Yoga for Musicians:
The benefits of a daily yoga practice
—Jesse Stacken


Benefits of Yoga:
Discipline and Focus
A regular yoga practice teaches one a lot about oneself. It requires great discipline on a couple of levels. First of all, just the act of beginning to practice each day can be challenging, especially when there are many important things to do. Of course yoga is a worthwhile way to spend time as I’ve explained above, but often the necessities of a musician’s life are calling: Practice that piece, book that concert, set up that rehearsal, go to your friend’s performance, pay those bills, walk that dog, and especially get more sleep. It’s a challenge to rise a little earlier each day to practice yoga, but I’ve learned great self-discipline doing it. Once I’m practicing yoga, there is another kind of discipline required – the will to hold a difficult asana. Even though I’m working toward effortlessness in my asanas, there are times in almost every sequence I practice when my muscles are begging me to come out of the pose, but I’m forced—or should I say strongly urged—to stay in the asana during class. Then I feel the good results. At home I have to be disciplined enough to stay in the asana, making it a goal to challenge myself as much as my instructor challenges me. Another example is how it requires intense determination for me to not allow my lumbar region to overarch in inverted poses. But I know that the benefits are greatest if I hold the asanas longer in order for them to penetrate deeper, if they are done with proper alignment, and if I eventually surrender to them. The stronger self-discipline that I have developed through practicing yoga has flowed to the other areas of my life, as has increased focus. A specific example is in the art of practicing an instrument. I am proud of the amount of time I practiced in college. I used to compete with myself to get more and more hours in on the piano. However, I now see how it’s the way one practices, not the amount of time that really counts—quality over quantity. As I go deeper into my yoga practice, I’ve found my piano practice to increase in quality, and I think the discipline required in yoga is largely responsible for it. Specifically, I used to set about practicing a piece of music, I almost always started at the beginning and played to the end, making several mistakes and never stopping to correct them. Then I’d do that again, and these mistakes, even ones that my teacher asked me to correct would go unfixed. I have become much better at making myself stop and correct mistakes—find a better fingering, bring out a certain line, work on a certain sound quality, and I give credit to yoga. It has made my instrument practice time much more efficient, a very valuable thing for a busy adult, who spends a lot of time at Bloomingdale School of Music these days.