Mentoring

Mentoring

You thank me for standing beside you, now,

After the fire between us

Burnt our eyes

In our separate integrity.

You praise me for the alchemy in your hands…

…the chrysalis was yours, not mine.

You won the new way your eyes take in

This rotten world and the new touch

That molds it.

Don’t you know your cocooning

Has also given me new wings? Let me

Treasure that secret as I stand in honor

Beside the flag, which will be folded

For the last time and presented

To your wife after you

Fly up to the sun.

Using Music as Self Care vs Music Therapy

As I write this, there is growing clinical and professional interest in the convergence of neuroscience and the application of music for clinical and/or therapeutic purposes by board-certified Music Therapists. Close alongside this collaborative effort one finds psychologists and "music psychologists" using music to open new potentials for treatment. These developments, while they have their roots in 19th- and 20th-Century exploration and practice, are primarily 21st-Century fields of endeavor, and, as respected neuroscientist and musician Daniel Levitin has written, are still un-researched:

"There is a great need in the field [of neural correlates of musical behaviors] for research that involves (a) controlled experiments with random assignment, (b) well-matched stimuli and control conditions in order to uncover the mechanisms by which music works, (c) a better understanding of the neurochemical systems involved, and (d) the optimal role of the music therapist in such interventions." (American Music Therapy Association Perspectives, Vol 31 (1), 2013)

On balance, I also want to quote Levitin's more encouraging paragraph which immediately precedes the cautionary concluding one in the same paper:

"The emerging picture is that music can play an important role in bolstering the physical and psychological health of already healthy individuals, and the in the treatment of patients across a wide range of presentations. The advantage of music-based treatments is that they are non-invasive, don't have side effects, are cost-effective, and completely 'natural.'" (op cit)

The over-arching point of Levitin's paper is that, while we know a great deal more today about the measurable effects of music on the brain, we know comparatively little about the vast body of what scientists call "anecdotal evidence" that has accumulated around the use of music for thousands of years. In my view, this results from our Western clinical proclivity to dissect "presentations" down to their component symptomology and then treat the symptoms rather than take a more holistic view of a "presentation" and actually treating that.

In no way to I wish to negate the promise and profoundly amazing clinical research that has been done using music, especially (for example) with respect to its benefits in recovery from brain damage including stroke, intervention with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases and management of autism spectrum disorder. Music Therapists have led the charge in these areas, and are to be commended for doing so.

The point here comes in the form of a question: if we know comparatively little about the effects of music, do Music Therapists not have a clinical and professional obligation for continued rigor before offering music therapy as a credible "treatment?"

For example, imagine yourself with a profound "presentation" that impacts your daily life -- it could be physical, mental, emotional or some combination -- and that no evidence-based music therapy intervention exists for your condition. Let us say that you have tried some drug therapies with moderate results and unwanted side effects. Let us also say that, based on 30 years' experience -- pretty much the entire life span of the practice -- a board-certified Music Therapist offers to treat you with nothing more than his or her professional experience as credibility. You agree that there is a possibility of benefit to you resulting from the music therapy, but you observe that board-certified Music Therapists are not supposed to accept your case because of their commitment to "Evidence Based Practice." For this example, you feel that the offer of music therapy for your "presentation" is genuine and well-intentioned. Hypothetically, do you accept the treatment? Keep in mind that you have no way of knowing which way the therapy will go: to your benefit, neutral, or to your detriment.

Having an experienced therapist as a guide is a plus; knowing that the side effects of music are very few is a plus.(Decibel levels outside the comfortable range can damage your eardrums, for example.) It's great to know that music therapy and neuroscience are working hard to solve the mysteries of the brain, but not enough is known about this now to attempt a cogent diagnosis of your symptoms, so that's a neutral factor in your decision. You could offer to become the subject of a study of how music changes you if at all...but your goal is well being, not becoming Exhibit A of a clinical paper. Even though you might be able to receive "treatment" at no cost if you agree to be the lab rat, you decide this is not in your best interest and contradicts the quality of life you want.

Professionally, your "presentation" is an outlier to the Music Therapist unless it fits into the existing spectrum of clinical study and practice of music therapy. If there isn't enough evidence to support taking you as a patient, the proper thing in your case would be a referral to some other clinician or therapist with more direct experience in whatever your "presentation" includes. There is certainly nothing wrong with giving you music therapy alongside whatever other clinical or therapeutic remedies are employed.

I'd like to suggest a third option.

A little-known pilot study of music as a self-guided intervention was completed by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs in September 2011. Over the course of six weeks of guitar lessons, Veterans with combat-related post-traumatic stress found double-digit reduction of symptoms of depression and improved health-related quality of life. I'll say that again...

Learning to play the guitar reduced symptoms of depression 

and improved health-related quality of life.

Do you see the possibilities here? Your example "presentation" might respond to music that you can give yourself, whether that's playing an instrument, singing, listening, drumming...there is a wide-open potential for you to interact with music to your own benefit. You begin to consider this third option: music as self care.

