pretty powerfully brings me into the present moment, closer to exercise than meditation, since there’s a level of focus too.
If you like some types of music yourself, whatever the genre may be, I don’t know that you need to be able to explain why you do scientifically to experience the good things it does for you. Part of what music is helping me explore is letting go of mechanistic explanations as fundamental and necessary all the time. It’s amazing to just be.
If I feel like a narrative, the one that sticks for me is: there’s something uniquely settling about connecting with the parts of myself that were once deferred. Now is the time.
Two questions for you:
- What’s a song or activity that helps you relax?
- Is there anything you’ve deferred, then something changed and you finally got around to it?
Coach Mauricio