Meditating Through the Brass Instrument

Eglė Liutkauskaitė

This study examines the relationship between meditation and brass players' ability to cope with music-related mental challenges, as well as its effect on breathing. The results highlight that meditation could be beneficial for brass musicians, even though there were initial concerns that meditation might interfere with breathing during playing. The findings show that brass musicians might have additional tools for dealing with mental challenges without compromising their airflow and breath support. Future research could further explore brass-playing-specific meditations and tailor them to greater effectiveness. An experiment was conducted with two groups of conservatory brass players (experimental and control) to assess whether music-specific and general guided mindfulness meditations affect their ability to deal with music related mental challenges (MPA, negative self-perception and focus issues) and how they in particular affect participants’ breathing. The findings indicate that both types of meditation affect students’ abilities to deal with mental challenges in a positive way while mostly having either positive or no effect on their breathing and sound. The participants’ progress was assessed by using the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, the Mindfulness for Musicians Questionnaire, weekly forms evaluating MPA, negative self-perception and focus in different settings such as daily practice sessions, main subject lessons and performances as well as interviews. Furthermore, the Self-Experimentation Log suggests that aside from aforementioned benefits, one of the most visible short-term effects is enhanced focus that has been observed during practice sessions right after meditating.

Gathering the data

The mixed methods design consisted of collecting both qualitative and quantitative data:

Qualitative data was gathered through interviews conducted before and after the intervention. The interview questionnaire consisted of six sections designed to gather the following information about the participants:

Background information
Focus and practice habits
Challenges and stress management
Self-perception and motivation
Physical awareness and technical skills
Instrumental lessons

Quantitative data was gathered through following the methods:

I designed a form to be filled out on a weekly basis. Each question was evaluated on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being the least and 10 being the most. The questions were divided into the following groups:

Daily practice: In this group, participants were asked to self-evaluate their focus, flow, engagement, mind wandering, and the effects of playing on their self-perception and mood.
Lessons: In this group, participants were asked to self-evaluate their focus, confidence, attention span, and MPQ compared to their performance in the classroom, as well as the effects of playing and teachers' feedback on their self-perception and mood.
Performances: In cases where participants had the opportunity to perform, they were asked to evaluate the following aspects of their performance: distraction caused by self-analysis, confidence, MPQ compared to what they could perform in the classroom, anxiety during and pre-performance, and self-judgment.

Questionnaires used at the beginning and end of the study included:

Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ):

Consisting of 39 items rated on a scale from 1 to 5 (Baer et al. 2006), the FFMQ measures five key facets of mindfulness: observing, describing, acting with awareness, nonjudging of inner experience, and nonreactivity to inner experience (Table 3). As a self-report tool, the FFMQ requires averaging the scores for each facet to interpret mindfulness levels.

Mindfulness for Musicians (MfM):

A 15-item questionnaire developed by Czajkowski and Greasley (2022) that assesses mindfulness in music-related contexts like daily practice, lessons, and performances. The MfM follows the same conceptual model as Baer's (2006) FFMQ.

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Methodology

Participants

A total of 22 brass players initially agreed to participate in this study, however, only 16 completed the study in its entirety (Table 2). This group included five trumpet players, three French horn players, five trombone players, one euphonium player, and two tuba players. The participants were randomly assigned to two groups: experimental and control. This randomization process was employed to eliminate any potential personal bias. The only criterion for the assignment was to ensure that the distribution of instruments was as equal as possible across the two groups in order to minimize the impact of instrument-specific nuances on the results. However, three trumpet players and one euphonium player from experimental group as well as one French horn player from the control group did not complete the experiment.

Procedure

Before the intervention, an interview with each participant was conducted, and they were asked to fill out the FFMQ and MfM questionnaires. Then they received recordings of guided meditations in various lengths (3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and 15 minutes) to make daily meditation practice more manageable, as finding 15 minutes to meditate every day can be challenging. Depending on the group, participants received different types of meditations. The control group received general guided meditations, based on the examples from the MEDITO app while the experimental group received brass-related meditations. Both groups were instructed to practice meditation every day before practicing their instruments. After each week of intervention, participants were asked to complete the weekly questionnaire. At the end of the study, another interview was conducted with each participant and they were asked to complete the FFMQ and MfM questionnaires again.

Table 2. Data of the participants

Facet	Comment	Example of a statement from FFMQ	Example of a statement from MfM
Observing	Noticing or attending to internal and external experiences, such as sensations, cognitions, emotions, sights, sounds, and smells.	I notice the smells and aromas of things.	When learning technique in lessons, I notice new tiny muscular sensations or small changes in sound production as they happen.
Describing	Labeling internal experiences with words.	I am good at finding words to describe my feelings.	It is difficult to describe clearly in words how I feel before I go on stage. (R)
Acting with awareness	Attending to one’s activities in the moment, it can be contrasted with behaving mechanically while attention is focused elsewhere (often called automatic pilot).	I find myself doing things without paying attention. (R)	I’m easily distracted when practicing my voice or instrument. (R)
Nonjudging	Taking a nonevaluative stance toward thoughts and feelings.	I think some of my emotions are bad or inappropriate and I should not feel them. (R)	I’m always criticizing myself in singing or instrumental lessons. (R)
Nonreactivity	Taking a nonevaluative stance toward thoughts and feelings.	I perceive my feelings and emotions without having to react to them.	If something unexpected happens when I am on stage, I notice it without reacting and easily carry on performing.