Matt Chung's Site

Tag: meditation

  • Harry Mack on mastery, art of practicing, and flow state

    I recently listened to a podcast episode by Harry Mack — a very gifted freestyle rap artist — named “Flow State” and I want to share a few key insights I took away regarding the art of practice. Though the discussion around his beliefs and advice revolve around freestyle rapping, I believe the principles can be more generally applied to other areas of life (e.g. dance) and ultimately, I think he’s ultimately describing mastery.

    Harry Mack Podcast Snippet (60 seconds) recapping mastery

    Some background: like many others, I like to think that I am someone who values process vs results. Though hitting objectives and reaching goals are important, especially in certain contexts, I stay rooted in the art of mastery in both my personal and professional pursuits. These days, given dance is at the forefront of my life, I’m less concerned about winning a dance battle and more concerned with exploring my mind and body during a performance:

    • What am I feeling?
    • What are my thoughts?

    Together, these two help gain more self-awareness, help me better understand WHO I AM and help me better align myself with WHO I WANT TO BECOME.

    Similarly, on a professional level, these days I’m less concerned with my title and role (something I used to obsess over) and more with what the day to day responsibilities include.

    Now, I’ve been interested in the topic of practice and mastery for over a decade; according to my Amazon purchase history, I bought the book “Talent is overrated” and “Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment.” It’s a topic that I find myself gravitating towards on a daily basis.

    Okay, enough background. Let’s get into it.

    Main Take Away

    Harry Mack transferred his knowledge of practice — he’s been playing music since he was 7 — and applied mastery to freestyle rap.

    What practicing is NOT: just doing the activity

    Here’s a common misconception when it comes to practice: just do the activity (e.g. dance, play the instrument) itself. Nope. That is NOT practice. While Harry Mack concedes that doing the activity itself will improve you skills and will help you ascend to a higher level, performing the activity is insufficient to reach what he considers an elite level. To reach an elite level, one must devote time to actual practice.

    So what is it?

    What is practicing?

    Practice is about identifying your weakness and is more or less fairly regimented. A subtle (but what I consider important) point he makes is that the activity should feel fun and that you are more or less “creating little games for yourself … that are aimed at specific weaknesses so that you can improve upon them.”

    I apply this concept of practice to my dance journey. One (of many) area of weaknesses that I’m aware of is my lack of coordination to intentionally perform polyrhythms: move two (or more) body parts at different rhythms. Most recently, I am working on polyrhythm that consists of 1) The cross step 2) Head isolation and 3) Arm movement. Though the integration of all three is what I’m trying to accomplish, I am breaking it down in parts that are manageable and within the range of my abilities. Harry Mack underscores the importance of making the exercises tailor fit for yourself:

    “If you are not able to achieve the goal at a decent percentage, you need to slow down, shaving away excess, so you get right to the thing that you’re working on.”

    Harry Mack’s example of practicing triplets

    His practice is not something he would not typically do in front of others because practice seems rather mundane and he believes (though I disagree here) that his audience would not find it entertaining or engaging.

    An example of practice (for him) is triplet rhythms, with one syllable rhymes. The practice would be him rapping four bars:

    Off of the top I get in the zone.

    I’m on the one I’m never no clone.

    I do my bars direct off the dome.

    I send these rappers all the way home

    He’d perform this exercise for 20 minutes and reminds the listeners of the podcast that the practice is NOT a performance.

    Performance: where the rubber meets the road

    As mentioned above, practice is highly regimented with clear parameters. When it comes to performing (in front of others), Harry Mack offloads all the regimented practice, letting it all go: “[Performance is] bringing everything together in real time without the regimented structure and there are no rules”

    Summary

    Ultimately, to practice, you want to come up with your own exercises that:

    1. Get you into a flow state
    2. Match your current skill level

    Flow state is not about repeatedly doing something easy. It’s a meditative state.

    In fact, it’s about “doing the thing that is at the razor’s edge of your ability …. we can make practice fun; don’t bite off more than you can chew. The surest way that practice doesn’t feel flowy and fun is try to do something that’s way outside your ability and you’re just fucking up the whole time.”

    If you are tripping up, try slowing it down, making it easier somehow, or reducing scope.

  • On restarting a meditation practice, reducing anxiousness, and overcoming sensitivity to other’s opinions

    On restarting a meditation practice, reducing anxiousness, and overcoming sensitivity to other’s opinions

    Today I meditated for an entire 20 minutes. For me, that’s a long time, as someone who struggles to still.

    Here’s what went down for today. The first 10 minutes was basically a paired muscle relaxation (PMR), tensing muscles (e.g. hamstring, glute, bicep) and releasing them, silently and mentally whispering the word “relax” to myself. I have been practicing this on and off, inconsistently the last year, first learning about the effects of PMR on reducing anxiety; this practice was introduced during my dialectical behavior therapy group.

    After this paired muscle relaxation exercise, I transitioned to another “breathing” exercise, focusing on the breath and again, classically conditioning my body and training myself to relax the nervous system on command. It goes like this: inhale, hold the breath, count to 4 seconds, slowly exhale. Do this 10 times in a row, which makes up a single round. After the round, repeat a mantra, something to the effect of “Whenever I say easy easy easy, my body goes completely relaxed.”

    There’s multiple motivations to reinstate my meditation practice.

    First, “have you started a meditation practice” is more or less the first comment that you’ll receive upon joining the Stretch Therapy forum.

    Meditation goes hand in hand with stretching and as important (and dare I say: more important) than stretching itself. The idea is to increase your awareness, allowing you to be mindful of where (throughout the day) you hold tension; in what areas, in what muscles. Only then can establish new habits, new patterns that replace the (now) unnecessary — perhaps at one point in time, the tension served a purpose — tension.

    Second, I’m currently on the path of becoming the greatest dancer I can possibly be. Not by anyone else’s measuring stick, but my own.

    And I recognize as part of this journey, one of the biggest hurdles is the mental side of dance. The psychological challenges are ones that I’ve avoided in other disciplines, including tennis. I was once a good tennis player, on that path of being a great tennis player, but I could never “perform” under stress (for reasons I won’t get into here). The same stress feelings followed me in other activities including playing guitar, singing, and now in dance.

    Furthermore, I believe that the self-induced stress predominately stems from what Michael Gervais calls FOPO: fear of other people’s opinion. I won’t go into too much detail of that here (check out my book reading progress) but I strongly believe that if I stay the course of practicing mastery, stay the course of mitigating the impact my worry thoughts about what others think of me, that something great will happen.

    What is this greatness that I am visualizing?

    I’m not sure.

    But I can feel it.