You realize you listen to music throughout your day: you wake to music each morning, sometimes have it playing as you prepare for the day's activities, listen in the car and sometimes use your smart phone and ear buds at work between meetings. You're always working out to music that powers you up, even with the "presentation" you've been fighting for months. Sometimes you sing along to the music; there's a concert by a favorite performer coming up soon and you're looking forward to it. You've even tried apps like Pandora and Spotify and the mood-based suggested playlists in Songza, and of course you buy new music on iTunes or CDBaby whenever one of the emerging bands you like releases their latest CD or EP. Usually, you relax to something soothing in the evening or before bed. Surprising yourself, you start to examine the soundtrack in your life and begin to wonder what effect it might have on you....

Not surprising to think that there might be a correlation between your music and your "presentation." There's enough neuroscience to suggest it's worth a look. You decide to vary just one song in your daily routine: the one that wakes you up. As much as you love waking up super-energized, you decide against all reason to wake up to something more subtle. You've done your research and made your choice of a new song and what the heck? If this new tune doesn't wake you up there are plenty of others to choose. You find, for example, a string quartet (?!) that looks intriguing (do Classical musicians really dress like that?!) and change your wake up tune, then you observe what happens. After a few days, you notice a change. You still wake up with energy, but less agitated. It takes a little longer to get out of bed because the music isn't so energetic, but you set the alarm a little earlier to give you time to hear more of the music before actually leaving the bed. You've started to engage in the process of music as self care.

Gradually, you being notice the effects of different types on you. You've always known that workout music needs to pump you up -- now you discover how there's more to it than a just high number of powerful beats per minute. You learn how you can modulate your breath to the pulse of music, whatever speed that pulse may be. You begin to notice the paradox between music that feels one way and lyrics that feel the opposite. You begin to sense that there is a lot more going on than a plainly obvious and simple physical, emotional or mental effect. You begin to engage with music in a different way. Even high-energy music has new meaning for you now that you are beginning to parse the polyrhythms and balance of each voice and instrument in the mix. You start to reverse-engineer what the producer had in mind in the various pop songs you love; begin to play around with equalization to hear interior sounds that aren't obvious in the airplay mix. You decide to listen less to sampled music -- most digitized music compressed to make it more portable but winds up missing quite a bit of information that our brains "fill in" for us -- and you haul your CD collection out of storage to see if you can really hear everything in a given song. As your ears become accustomed to wanting more depth in the music, you start to change all your compression settings from "normal" to "high" or "studio quality"...and you quickly run out of space on your mobile device.... You come across the old flute you used to play in the high school marching band and try some tunes you still remember....

Are you getting the picture? I'm not suggesting that we all become audiophiles, or start taking music lessons, but the small-and-growing mound of evidence for music as a "self-guided intervention" -- what I call "music care" -- supports the notion that you, with whatever your symptomology or "presentation," might be able to give yourself a form of relief that simply isn't available any other way.

The World Health Organization calls stress the "health epidemic of the 21st Century." Debilitating stress, depression and anxiety are a leading cause of "years lost to disability" worldwide -- more so than even cancer or AIDS. The world needs better health care for depression, stress and anxiety. You deserve better health care. If you had the opportunity to give yourself care -- care that could be effective, is definitely safe and free of side effects, and that is available for free worldwide -- why would you wait for a therapist?

It's just a suggestion, but I believe that it's time to get busy and listen.

Veterans Not Victims

The latest statistics on post-9/11 members of the Armed Forces estimate that 20% will experience combat-related post-traumatic stress. The number for Vietnam Veterans is closer to 30%, but perhaps more than any other conflict in history, our current wartime era has brought attention to the injuries our fighting men and women must overcome, including post-traumatic stress...an injury that is a normal human response to trauma, be it wartime or peacetime.

Human beings are innately equipped to process post-traumatic stress. Our physical bodies and psyches seem to evolve -- even transform -- through such injuries, and we become more resilient and resourceful as a result. The Wounded Warrior Project has helped countless Service members find a new mobility after battleground injuries -- physical, mental and emotional. Terms such as "neuroplasticity," unheard of during the Vietnam conflict, are now accepted medical lingo for describing the brain's own ability to re-wire itself around physical damage, including traumatic brain injury, whether suffered on the battlefield or the playing field.

There are thousands of government and non-government organizations, professionals, non- and for-profit organizations dedicated and willing to meet the needs of the most at-risk Service members and Veterans in every possible way. Injuries suffered by those who defend their homeland deserve treatment without delay; injuries to those deployed abroad by the homeland may be more difficult to justify, but those injured in the line of duty deserve the very same standard of care. This is the right and honorable thing to do, and we can thank Vietnam era Veteran advocates for their political sacrifice that paved the way for today's post-9/11 Service members and Veterans to receive better health care and services.

Unfortunately, our system of care in America is victim-based. That is, we diagnose issues as a "disorder" or an "illness" rather than an "injury" and treat these issues as if they must be "cured" rather than integrated into our psyches and day to day lives. Our helping programs are designed to find and treat the most at-risk members of society which is noble...except that many of those at-risk folks may not actually be "victims" of anything.

