Understanding The Different Phases of Practice

A lot of us go through different phases of practicing.

They're all valid and they're important to pay attention to, look at and respect when they are shifting.

An example of that would be, you might decide you are practicing six hours a day and that's just what you want to do.

And somehow you have the time to do that and you're really excited about doing that.

So what you want to look out for is, when you're in a phase of high energy practicing and you start to notice that you wake up one day and all of a sudden things are feeling a little bit different.

You might not want to be doing that super long practice session that you've been excited about and rather than trying to do it and thinking that you should do it, it's the exact opposite.

It’s very counterintuitive.

What you really want to do is notice that, recognize that and be like, “Oh, my phase is shifting”.

Something is shifting here, let's see what the next phase is.

Then you get yourself into a state of curiosity.

Maybe the next phase is doing same the same amount of things, but only 20 minutes instead of two hours each.

Or maybe the next phase is chunking up your practice sessions and doing half an hour here and half an hour there.

Perhaps you just need some rest and so you do something just to keep your fingers moving.

The exercises in our program are really great for those maintenance type of days where you’re just like, I'm going to only do one thing, the minimum.

So you do your scales and that keeps your fingers in a happy state for when you are ready to do something a little bit more creative or more mentally engaging.

Instead of trying to sustain a phase longer than it wants to be there, which can end up being destructive and harmful because we're then shaming ourselves for not doing something that we think we should be doing that we're actually not supposed to be doing.

Instead of feeling bad about that, being in a place of wanting to discover what the next phase is going to be.

That becomes more of a fun relationship with your practice.

So that it's not really this stressful thing or a chore anymore.

It's actually like a living entity that you're having a relationship with and you're like OK, what are we doing now friend.

We can call it a practice flow.

The practice flow is this living thing that's changing all the time.

And you're always you don't want to be in the state of always wondering what he flow is going to be rather than trying to force the flow yourself.

That's going to get you into a place of much more enjoyment in your practice.

It’s also more efficient because you're going to be doing what really wants to be done rather than what your mind thinks you should do.

Which as we a lot of us know a lot of the times our mind has really crazy ideas about what it thinks we need to do.

Sometimes it thinks we need to learn this crazy shredder solo but we don't have a foundation for that so we just completely bang our heads against a brick wall trying to learn this thing that we don't have a foundation for.

And that was just a concept that somewhere, at some point our mind said, that's what we need to do, but that's not necessarily an informed decision or informed choice.

So just little things to watch out for is paying attention to your practice flow and like the natural practice flow the same way you would pay attention to your body when you're hungry

You don't want to eat a meal If you're not hungry, you want to feel hungry and then eat a meal

It's the same thing with your practice.

Paying attention to what what you're really wanting to do and also having a balance with knowing what the things to do for maintenance are.

Technical practice is really good maintenance but that doesn't mean you have to do it for three hours a day.

If you have a day where you have less time, doing a little bit of technical practice is going to keep your fingers moving and keep the muscles in your hands that are developing on a good track.