This has been a very fun journey. Yesterday, I was able to memorize half a page. I thought, oh my goodness this seems impossible to do in just a week. But today I approached it again and I now have one page completely memorized. I have all the notes memorized, including the correct fingerings, and bowings. I’ve thought about how I want to phrase it, and what I want to express, and this is yet another tool I use to cement it into my memory.
So today my self-awareness journey was about memorizing this music. While doing it I was completely focused on that activity. What was the effect of this activity on me? Well, one is obvious. I memorized the page of music. Hooray, I did it! I’ve only got one more page to go. It made me feel happy and satisfied with myself and what I accomplished. But it did something else for me. It made me think about how I can empower my students. My plan was next week to go up in front of them, play my music from memory and tell them, see, I did it and you can do it too. This is great, but I can take it a step farther. What if I actually created a plan, and taught my students how to do this? Wouldn’t it make their experience of learning the violin so much more rewarding, interesting and meaningful? So now I am so excited to teach my students how to learn something by heart.
If you would like to listen to the podcast edition of this blog, go to https://anchor.fm/tamara-tanner/episodes/Day-2-Memorizing-is-So-Much-Fun-e14nm98
Explorations in Healing 