Josh’s Reviews > Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within > Status Update

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.

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.