Meditation

I first started meditating soon after Ray Premru handed me a copy of “Inner Game of Tennis” in 1993. That was 28 years ago, and I have been meditating regularly since then. I have gone through stretches when I’ve really been into it, and found it to be super helpful staying calm and focused on stage. Other times, I have felt like it made my trombone playing boring, and laid off it a bit. I was completely unable to distinguish why it had sometimes worked and other times not.

The insights of ISTDP led me to look into the different ways people meditate and see if I couldn’t solve the dilemma of how to meditate in a way that would add peace and calm to my performances, but that wouldn’t make my music making bland and uninteresting. I think I’ve found an answer, and it doesn’t have anything to do with technique. I continue to meditate just like I always have, simply sitting in a quiet place, either on a cushion or in a chair, and counting my natural breaths, one through ten, over and over again, for about ten minutes each day. 

The difference I’ve discovered is in the intention of the meditation. With the kind of meditation I do, it is possible to either become more connected with your inner life or detach from it. Niether way is right or wrong, per se; however, detaching is a psychological defense. It has the effect of distancing you from feeling. That makes for boring performances, not to mention a life cut off from the richness and complexity of who you really are. 

Meditating to connect with yourself reveals to you how you are doing at that moment. What you are feeling. What is distracting you. What defenses you might be using. What emotions are presenting themselves, requesting to be acknowledged. That is incredibly useful information that helps you navigate your performances as well as your life itself!

A few years ago, my orchestra performed Verdi’s Requiem at the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, Germany. That was a very cool experience! The morning of the concert, I visited the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe. There happened to be an exhibit on Buddhist art, and I stumbled upon an inscription on a statue depicting Taoist meditation that took my breath away:

“Self-realization through the transference of the primal energy of life into human existence.”

This is precisely the goal the kind of meditation I am now practicing and also a rather poetic description of the the purpose of ISTDP.