Moving Beyond Your Comfort Zone
Deborah Sobol | April 9, 2010 Having just posted a piece on "creating your own posse," I thought I'd share an example of how I followed my own advice. Last month, in order to take full advantage of the warmth and sun of La Quinta and the presence of a pool 75 feet away from my casita, I hired an aquatics workout trainer to work with me every other day.
Chanel joined my "posse" here, equipping me with new tools and a new regimen in a new environment: water. Not that water is a “new” environment for me—I love the water, both being in it and around it. I connect instantly to its energy. It connects me to the "Ur-energy" of our very first environment, when we were floating in prenatal bliss inside our mothers' bodies, with room service 24/7.
I'm always happy in the water—I spent a lot of time in it as a kid on swim teams, and in the summer, just horsing around. My body remembers what it is to "train" in the water and when I push the "stroke" button, it goes back to old long and lean strokes, triggering the endorphins that elicit well-being.
It's a great synergy.
Lately, I'd been more like a dolphin in the water: a few strokes here and there, but mostly just moving around, following my body in a playful way, as it released winter tension and resumed the coordination of lungs in liquid. But, in my second session with Chanel, I had an "Aha!" moment. After the flexibility and mild-resistance segments, she moved me into "cardio" and asked me to swim "as fast as I could" for four laps. She reinforced this by swimming alongside me and pushing me forward like a coxswain on a crew boat. "No problem," I thought, "I’ve swum laps all my life." Then, I realized that while I had swum laps all my life, it had been a long time since I had asked my body to swim as fast as it could! The cardio aspect kicked in immediately and then came the "Aha!" moment:
"To grow and gain strength, you have to push yourself—yes, even in the comfort zone of the water!"
"Of course!" you're thinking. "Where have you been in the last two decades of the fitness craze?" (In the studio, at the piano, but I digress...)
Truly, I knew this maxim and lived it daily in my work at the piano—but somehow, when it showed itself again in an environment I'd always viewed as a playground, it hit home more succinctly: you can still have a playground and grow.
And, of course, it took only a nanosecond for me to bring that connection to my work with my graduate and undergraduate students: you have to keep pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone to keep growing! Not to the point of pain (and this is where so many students go awry done the path of injury into the house of tendonitis), but to the point of having extended the challenge a bit more each day, whether it's faster octaves, longer trills, a Beethoven sixteenth-note passage with a stronger "Beethoven tone," or a truer legato in the left hand.
The gym, the pool, the track, the mountain path...they all have something to teach us about our work as musicians and "artist-athletes." I invite you to make the connection and bring it to the practice room!
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