Muscle Memory

I have played the piano from the time I was around six years old. Blessed with parents that noticed that I had an ear for music (picking out the melody of Beethoven's Fur Elise at around six), they ensured I would have the opportunity to develop my gifting. With our meagre resources, my dad then working as a janitor and my mom a homemaker, they saved up enough money to buy me my first piano.

My journey of piano lessons was often fraught with frustration for my teachers. Through my later childhood and teenage years I trained with the Royal Conservatory of Music, learning classical music. The problem was, being that I had an innate gift of "playing by ear", I would never want to learn a new piece by reading the music. Instead, I would ask the teacher to play it for me so that I could "copy" it by ear. Using this skilled ear, I was able to often reproduce (in my own way) pieces that I never actually learned from the sheet music --- pieces like Mozart's "Rondo Alla Turca."

Mozart's Turkish Rondo was always one of my favorite pieces. Throughout my life, I have often sat down and played my own version of it, though not entirely faithful to the composer's original work and intricacy of the piece. My rendition contained the main theme of the piece and its overall mood, but did not contain the brilliance or fluency with which Mozart composed it. The entire middle section, a dazzling passage of sixteenth note runs, was left out of my version entirely.

I haven't studied classical training now in nearly 30 years -- focusing instead on composing my own music and playing in my own unique style. However, as of late, I decided that I wanted to challenge myself and dig out my old music books to see if I could actually learn some of the famous works that I have loved all of my life.

I found the sheet music for this piece in my basement, and started in earnest, to learn it note by note in January of this year. When I began, I thought perhaps my rustiness at classical technique and the effects of mid-life and perimenopause on my body (stiff joints, frozen shoulder, less limber fingers) would be my greatest challenge. However, it was something else entirely I came up against that hit me like a brick wall.

Muscle memory.

There, in the very first three measures of the piece -- the famous opening phrase -- my fingers found their worst enemy. They had been trained for nearly 30 years by my "own way" of playing the piece. This movement was so ingrained in my muscle memory that I physically found that I could not play the phrase with the correct fingering that would allow me to play at full tempo. I stumbled over, and over, and over again, trying to retrain my fingers to play "4-3-2-1-3" instead of "3-2-1-2-4." As my children could attest, I may have even slammed my fists on the piano in frustration a few times (reminiscent of my teenage self learning difficult pieces...although this time, the challenge was minor in comparison!).

Only after what has now been over four months of practicing this piece repetitiously, every day, arduously repeating the same movements with my fingers over, and over, and over again to retrain my muscles into a new pattern, did I realize that I was experiencing the physical parallel of a spiritual principle.

A famous, oft-quoted Scripture found in the book of Romans flashed in my mind last night as I practiced another difficult section of the piece:

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." Romans 12:1-2

The renewing of the mind. It's a ubiquitous phrase in Christianity yet, what exactly does it mean? It seems so "out there," so vague and difficult to put in practice without knowing exactly the methodology of doing so.

It wasn't until I started studying neuroscience and brain plasticity that I realized "renewing of the mind" literally means the rewiring of the neural pathways of the brain by constant training, to reject the adulterated thoughts we believe -- our own way -- replacing them with God's truth. It's not just a spiritual battle -- it is a physical process, like the retraining of my fingers to play this Mozart piece. The spiritual practice of discipline -- when we find ourselves rehearsing a thought in our mind that is not in alignment with God's Word -- to reject that thought and retrain ourselves to truth, physically changes the structure of our brain.

"The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:4-5

All of this is not easy in the slightest. It takes constant effort. We do not learn this "by osmosis". It's gritty; it's hard work; and it's sometimes wrought with frustrating moments, like my pounding of fists on the piano ("I will never get this right! I'm going to be stuck on this part forever"!) When we are stuck in strongholds of thought (fear, anxiety, worry, condemnation, jealousy, discontent, and more), the "muscle memory" of our brain defaults to these modes, just as my fingers kept defaulting to my inadequate fingering. However, the reward of discipline is worth the effort. After four months of struggle and thousands of repetitions on this piece I have come to play the first page with ease at full tempo (with the correct fingering!). Now, instead of a watered down version of my own design, I am expressing what the creator of this piece originally intended people to hear!

Isn't that so like our life? God has a "good, pleasing, and perfect" blueprint for each one of us that includes wholesome thoughts -- thoughts filled with peace, patience, joy, love, and hope -- thoughts that when practiced and cemented in our physical being will allow our entire life to exude the brilliance and beauty of His original design for our lives. Each one of us is a masterful composition created by God's hand that the world deserves to hear in its full beauty! But we need to read the "sheet music." We can't do it our own way.

It is up to us then, to wage this war of the mind as the Scripture instructs -- to develop that new "muscle memory" in our thoughts, that the old established patterns of negativity, fear, jealousy, and all other worldly patterns would crumble and make way for new, Holy Spirit infused patterns based on the Creator's blueprint.

Like learning a new piece of music, it's hard work. But the reward is worth it!

Keep practicing!