Breathe the Music
Thursday night, while Paul busily hosted book club, I snuck out to Carnegie Hall and grabbed a seat right in the middle of the parquet section. Pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii performed. I had not heard him before but the quivering with excitement sold-out crowd…I must have gotten the last seat…indicated that he is a mega-star in his native Japan.
Tsujii is blind from birth. Legend goes that he first sat at the piano at 2 and played Do Rei Me. Now 34, he’s developed a novel way to learn pieces that doesn’t utilize Braille. He learns symphonies in small sequences and strings them together like pearls on a necklace; adding color and interpretation through the practice. It takes a month to absorb a symphony this way.
Last week he played 10 flawless pieces over an hour and a half…all from memory.
Ever the romantic, I cried during his rendition of Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante defunte (you know it.) And, was captivated by the jazzy classical combinations in Eight Concert Etudes, Op.40 by a composer named Nikolai Kapustin that I didn’t know. Audience members on all sides of me gasped when Tsujii’s performance of the Kapustin etudes ended. I stood applauding, along with everyone else in the concert hall, as he sensed our adulation and held on to the Steinway bowing and waving with a big smile on his face.
There is a phenomenon of the brain that when one sense is compromised or shut off, another can heighten and gain super-ability. On the subway home, I read an interview with the performer. He was asked how he knows what the conductor is doing when he plays with an orchestra? His answer, "by listening to the conductor's breath and also sensing what's happening around me."
The breath is such a powerful guide for Tsujii and also for a yoga practitioner. Prana, the word we commonly use for breath, is actually a cognate with the word animate. Prana is the force that keeps us alive. In yoga texts our life is measured by the amount of breaths we take. When I practice pranayama, control of the breath, my mind quiets and can more easily fall into a meditative state.
When taking postures, I watch my breath to see if it is labored or steady. If there are areas that are under or over working. Can my exhale extend? Do I notice the pause between the inhale and exhale. Can I truly let the breath initiate movement rather than the other way around?
This week inspired by Tsujii, I took balancing poses guided by my breath. Usually, I grasp for my foot in Tree Pose or find an anatomical point of stability for Half Moon Pose. These physical processes have benefits but as I observed my breath alone it was different. Practice was no longer about the struggle to balance but rather how to fill space with balance.
The breath like all vibration communicates both internally and externally. That’s why we can sense whether someone nearby is anxious or calm. And, why the breath is the gateway to the subtlest limbs of yoga.
Nobuyuki Tsujii due to his individual circumstances learned all about the breath at a young age...the response of an audience, the pace of a conductor, the beat of the music and his own internal interpretation of it all for him to exhale and us to inhale.
With lots of love,
Brette