The combat infantryman who gets blown up can be severely hurt, yes, but that's part of the battle. In no way does getting blown up suddenly turn a soldier into a victim; getting blown up is not the same as being the target of some premeditated crime or random accident. It was the soldier's choice to be on the battlefield, and it's his mission to win that battle, even if he returns from it -- or to it -- with physical, mental or emotional injuries. Battle scars? Cost of doing business. No pro football player leaves the field on a stretcher thinking of himself as a victim -- I hope....

So this blog is not about victims. It's about the Veterans no one seems to be is talking about.

With great respect for the 20% of post/9-11 Veterans and 30% of Vietnam era Veterans with diagnosable post-traumatic stress, we have to ask ourselves: What we are doing for and with the 80%?

The 80% are the Service members who leave active duty and engage successfully with life as a civilian. Some become leaders, true, but the vast majority settle into lives, careers and marriages with a level of success that takes them out of the at-risk pool, at least for a while.

The 80% are the Service members, now civilians, who take their active duty service into their new roles as fathers, mothers, businesspeople, researchers, administrators, entrepreneurs, coaches, mentors, counselors. They quietly -- in most cases -- become a part of the fabric of their community, church, office, school, business or service organization.

The 80% are sometimes first responders -- they have the training. They are sometimes team leaders, just as they were in combat. They are machinists, software or civil architects, tow truck drivers, government bureaucrats or elected officials. They have the skills to engage opportunity, at whatever level, and they take it.

The 80% are the Veterans we hear and see in "hire a Vet"advertisements.

The 80% may not be the youngest rising stars, but they are the ones with experience and savvy beyond their years.

The 80% -- less than one million people -- are the ones quietly doing exceptional things in civilian life. They are working hard -- sometimes to climb the ladder of achievement, sometimes to stay out of the at-risk pool -- to make a contribution to the rest of us. They know how to make a contribution and they are unstoppable.

Some among the 80% are also living with unseen injuries; some have learned how those injuries have changed them forever and some have yet to learn it.

With so much of the country paying attention to the 20%, are we missing what's happening with the 80%? What could we learn from them?

More importantly, how would we learn it?

The 80% like to merge into civilian life. For some, the medals and stories and tools of war are put aside but never forgotten, but never a part of civilian life. The qualities of being a Service member remain, but the tools of the new trade are not battlefield weaponry. Getting a Veteran to help the rest of us connect the dots between the qualities of being in Service and the sound of those qualities in the music of civilian life is a difficult thing...Veterans aren't generally built like that.

We aren't going to be able to do an evidence-based study on the 80% -- many institutions of higher learning and research think tanks like to try, but the truth is that funding for studying the "normal" isn't as rich as funding for studying the "abnormal" so we are missing much opportunity to understand what makes the 80% work.

Although it's "unscientific" as a method, if we want to learn from the 80%, we can simply watch what they do. We can confirm that Veteran qualities which "work" in civilian life have merit. We can use this "anecdotal" evidence to help all of society benefit. We can model the successful character traits as parents, business leaders, professionals, and teachers -- from elementary to university -- and watch for a performance boost in academics and in life.

Yes, it won't work for everyone, but I believe we do have a shot at some real change here. By making a real effort to learn from the 80%, we may be able to make a wider collective change in society at large than targeting all our resources on the 20%. The truth is, we don't presently have the sorts of organizations we will need to help the 80% serve us. True, there are a few non-profits in the Veterans sector with a clear civic opportunity mission instead of a crisis-driven response mission, but we will need more institutions that support things like entrepreneurism, purpose-driven businesses and adult development, if we are to really capitalize on what today's Veterans have to teach us.

Let's reach the 80%, not so much with services, but with open, teachable minds. Let's learn what's working for the 80% and use that knowledge to re-inspire our existing programs and help us create new ones. Let's reframe our response to the opportunity today's Veterans present. Instead of a focus on woundedness, let us encourage a focus on wonderfulness. A Veteran that succeeds in civilian life doesn't do it alone; civilians are a part of that trajectory, too.

Military service is not an easy choice in a world where military strength is so politicized.

I suspect the Veteran who enjoys success in civilian life gives and receives respect from his or her colleagues, gives and receives honor, gives and receives teamwork, gives and receives friendship. I suspect that the qualities and character of a successful Veteran inspire his or her civilian peers -- not because of the ribbons and medals of valor but because we civilians understand that taking the oath of military service can be an exceptionally humbling, difficult and powerful promise. The 80% of Veterans who have made that promise are people I want to know.  

How about you?

Jerry Coleman and a Challenge to Veterans

Today I was humbled to attend the public memorial for Jerry Coleman at Petco Park. There will be plenty of press about Jerry's service in the United States Marines, in baseball and as a broadcaster, and there is nothing more I can add to what has been and will be said many times. The irony is that, while all of it is true, there was a quiet aspect of Jerry Coleman that embodies character traits many believe are missing in America these days.

Lt Col Coleman served as a pilot in two wars: World War II and Korea. As befitting many in "The Greatest Generation" he was not given to talking much about his military service. Folks from that era were above braggadocious self-aggrandizement, and frequently point to their brothers and sisters as the reason for whatever military or civilian success may have come their way. This was true of Jerry to a fault, as many of today's speakers confirmed, and it is honorable. That kind of character served them well, and gave their kids excellent role models to emulate.

