I sat quietly eating my lunch, listening to the conversations of the people sitting around me. I was at an Arabic music retreat and there’s a lot you can learn by listening in. The people next to me were talking about practicing the Oud, I happily listened as I myself would like to learn the Oud one day.  And then one of them, who was also an instructor at the retreat, said something so simple yet it resonated deep for me; he said “It took me years to learn how to practice.” My ears perked up, did he just say say that? Could you actually “learn” to practice? I have struggled with practicing in both dancing and singing for many years but I thought maybe I was alone in that struggle. It never crossed my mind that practicing was something you could to learn to do.

I’ve been dancing for nearly 20 years and singing most of my life. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m incredibly hard on myself but often I’m frustrated that I’m not better at either at this point. I have come to realize recently that a big reason why is that I don’t practice. I go to classes, I sing with ensembles, dance with troupes, these are easy because I know exactly what I need to practice in order to perform. But I have no clue when it comes to practice as an individual dancer or singer. Sure I’ve tried, a normal dance practice usually involves me spending way too much time trying to figure out what song to dance to and then finally putting something on, I stand there and think about what to do, what to work on until I’m frustrated and turn the music off. I’ve even rented studio time in hopes it will help, it doesn’t. Singing is a little easier, I’ll put on a favorite song, sing and done! But I don’t normally sing alone without music.

As I was getting ready to leave for my trip I began to fear not having the structure of a class or ensemble. I’m out here in the world trying to learn dance and music and in order to progress as a dancer and singer I have to learn to build my own daily practice. It’s been two months since I’ve been on the road and honestly I’m still struggling to figure it out. I excel at things like researching, reading and listening to music but I want so badly to wake up in the morning and dance and sing without thinking about what to do.

So, how do you “learn” has become the question. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, going through years of classes, workshops and private lessons in my head. I’ve thought about what, I, myself know I need to work on. This thought process has helped me identify several things. First, when I lived in San Francisco I kept myself so busy with work, classes and ensembles that I didn’t leave any time to practice, mostly using tiredness as an excuse. In my new life, I have no excuses! Second, my main teacher, whom I took classes and private lessons with for many years, often (pretty much all the time) told us how to practice. Routinely she gave simple suggestions to help individualize you as a dancer like standing in front of a mirror and figuring out what looked best on you in terms of hand or body positions and poses and then getting these things you liked, on you, into your muscle memory so you’d automatically go to them and knew you looked good doing it. Third and most importantly, I’ve realized that in order to create a daily practice, it needs to become a habit. I need to just do it everyday; some days will be epic failures and some days will be amazing. It might be 15 minutes, it might be 2 hours. I’ve heard that a habit takes 3 weeks to make or break so I’m vowing now, publicly, to give it a try. I’ll let you know how it goes!

How did you learn to practice…