Amber's Chapter summaries 9-12 SOHH

Chapter 9
Visualizing the task we are about to do will greatly improve performance. This helps get hindering tensions out of the way so that we can let go and do what we need or want to.
Key concept: Your brain is a pert of your body and therefore connected. Perhaps we should incorporate it into our seemingly mindless memorized tasks.
Key words: preplay, or instant preplay
Connection: I had actually just read this chapter before master class today. Yeah, I got lost on the pitches when the piano played different ones than we had gone over in studio last week. BUT I did visualize standing int he choir room and just engaging the breathing concepts we have been working on these past few weeks. For once in my life in front of people, I was not gasping for air and not even really concerned about it. That’s a BIG deal for an asthmatic.

Chapter 10
Gather up all you can find, take what works, then throw out the rest. The only official doctrine of teaching and learning is that you and your students have to find your own ways.
Key concepts: Yeah, this is a quote, but it works so well, “you cannot adopt any system without sacrificing the integrity of your own internal source of wisdom.
Don’t outsource; yousource.... form your own opinions.
Connection: sometimes the best teaching tool is none at all. Just guidance and room to experiment.

Chapter 11
Permission is granted to several subjects to be human (imperfect). Child like awareness and clarity are free when we give ourselves permission to get messy and make mistakes.
Key concept: Our self worth is too caught up in trying to be perfect.
connection: I need let go and to stop trying too hard! Is it really, truly failure if something valuable is gained from the experience? Stop saying would’a, could’a, should’a and just live.

Chapter 12
We need to free ourselves of our addiction to suffering. We must ask ourself honest questions about what our problems do for us in the form of comfort, or power in a given situation.
Key concept: pain and sorrow and self deprivation can be addicting. We all need rehab.
Connection: I made a goal to get out of this particular comfort zone last spring. I was not going to be afraid, flinch and retreat as if someone was going to censure me, hit me , or hurl an object across the room at me and leave bruises for being “too loud”. So far, every lesson this fall has been absolutely golden. However, I have a severe anxiety meltdown for about an hour or so afterward. Why? I am so used to being comfortable seeing myself as a failure that I almost can’t handle success. I tell myself to stop getting in my own way to happiness and it stops. Then the way is clear for another amazing experience the next week. It gets a little easier every time. “Every day is a gift” -Kris King