The sad truth is that many of us in the Baby Boomer generation didn't emulate our parents sooner.

Something about what made Jerry Coleman tick got lost during the Vietnam era. We thought, perhaps, that we knew better -- that the stiff upper lip of proud and humble service didn't serve us. But, when some in America spit on the returning Vietnam Veterans, folks like Jerry kept going, continuing to lead by example with the same character that kept them at war until the job was done, honoring the memories of brother and sister heroes who did not come home through their own exemplary lives. Vets like Jerry Coleman spoke little about their military service, choosing instead to show us how being willing to give their lives for America could play out as husbands, fathers and grandfathers. If you are fortunate to have come from such a family, you have received a rare gift.

We are now almost 70 years away from the end of World War II, but the spirit that won that war is not forgotten. There are young Veterans living near many of us today who have the sparks of that spirit in them. Maybe they are noted public servants or businesspeople, or maybe they are homeless, but they share an oath of willingness to sacrifice their lives for...what?

This is today's challenge to Veterans of all eras: make your sacrifice come alive for the rest of us.

Most people are aware of the invisible wounds of war that afflict so many of our young Veterans today. If you are a young Veteran, take those wounds deeply into your psyche and let them inform the passion with which you tell your story, then tell your story. Tell it to those who love you. Tell it with sensitivity to your loved ones' ability to digest the tough stuff. Let your friends and family see the angst that goes with being a combatant today -- show us the tragedy of having to make instant moral decisions that may or may not be the right ones; show us the pain that goes with having to make those decisions. Show us how to make better choices in civilian life as a result of the ones you had to make in the Service. Show us how to lead, how to mentor, how being a brother or sister on the battlefield can strengthen the ties to friends and family here at home. Sure: you may not get it right the first time, but the people around you here at home need your experience -- however horrific -- and your openness. We live in an era where the most difficult choices are happening, not in the boardroom or the courthouse or the halls of government, but in the families and communities of military combatants, and we need leadership.

Most people have an understanding of the history of Vietnam, but not many of us know what it has been like to live as a Vietnam Veteran since then. If you are a Vietnam Veteran, you may have now retired both from the military and from a civilian career or two. You know what it has been like to live with your past. Tell us. Tell us about the choices that led you to Vietnam. Tell us about what it was like to fight there. Tell us how that changed you -- or didn't. Tell us what it has been like since you came home. Tell us how you began to work for peace, or worked for a defense contractor, and why. Tell us about your commitment to your buddies; about the ones that didn't come home; about how you were treated by others -- some of them friends or family -- who became conscientious objectors. Give us some insight into how difficult it has been, into what has made it more bearable. If you became successful in civilian life, tell us about what made that possible and how it happened. Help us understand the adversity and teach us how we might possibly do it better if we were ever given the opportunity. Maybe your grandsons and granddaughters need to hear this; maybe total strangers will hear it -- tell it far and tell it loud and help us understand how you came to be who you are today.

This is hard to do. It's not typically what those in military service do. But if only a few accept the challenge -- if only a few find the courageous humility to do so -- think of the potential for changing the future. Next time you find your kids or grandkids playing war games online, take them aside and tell them what it is really like in battle. Talk to them about what a Purple Heart really means. Give them some real life combat infantry tactics. Most importantly, help them understand what it really means to make the ultimate sacrifice, or to hold a buddy in your arms while he or she makes it. These are beautiful character-building opportunities our world can't afford to miss. Veterans: we need you.*

Jerry, thank you for your noble lifetime of service. Thank you for the inspiration of your service, from aviator to baseball player to broadcaster. Thank you for giving your voice to the Padres for more than 40 years. I hope your passing inspires us to keep on talking...about what it means to serve in the United States Military, as a civilian, as a father and grandfather, as a brother, colleague, mentor, leader and friend. God bless you, Jerry Coleman.

*A great online collection of Veteran stories has already begun at Make the Connection -- please share yours.

Sex, Drugs, Food and Music in the Workplace

One of my favorite go-to researchers on the topic of music and human physiology is Dr Daniel Levitin. He's documented the relationship between listening to music you love and the release of dopamine -- the feel-good hormone. Dopamine is also released by eating, having sex and by some drugs, including many of the illegal "recreational" ones.

Think about it for a second or two and you'll get the visual: romantic dinner, fine wine (a legal drug), soft lighting and music you both love.... But I digress.

Sex and Drugs in the Workplace? 

Now that I've got your attention, this isn't a post about sex or drugs at work -- bad idea, people.

So...how is it possible to feel good at work if your occupation is a grind? If your boss is an ogre? If you are working three jobs to make ends meet? I'm not talking about just making it through the day so that you can go home to your chosen dose of dopamine; I'm talking about using a legal, safe and effective workplace intervention to keep the dopamine going while at work all day long.

