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.