After studying music and psychology in Russia I emigrated to the UK in 1999. My main work is teaching the piano in particular to lawyers and other professionals who all work in a stressful environment. Over the years I have developed a method of reaching such students that is designed not only to teach them how to play the piano per se but also to help them to develop their emotional intellect in order to protect them from emotional exhaustion.
The Influence of Piano
So why do lawyers need music? The answer can be encapsulated in one simple statement: studying music helps them in their work.
A lawyer's work is highly stressful. There is a constant need to study complex documents and to consider each written and spoken word and they need to constantly prove their position. They have to remember that other's as well as their own destiny depends on their work. Music provides what an individual needs at a particular moment: relaxation, aggressiveness, energy, comfort or humility.
Students tell me that after lessons they feel relaxed, and relieved of the stress they have suffered from working, their memory becomes sharper, and they feel much more contented and happier in themselves. But why should this be? Why does listening to and playing music influence us, both physically and mentally? To gain a better understanding it is useful to have a brief insight into how the brain works.
The human brain is an incredibly complex and interesting mechanism. It is divided into two hemispheres and each of them performs its own functions. People are either left-brained or right-brained, meaning that one side of their brain is dominant. If you're mostly analytical and methodical in your thinking, you're said to be left-brained. If you tend to be more creative or artistic, you're thought to be right-brained. The areas of the brain constantly share information. The left side is responsible for speech, writing, language and logic, and in music it is responsible for rhythm and reading musical notation. The right side of the brain is responsible for spatial perception, emotions and feelings, and for the range in music. Studies show that a musician’s brain has more connections between the sides of the brain than the brains of others.
Music causes not only emotions and feelings but also physical reactions like tears and laughter. Brain cells respond to the intensity and frequency of music, to the movement of the hands and the position of the body in the case of playing the piano. Brain electromagnetic pulses, breathing and heartbeat are adapted to musical rhythm. Music influences hormones and blood pressure.
Notwithstanding the fact that one’s brain hemispheres are constantly in action, one of the hemispheres is always more developed than the other. If you have a developed left hemisphere you think more rationally, and in the case of the right one you think intuitively. A developed right hemisphere indicates developed creative thinking and cognitive flexibility that allows the generation of new ideas more easily, enables the right decisions to be made quicker, and creates, invents and enhances pleasure.
Intuitive decisions are made easily and quickly but, as a rule, they should be justified and rational thinking assists in this process. People working in a professional capacity such as lawyers and doctors will ideally need both their left and right hemispheres to be well developed because of the nature of their work but generally speaking they will be either left-brained or right-brained.
So, this, as set out above, is where learning to play the piano can help them. It increases the connections between the sides of the brain and serves to develop the right side of the brain of a left-brained person and vice versa, thus developing rational and intuitive thinking simultaneously. If you have both developed logical and developed intuitive thinking you will doubly succeed in finding new ideas and making better decisions.
However, I found from experience that teaching lawyers and other professionals with stressful jobs to play the piano itself posed difficult problems. I soon discovered that just teaching the piano alone was not a panacea to provide the students with the benefits discussed. It soon became apparent that adopting "standard" methods of teaching simply did not work with such people. I will illustrate this point by relating my early experience with my first lawyer-student who was a barrister.
When he came to study with me, I of course, already had my own method of teaching. This method worked perfectly and was time-tested. All my students liked it but It became apparent that this method was not good enough for the lawyer. It was clear that I had to change it, but how? To answer that question, I decided to carry out a study of lawyers and their work. I had accepted a professional challenge and firmly decided that if I wanted to work with lawyers, I had to understand the way they think and why they think in that way, rather than in another.
I therefore attended open court hearings to witness my students at work and understand how to teach them to play the piano. I needed to watch them at work to understand how I should adapt my approach to and methods of teaching them and I succeeded in my objective.
I was greatly surprised watching them analysing every word and fighting like tigers to defend their position. Things that irritated me as a teacher in a lesson impressed me in court. They were excellent at competing with their opponent in a trial. The court room was a stage on which they shone and I was most impressed. They argued with me because they were used to arguing. It takes a long time for me to gain the trust of a lawyer because in their profession it is impossible to trust people unconditionally.
My normal method of teaching professional adults worked very well but when it came to lawyers, they argued even though they did not know whether or not they would appreciate my methodology and even when I developed another method especially for them the disputes still did not end. Then came new student lawyers and when I introduced them to the revised method that I had specifically designed for them, they still argued.
Later I realised that it had nothing to do with my methodology, it was due to the professional skills of lawyers. Vigorous debates only ceased when I had gained their trust.
It’s not easy when a lawyer starts with me as a student, but I have learned that all I have to do is argue my case and prove that I am right. However, when I changed my method of teaching so that it took into account the characteristics of the thought process of lawyers, there is no doubt that it became easier to gain the trust of new students.
I started teaching lawyers 12 years ago. Now most of my students are practicing lawyers or training to be lawyers. But it is interesting that for me, things have not changed over the years in teaching lawyers. One of my students whose name is Michael (a QC and part-time judge), has achieved great success in music and playing the piano. He performs technically quite complex compositions and always chooses his own repertoire. Now we understand each other completely but seven years ago, when he had just become my student, I could never have imagined that would happen. Back at that time our lessons were akin to a battlefield! Like a typical lawyer Michael always argued with me. He would not accept my method of teaching nor the composition I wanted him to play let alone my training program. I tried changing my approach, methods, and programs but he still argued about and cast doubt on everything. I often had to remind him that we are not in court but are engaged in a music lesson. At one stage I even started to have doubts that I ever could teach him to play at all, but then everything gradually changed. He started to trust me and the disputes almost ceased.
Listening to music has a therapeutic effect and develops musical thinking, but more effective musical therapy is to be enjoyed through performing music. It develops creative thinking faster, contributes to arriving at atypical decisions. It teaches thinking and acting like an artist in any field of activity and that’s why studying music and learning to play the piano is so beneficial to those in stressful occupations.