Status Updates From Effortless Mastery: Liberat...

did meditation 2 and practiced steps 1 and 2 again. Tried out step 3 (and maybe 4?), I think I'm starting to get the intent here, it's basically a sophisticated version of "practice the music slowly until you really get it, and then you can speed it up later" except the focus is not only on playing it slowly but being relaxed and learning the material so deeply that you can play it without thinking.

I followed the first two meditations a few more times and practiced steps 1 and 2 out of 4. I also just read through most of the rest of the book to get an idea of what's left. Looks like I can do any of the 4 meditations whenever I like, but working through steps 1-4 will take some time. I feel pretty good about step 1 and have to work more on step 2 for now. I've also taken notes to summarize the key ideas so far.

Up until now I feel pretty identified with everything he’s proposing; hope he supplies me with solutions or ways to solve those problems myself😂

I'm at the point in the book where I have to actually apply the concepts, meditate, practice picking up my instrument in a mindful state etc.. page count will increase much slower moving forward.

When it comes to the actual exercises, essentially he's slowly guiding the reader to be able to pick up their instrument in a state of detachment and relaxation, then to play notes in that state, etc etc. I've been taught bits and pieces of this from teachers before, but it should be interesting to see a coherent method for it. For example, one of my guitar teachers told me to try playing the 'wrong notes' on purpose

Kenny Werner understands a ton of pitfalls and challenges that musicians encounter. His first meditation was nice to follow and I'm going to wait til my next reading session to try the second one. As for whether his method will actually help me to improve, that remains to be seen. But in this book he explains his method for resolving the conflict between what we want to be playing and what we actually can play.