Activating mind-body connection as a part of wind instrument players practice routine

Abstract

Learning to play wind instrument requires creating mental representations. Work as a professional musician and teacher can set challenges for individual. Challenges can be approached with various methods and teacher can support finding the methods that help the learner to reach their goals. Including holistic approach to teaching, which includes viewpoint of mind-body connection, could bring tools to work with challenges and build mental representations. The research questions and tacit knowledge from the field of music and music educations guided the choice of research method. Qualitive research was conducted by semi-structured interviews of four professional wind instrument players who also teach their instruments. The themes of the interviews discussed practicing, teaching to practice and mind-body connection and practicing. After the analysis it appeared that individual experiences, education and tacit knowledge had guided the professionals use their methods in their practice. The same methods seemed to be used with their students but modified to help the students to reach their goals. Participants used breath as a tool in the warm-up. Warm-up appeared to be not just to activate player, but to learn something of oneself or about the connection with the instrument. Dialogue and motivation played an important role for the teachers.