Food at Work

By way of an example, let's start with food. If you have ever been out to lunch with your team from the office, or been subjected to one of those embarrassing office birthday things, or keep a bowl of M&Ms or jelly beans or nuts at your desk, you'll have an idea of where this is going. Sharing a snack or a meal with your co-workers is a great way to build rapport "outside" the normal humdrum of workplace activity. Food boosts dopamine, you feel better (at least no longer hungry!) for a while, and in that better-feeling place you naturally feel more secure, lower your guard a bit and get to know something about your co-workers as human beings. However briefly, the shared food-based dopamine boost over lunch can create a way for your co-workers to know and relate to you better, possibly enabling a more productive working environment. Make sense?

Team-building trainings and conferences, especially ones that last a day or more, often have activities in them integrated to food: networking lunches or games during dinner are common ways that food-based dopamine helps people get to know and trust each other. The more time you allow to really enjoy the meal, the better for your digestive system -- and for your dopamine level.

That bowl of snacks on your desk? A great icebreaker, certainly, but I'm not suggesting a sustained sugar boost all day long. If you're going to put out an obvious social offering for your co-workers, please make it a healthy one --something enjoyable that takes a few moments to consume. Taking a snack break with a colleague gives you both time to get the dopamine boost together, and that's what you want when it comes to using food with the purpose of building rapport, getting to know a new colleague, even coming out of a tough meeting and needing that dopamine "reset."

(By the way, it's hard for me to understand folks grabbing lunch alone at their desks. I done it too. Time constraints on the job are a reality, but wouldn't you rather take 15 minutes to enjoy a meal than 5 minutes to gobble something unsatisfying and non-nutritious that you'll pay for later? You can have a nice solo dopamine boost from a slower meal, and a quick walk to the sandwich shop with a team member can work out better for your health and workplace satisfaction than holing up in your cube with FaceBook and fast food.)

The point here is integrating food and the people you work with for the best possible use of dopamine is a good idea.

Music at Work

Isolating yourself under headphones while in the office is one of those good/bad ideas. If you need the solo concentration to work a project well, by all means put on the tunes you love to get you feeling good about your work. On the other hand, your feel-good music might be separating you from your team. This balance is one you'll have to find based on your own specific workplace demands. Of course I'm an advocate for sound-tracking as much of your day to day as you can -- who wouldn't want that musical dopamine high all day? -- but there's a more useful way to bring music into your workplace.

I've spent too much of my musical performance time as a soloist. Don't get me wrong -- I really enjoy giving my one-man show -- but working with other musicians in rehearsal and performance made me realize how much I was missing by performing alone. Here's why....

Musicians playing together are all "on" dopamine. Yeah, I know some bands perform high on a bunch of other substances as well, but whatever the genre, the musical magic that happens is heightened by this shared physiological experience. The fact is, you can't make music you love without releasing some amount of dopamine into your system.

(To be complete, listening to or making music you hate triggers an adrenalin-based fight/flight/freeze response, which tends to isolate you from social interaction and therefore wouldn't be so good around the office. If your occupation happens to involve situation that produce adrenalin, such as "pro athlete" or "military combatant" or "peace office" or "first responder" your training is such that you can effectively do your job under heavy distress regardless of the hormones coursing through your system. Balancing the adrenalin rush with dopamine comes later, "inside the wire" or after the game or once the emergency is over, and without this balancing, your risk of an adrenalin addiction becomes a real concern. If this describes you, please get some professional attention -- you deserve it.)

Back to that making music together scenario....

Whether I lead a drum circle or present the power of music to an audience in a keynote address, there's always a shift in the room once people have made music together. In a small circle, as the dopamine kicks in and you and the other participants tune in to each other, you begin to know each other on a level that has nothing to do with what you wear, whether you like your job or not, what car your drive or the language you speak. Making music together just eliminates those superficial ways we relate to each other and provides a very safe, effective and legal means of reaching a deep connection and understanding with the other participants. In a large group, there's a powerful shared experience of creating music together. You can literally watch a change take place in the participants as the music progresses from start to finish.

Certainly dopamine facilitates that experience, but there are other factors working as well. It's a holistic thing (physical, social, emotional) that's complex enough to bore you completely. The point is that, after a group music-making exercise, there is a new openness in the participants' communication, a certain inflection of joy where there may have been stoicism and a willingness to relate as human beings without considering position, rank and seniority. In that powerfully open place, it becomes possible to achieve things as a team that would not have been done so simply without the musical intervention.

This is not to say that entire companies ought to drum together regularly, although that could be interesting. What I'm suggesting is that team leaders have powerful team-strengthening tools available to them that are safe, effective and legal...and largely unused. Most of the world's music can be found online for free. We can drum on a conference room table with our hands. We can stomp or tap our feet. We can sing -- even badly! or chant. There's quite honestly no limit on the ways we can make music together.

Yes, in America, there is a taboo about shared music making. Back in the day, companies such as Ford Motors and IBM actually began meetings by singing their respective company songs, which every worker -- from the Chairman to the journeyman -- knew by heart and could sing them robustly. Some of this tradition survives in civic clubs and at sports events, but, for the most part, it has simply disappeared at the office. Too bad; singing those songs at work brought people together in a way that felt good (dopamine) and welcomed a better level of interaction. 

