Tai Chi for Conductors

Conductors communicate a composer’s expressive intention by embodying it, allowing the musical idea in our minds to become manifest and observable in our bodies so that it may influence the ensemble. Tai Chi gives us practice opening the pathways between mind and body, intention and movement, to guide us towards conducting from our truest intuition. The distraction of your conscious self is lifted like a veil between thought and gesture.

You can practice now, reading on a screen, especially if you slow down for a moment:

Turn your attention to your breath.
   Notice what muscles expand as you inhale, what muscles contract as you exhale.

Allow your breath to become slow and deep.
   Notice that you need not control your breath.
 

You can observe it without interfering. You can participate in your breath. Your breath takes care of itself.

Turn your attention to your eyes.
   Notice if you are looking up or down at the screen, how your eyes move to follow text on the screen.

Allow your eyes to receive light.
   Notice that you need not control your eyes.
   You can trust your eyes to see without interference from you.
   You can participate in your vision.
   Your eyes adjust to light and direction before the need for adjustment even enters your thoughts.

Your breath and your vision are controlled by parts of your mind that are deeper and older than your conscious self.  Your whole body can be, if you allow it.  And when a musical idea fills your mind’s ear, you can trust your training and experience to make your gesture clear, and allow your gesture to be guided not by conscious choices, but by the instincts that are built into the muscles, more intelligent than your brain.

All it takes is practice.

 

(From the interest session, “Oneness of Thought and Gesture: Tai Chi for Conductors,” by Amelia Nagoski. Presented during the 2012 ACDA Eastern Division Conference.)