The title is a little cheesy, I know.  But it’s my title!  I’m not apologizing!

I want to keep an ongoing list, right here, out and open and in the public eye, of all the things that Shiva Nata has helped me do.  Well, not all of the things, because a few of the epiphanies I have had are very personal ones.  But there are many that I would like to share with you.  I guess kind of to “lead” by example.

So I have an update.  And it is a BIG one.  So big that I had to post it here before the rest of the article. Why, you ask?  Because while the following four examples of how Shiva Nata is making me a better musician are pretty clear, this one new Shiva Nata Epiphany was too big to put at the bottom of the page, because it is just so concrete.  Numbers are involved.  Measurable numbers.  So even though I am adding this in almost a full month after I first published this page, it is important and clear and mind-blowing enough, that I just had to sneak it in first.  Here we go.

If you are a piano student who has been playing for, I would approximate, more than 3 years, give or take, you have probably played at least 1 finger exercise by Hanon.  Each exercise is a little doodle of a pattern, that gets repeated, oh, about a kabillion times.  I make sure, in my own practicing, to go over the Hanon exercises that my students are working on (the furthest any of my kids are at this point right now is Hanon 10), and then I continue to play a few extra, until I am either making mistakes because my fingers are tying themselves up in knots or because my brain is tying itself up in knots.  Some of the patterns are tricky!

Up until October, I was practicing up to around Hanon 14.  Then I took two and a half months off from Hanon for various reasons, but the important thing to remember is that I did not touch a single Hanon exercise for two and a half months.  And then, I sat down one day to pick up my Hanon practicing.  And I blasted through Hanon 14, and didn’t stop to catch my breath until I hit Hanon 30.  THIRTY.  Without practicing Hanon, somehow I had gotten better at practicing Hanon.  Pretty much twice as good, in fact.

I am a skeptic when it comes to Shiva Nata, I have to admit.  Especially because there was a point when I wasn’t sure if I wanted to share it with my students.  I don’t mind spending ten minutes (or less) a day on a practice that may or may not give me obvious and measurable benefits, but I sure wasn’t going to waste my students’ time on something like that until I was absolutely sure it worked.  Especially when parents are involved.  Parents want to know things about what you are teaching their children.  They want facts.  Measurable progress.

Before I planted my flag down on the peak of Hanon 30, I was pretty much convinced that Shiva Nata was one of the best things I could share with my students.  Hanon 30 sealed the deal.

Everyone will have a different experience with Shiva Nata, and I am working hard to not really shape that experience, but to lay the groundwork and a solid foundation, so that my students can take it and use it the way they need it.  But regardless of how Shiva Nata becomes incorporated into your daily life, there is one big reason why I will continue to use it in mine.  And now, here are four others.

First of all, Shiva Nata is toning my arms like whoa.  Which is kind of awesome, but also important.  I am a piano teacher who has, in the past, suffered from carpel tunnel syndrome, arthritis and tendonitis.. in both of my hands.  I have been on pain killers, worn braces, taken supplements, and even received shots.  The best bit of advice I ever got from my orthopedic doctor was that for me, music, was a sport.  And just like in sports, where you warm up beforehand or risk injuring yourself, now I had to warm up before I practiced.  I also had to learn to pace myself when it came to my personal practice.  Well, it’s been three years and counting.  I perform twice a week, I teach six days a week, I practice four to five times a week.  The only pain medication I take is for my occasional migraines. I don’t even remember my orthopedic doctor’s name.  Which is unfortunate, because he actually helped me to stay well (instead of only treating me when I was not well), but that is how long it’s been since I had to  think about him or visit him. (Wherever you are, sir, thank you so much).  So anyway, Shiva Nata and toned arms is important because stronger arms mean I am actually relying on the strength in my wrists and fingers less.  But hey, toned arms are always a good thing.

Second of all, Shiva Nata has helped me to become a more insightful teacher, and also a more patient one.  Now, becoming a more patient and insightful teacher over time is probably the natural progression of things, for those really thoughtful and dedicated teachers, but seriously, in the last three months I think I’ve had five or six separate parents comment to me that I am just so patient with their children.  Now, I don’t want to claim to know their children better than they do, because I know I don’t, but I will claim that in the 30 minutes a week I see their kids, I do have the patience  to see a habit, let it play out, try to understand the underpinnings of it, and then to comment on it, in whatever amount of time it may take.  I don’t see a child playing quietly and timidly at the piano, I see a child with little faith in their own developing abilities. I don’t tell them to play louder, I remind them that they are, in fact, getting to be pretty good at this whole piano playing thing.  That one sentence gets stronger and more confident results, every time.

Third of all, Shiva Nata has made me less of a slave to books.  Well, books are not the evil here, but in the past, I have followed each piano method book from page to page, in my teaching, faithfully, skipping nothing.  Listening to the book, not to the student.  In the past year or so, a new teaching method I have tried to develop for myself is to use the books for what they are, just a tool, but to listen to the student instead, and to let the student’s own needs and abilities act as Jack Sparrow’s compass.. not pointing North, but pointing to our heart’s desire.  And to take another quote from the pirates of the Caribbean (I have wanted to be a pirate since I was, like, five, please don’t judge), books are “more like guidelines, anyway.”  The books I use are very thoughtfully laid out, and are an excellent set of method books that are actually very flexible, as methods books go, and can be used to teach virtually any student.  A good teacher, though, is one who can listen not just to the playing of the student, but to the needs of the student, and this is something that I have been working on, and will probably continue to work on until I die.

Fourth of all, and this is something that I think all students of Shiva Nata take away on some level, I am ok with me (most of the time), now more so than ever, and everything that being me entails.  Even my mistakes.  Especially my mistakes.  To be honest, I don’t feel like I make mistakes anymore.  That is not to say that I am perfect.  That is to say that my mistakes no longer have any amount of negativity attached to them.  They are just learning experiences.  They are bumps in the road.  Chapters to my adventure.  Bumps in the road don’t destroy my car, and another chapter in a book only adds to the story.  Probably because of this, I am generally less stressed out about, like, everything.  I am actually one of the calmest people I know.  I don’t get very mad at anything anymore.  I take something in, I process it, and I figure it out.  Everything is a chance to learn.  And sometimes mistakes are actually kind of funny.

…

So far, those are my four five big truths.  And they are pretty big.  I have had a few little epiphanies, as I’ve said, that I simply don’t feel like sharing here, but these are four really big things that I have come to realize in the last year, and I owe most, if not all of it, to Shiva Nata.

So what has Shiva Nata done for you?

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