The best "modern" surviving example of singing on the job could be the military chants drill sergeants use to keep their platoons moving on long marches. If you are a workplace team leader, maybe you could begin by using the vocal chant cadences here and modifying them to fit your specific team objectives, then trying them on your team in the conference room before meetings. It's a start, right?

(Spoiler alert: sales pitch coming!)

If leading your team in a chant or drumming on the desk isn't your style, reach out to Music Care Inc for some help. Our innovative training can get your team humming (literally!) and give productivity and team interaction a positive boost.

Music at work? Why not? Making music at work? What are you waiting for?

ObamaCare vs Self Care

If you, like me, are attempting to "navigate" the new government bureaucracy that is supposed to be "health insurance" in the United States and are frustrated, I'd like to offer a life line.

Clearly, there are aspects of health care that are beyond the normal ability of most of us: we probably shouldn't perform open heart surgery on ourselves, for example. But when it comes to dealing with distress, anxiety and common-variety depression, there's an alternative to the ObamaCare mess that is affordable, safe and effective.

First of all, please know that most distress, anxiety and common-variety depression are feelings that are normal for most human beings. These feelings arise as warnings to us: ALERT is usually the indication. Notice what's causing the distress. Notice what's causing the anxiety. Notice what's causing the depression.

***BIG DISCLAIMER!!!*** If you can't figure out what is causing your feelings, please stop reading right now and GET HELP. IF YOU CANNOT GET OK ON YOUR OWN, please please please DO NOT self-medicate with harmful substances or hurtful practices. Licensed therapists, ministers, physicians and other professionally-credentialed individuals are available to help you sort out what is causing you to hurt. There's no real reason for your to suffer 100% of the time; there are ways to change that and you deserve to do so if that's what you want. There are many FREE resources you can find online if you need them -- search for your County's health services department or dial "2-1-1" to locate help, for example.

Back to the discussion about noticing the cause of my feelings....

My difficulty with noticing comes from maintaining my perspective; that is, the "bad" feelings, when they become debilitating, sometimes become too much for me to handle without tools and interfere with my ability to notice what's causing the feelings themselves. This blog post offers you some of my favorite musical tools for maintaining perspective so that you CAN notice what's causing your feelings and change them. (If you don't use it to blow your eardrums, music is economical, safe and effective.)

These tools are presented in order -- you will want to experiment with the first ones to help you master the next ones. I will offer you three tools here -- for more, please contact me!

Overwhelmed by your feelings? Go with it!

There is a common practice in mental/emotional health care that seems to have originated in Eastern wisdom and been adopted by Westerners. This practice engages you deeply and safely in a full experience of the feeling, whatever it is. This is in direct opposition to the "stiff upper lip" method of dealing with issues, which is how I grew up, and I find it quite freeing. Here's a quick "how to" for using music to fully experience a feeling.

First, select some music you love that matches the feeling you are having. That is, if you are grieving, don't choose your happy music. Instead, choose music that is sad, melancholy, tragic, depressing. You want the music outside of you mirror the feeling inside you.

Next, find a place where you can put on your headphones and listen without being disturbed by too much around you.

Then, LISTEN. Listen to your music over and over. Listen for as long as you feel sad -- sometimes a few minutes, or sometimes days or even weeks. If you needs days or weeks to fully feel the grief, please know that using music to support your grief in this way will permit you to feel it fully and more beneficially than if you did not consciously sit down and make time for your musical grieving.

You will notice at some point that your grief has passed. It's as if the feeling has been fully experienced and moved through you, leaving room for the next feelings to appear. Don't worry about the next feelings; your objective is to stay with your grief and the music in which you are "containing" that grief until you are done with that particular feeling of grief. 

This process works with ALL feelings. Don't trust me on this; prove it for yourself.

Need a quick pivot? Use a musical "corner."

In a traditional New Orleans funeral procession, mourners accompany the coffin on foot from church to cemetery, often joined by a brass band. The band starts the procession playing a dirge: slow, sad music that permits the mourners to grieve (see above!). At some point during the march, however, the music will change. Usually the same song that was played down-tempo is now played up-tempo. Right there in the funeral procession, the musical accompaniment changes from grief to joy. Why?

Have you ever attended a live concert? Recall the moment in the concert when the band played something slow? Back in the day, we all held lighters (or matches) in the air to join the feeling of the ballad; last time I witnessed such a thing (Hollywood Bowl with Crosby, Stills Nash and Young), everyone held up their lighted mobile phone. This is equivalent to the slow part of the New Orleans funeral procession.

Back to that live concert. Remember what happened after the ballad? Everything went crazy, right? CSN&Y started a medley of all their greatest hits, and 40,000 people sang along. In only a moment, that entire concert shifted from "ballad" feeling to "greatest hits" feeling. This is what I call a musical "corner."

I know: joining a New Orleans funeral procession or getting 40,000 people and a legacy musical act together for YOUR specific issue isn't practical. But you can make a playlist with a musical corner in it. All you need are two songs with clearly contrasting feelings. From the music you love, pick a song that's slow and one that's not slow, put them into a two-song playlist, put on your headphones and listen. It only takes as long as the two songs you love and you're done. Pivot accomplished.

