Body, mind and spirit.(Forum Focus: Wellness)

Learning ways to empower musicians through the body, mind and spirit toward wellness was the theme of the "Wellness Symposium" cosponsored by MTNA and the Canadian Federation of Music Teachers Associations.

Held in New York City July 7-9, 2008, the symposium was part of MTNA's efforts to emphasize musician wellness. Sixty-one people participated in the event at the Yamaha Artists Services Facility, which featured national and international clinicians discussing various aspects of musician wellness. Attendees were also treated to a reception at Steinway Hall.

Mind

Louise Montello, internationally known authority on the treatment and prevention of stress in performing artists, began the conference by talking about the need to empower musicians to avoid and cure performance disorders. The group experienced several exercises with her, including how to improvise in small groups as a way of getting in touch with our own musical voices, eliminating negative thoughts and confronting our own imposed limits with empowering thoughts. People in the groups were asked to play less familiar instruments in a group improvisation activity.

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Many of Montello's ideas are in her book Essential Musical Intelligence, which is designed to use music as a path to healing, creativity and radiant wholeness. Montello also cited ideas from her books the Performance Wellness Manual, Teachers' Wellness Manual and the Performance Wellness Workbook. One of Montello's main points of her session was to work through something she calls the "polarized perfectionist." This unhealthy idea leads to a belief that if we are not perfect, we are complete failures; there is no middle ground. Realizing this situation can help deal with performance stress.

Body