Here's the magic: you don't even need a music player!

Need to support or corner a feeling? No music player handy? No problem!

Fortunately for you, human beings have a unique ability to recall music accurately. Ever been bugged by an ear worm (that annoying song stuck in your head that won't go away)? Use that ability of your brain to recall the music you WANT and put it to work.

You'll need a way to shut off the world while you "play" your music in your head (soundless, but you will respond as if you were actually hearing the music). I use noise-canceling headphones if they're available, or a walk outdoors, or just sitting in a chair for a few minutes. Even if I'm in the office, there are ways to "take 5" that are relatively quiet -- a restroom stall works OK. The point here is to turn off as much of the external noise as you can to give your ears a break.

Once you have relative silence around you, make the voice in your head become a DJ and tell it to play the song you want. This will take some concentration because that voice in your head like to talk about what it's doing ALL THE TIME, but with practice you will find you can rely on it to shut up and just listen for a bit. You can help the voice to stay quiet by focusing your attention on the music of your choice playing in your head. Try to stay with the music from beginning to end -- as you remember it. Whether you're supporting a feeling or creating a corner, you will find that the results surprisingly similar to the ones you get when you actually listen to a recording or live concert. Really.

Plan in advance: playlists for when you need them.

Last thing: you can organize your music for when you need it. Thanks to tools like spotify.com and GrooveShark.com, you don't have to settle for whatever Pandora gives you. If your music isn't inspiring you any more, apps like Songza will actually serve up feeling-based playlists assembled by real human musical experts for your delight and edification (and use!).

I like to have a few feeling-specific playlists stashed away in Spotify for when I need them. It only takes a few minutes to organize your songs in this way, and when a feeling shows up that needs expression, my latest playlist is right there at my fingertips. You can make a two-song corner playlist from longer ones of contrasting feelings, or make specific two-song corner lists that work just as well. Go nuts! Storage is free (mostly -- I DO keep some songs in iTunes or offline Spotify playlsits for when I don't have decent cell coverage) and the music is "mostly" free (you know how it goes: pay the subscription to avoid the advertisements -- I don't like audio ads honking up my self care).

Happier new year....

I hope you'll join me in working to improve this year over last. (I don't actually make resolutions for the new year, but the notion of working to make things better is a practice I remember every time January First rolls around.) If there's any way you can make music a bigger part of caring for your sanity, that's a great start. If you find it works for you, spread the word. I'm just one person, and so are you, but if more an more of us start adding music to our practice, perhaps some of the world's noise will also be transformed.

Blessed

B 

Thanks to Nordstrom....

One of the laugh lines in my show makes fun of how unrewarding it is to play piano at Nordstrom. That's not entirely true, and I want to explain why, because I'm indebted to many people I will probably never meet again for the true gifts they gave me while I sat at the piano and they...were my customers.

Back in the early late 80s and early 90s, I was invited to join the piano staff at Nordstrom Main Place Mall in Santa Ana. I did so as a part-time pianist for a year or so before moving to Pennsylvania to take a promotion at the company for which I worked full time. A few years later, back in Southern California, separated, trying to keep my business afloat, keep from being homeless and see my kids as often as possible, playing the piano at Nordstrom was literally my only steady -- if meager -- income. I took every opportunity to play because I needed the money and, for a time, the Steinway grands in the Nordstrom Main Place and South Coast Plaza stores were the only pianos available to me to play semi-regularly.

I've observed lots of audiences, both as an audience member myself and as an onstage performer, but it was the Nordstrom "audience" that gave me my real education on the ways that music actually works on listeners, whether they are consciously paying attention or not.

I made some close friends while playing for Nordstrom, and I'm honored to know from their stories how deeply music moved them. Most of them are now passed away, a few remain with whom I'm no longer close. I'm humbled to have had their friendship, wisdom and insight, as well as their candor about the music I played while they were listening. Each one has had an impact on my life. But this story is about the others who heard my play and what I learned from them -- the hundreds, maybe thousands of people who floated through Nordstrom back in the glory days of the Internet.

Most of the time, sitting there at the piano pretty much on autopilot with the latest Disney movie themes or pop tunes, I could look around at what was happening in the store. After a few months I could recognize most of the employees who worked in departments close by the piano, as well as the roaming personal shoppers and plainclothes security. Eventually, I could recognize most of the employees throughout the store, if only from the frequency that they appeared floating by me through endless streams of people. Both the Nordstrom stores at which I played positioned their pianos close to the incoming entrance to an escalator, so there was always a constant surge of people coming from behind me towards the escalator and moving past me either on their way up or down a level or just alongside the piano to some other part of the store.

Once in a while, someone would stop somewhere near a railing or counter, not to look at the displays or purchase something, but to...what? Rest? Wait? Listen? In a constantly-churning river of shoppers and employees, one person stopped still stands out sharply. Most of the time, in that fixed place, the man or woman would look sort of aimlessly around (this was before everyone had smart phones for distraction at those resting moments), sometimes scanning for someone else, or admiring the decorations at holiday times, or semi-focusing on where that piano music was coming from.

Part of the job of a piano player at Nordstrom was to be a kind of greeter. We were encouraged to make eye contact, smile, speak to people if we could while playing or during breaks between sets, give directions if asked. If you think about it, seeing someone in a tuxedo or evening gown making amazing music at a very large grand piano in the middle of a department store is a bit of a novelty -- and Nordstrom was quite effective at exploiting it for many years -- and the novelty is enhanced when the pianist actually takes time to smile and say hello while playing. It's a unique personal touch, and Nordstrom was "high touch" with its customers in those days. I really enjoyed this part of my job which, in a formal concert setting, would have been mostly Vorboten, so when I offered a smile or "hello" to someone stopped in the store observing me, I can imagine it being surprising to a customer at first, and then somehow welcoming.

Meeting the eyes and smile of some random person stopped in the store and just gazing around to find the piano happened often. What happened next was always amazing and unpredictable. Some folks would collect themselves and whatever bags they had momentarily set down and scurry away on some quickly-remembered errand, almost as if they had been caught napping at work. Some folks would pretend not to have shared my greeting and keep scanning the store. Some folks would stay focused on listening and watching, even from far across the atrium, until the end of the song or sometimes until the end of the set, intent on the music. Some folks took the time to approach the piano and stand closer until I finished whatever I happened to be playing. The people who showed interest, it seemed, always were the most interested when I played music one wouldn't expect to hear playing in a large, elegant department store: ragtime, dramatic Rachmaninoff, Chopin or Beethoven, odd arrangements of TV theme music. Their interest wasn't derisive, it was mostly curious and (I'm glad to say) appreciative. Random people told me how pleasant it was to hear music other than the top-40 sound tracks most retail stores use, but I began to understand something else was going on. The only way I can describe it is that the folks who listened somehow had a need for the music.

A Nordstrom piano player was not supposed to be an entertainer, in the sense that many street musicians actually have a carefully-constructed performance that produces donations in the guitar case (for example), so I wasn't thinking or attempting to put on a show, but it started to be clear to me that people wanted some sort of presentation in the music, especially when they stopped to listen. Their generous offer of musical time with me needed to be met with a satisfying musical experience that sent them along to the next purchase or errand. People expected more, and Nordstrom was about exceeding customers' expectations, even when that included making live music for them.

This challenged me to not only play the very best I could but also to assemble the music I used in a way that listeners felt was satisfying and somehow complete, all spontaneously and without much (if any) direct input from the listeners. Sure, I was often asked for the same song multiple times each shift, but if that happened I had to figure out how to turn out a fresh "product" each time, or weave together a medley with a clear musical direction -- beginning, middle, end -- and a satisfying arc of emotion. I'm sure I kludged a few loser playlists back in the day, but over time, people taught me what worked, and I started to get better at it.

There were a few setbacks, but I'm still grateful. One crowded holiday some college frat brat came up behind me while I was playing and lifted my arms and hands off the keys. He's lucky he didn't get clocked on both sides of his head -- pianists have fairly well-developed arm and back muscles -- and instead received only a smile and a nod and very little interruption in the music. There was always the superior person who scoffed: "I can play that piece much better than you!" (yup: really happened...a lot) or who observed loudly to companions: "He must really be desperate to waste such talent on Nordstrom." They all got a smile, sometimes a grin. They all helped teach me about live performance and what it takes to produce one in a very un-concert-like environment. Every one of them gave me a gift I could take back to the recital hall and use in some way. Often, in addition to giving a smile to these difficult customers, I'd intentionally play a wrong note in an obvious way just to further their superior self impression, often to the delight of other folks standing by who had observed and heard the interchange. In this way, even the hard stuff became pleasant -- almost a game -- and my fear of going into the crucible of a concert hall lessened.

Like the trapeze artists who intentionally fail a stunt twice to build their engagement with the audience, playing at Nordstrom taught me the value of vulnerability and the joy of sharing a listening experience with an audience. So much of what appears as live music in a concert hall situation is about an audience's expectation of virtuosity from the performer -- of how he or she will "interpret" some classic, difficult work. Will he be able to play the really hard part? Will the interpretation be "correct?" If it is a premiere, will the piece of music and the performance pass critical muster in the highbrow word of musical sophistication? The opposite of that was happening to me at Nordstrom, even if I played the same music I took into a formal concert: all those formal expectations, while still there, took the form of a delightful shared journey with the audience.

So I'm writing today with thanks for Nordstrom. Playing piano at Nordstrom literally kept me fed and housed when I had no other income. Nordstrom taught me the importance of being able to perform under any circumstances, and to make every rendition of the latest Disney tune fresh, even if playing it for the tenth time in four hours. But my biggest gratitude for Nordstrom goes to the people who came there: employees, shoppers, folks just passing through from one part of the mall to another. Without Nordstrom and its commitment to having a grand piano and pianist in every store, the people who listened there would never have inspired me and taught me to do what I do today, and I'd be just another guy in a tux on a stage with a big piano.

Happy Thanksgiving! Thank you Nordstrom!

Blessed

B