What Learning to Play the Piano Can Teach Us About Stress

There’s something slightly odd about the way we expect people to manage stress.  We tell them to calm down, go for a walk, take a bath.  And in those moments, maybe for an hour or so, stress subsides.  But what about the other 23 hours of the day.

Imagine you want to learn to play the piano.  You could

• read about scales.
• watch someone explain where to put your fingers.
• learn how chords work
• maybe even take a lesson on how to read music

And then someone sits you down in front of the piano and says:

Right. Play.

We'd never expect that to work.

Because understanding how to play the piano and being able to play the piano are two completely different things.

At some point, our fingers have to touch the keys.

We have to practise.

So is it possible that stress management works in the same way?

We can

• understand why we're stressed.
• learn about the nervous system.
• recognise that we're overthinking or replaying a conversation.

All useful.

But understanding what's happening doesn't always translate into being able to handle situations when we're right in the middle of them.

That's where I think mindfulness is misunderstood.

We have expectations that mindfulness should help us to feel calmer.  But perhaps there’s another gem hidden underneath.   Perhaps the real value lies not only in how we feel while we practise, but in what we’re actually practicing.

 How Does Mindfulness Help With Stress?

Mindfulness and stress reduction have become almost synonymous.

Feeling stressed?

• Try some breathing.
•  Ground yourself.
• Calm your nervous system.

And there are good reasons for this.  

Mindfulness-based interventions have been shown to help reduce perceived stress.  Practices with breathing techniques and attention training can help us to settle after stressful encounters – something I explored in my last article - Why Is Everyone Talking About Nervous System Regulation?.

Our nervous system isn't designed to keep us calm all the time. It needs to respond when something requires our attention and then adjust as our circumstances change.

And sometimes a mindfulness practice can absolutely help that process.

But what happens when we finish?  As I once said to my meditation teacher, meditation is great for those 10 minutes, but what about the other 23 hours and 50 minutes per day?

Because being on the meditation mat is not like having those difficult conversations, navigating those deadlines or worrying about those late-night emails with the subject line:

Can we have a quick chat tomorrow?

The minute something unnerves us – off we go again.

So what’s the point of those ten-minute sessions?  Is there more going on than we realise?

Is Mindfulness Just About Feeling Calm?

I know people who follow apps every day for relaxation.

But different types of mindfulness work in different ways.

One of the most common ways of practising is through focused attention.

We deliberately place our attention somewhere. Often that's the sensations of breathing.

We follow the breath.

And then quite quickly our perfectly normal human minds get distracted and begin to think about what we’re having for lunch.

Eventually we notice this inner dialogue and return our attention to the breath.

And then we repeat.

FOCUS ON THE BREATH → THE MIND THINKS ABOUT LUNCH → WE NOTICE → RETURN OUR FOCUS TO THE BREATH

It sounds incredibly simple.

But think about what's actually happening.

We're not reading about attention or listening to somebody explain the benefits of attention control.

We're experiencing the practice of directing it.

Just like playing those scales on our piano, we are nurturing our craft.

Why Does Practice Matter When Managing Stress?

Nobody practises scales because they have a lifelong ambition to become exceptionally good at playing scales.

They're developing skills they'll eventually use to play music.

At first, finding the notes requires enormous concentration.

The fingers don't automatically go where they're supposed to.

So we repeat the movement.

Again.

And again.

Until eventually something that once required a considerable amount of conscious effort, becomes more familiar.

That's learning through experience.

And this distinction becomes incredibly important when we apply it to stress.

Imagine you've had a difficult meeting.

It ends at 11am and you understand that it’s over.

You’re aware that replaying it won't change what happened.

You may even have read my blog and know that repeatedly revisiting a stressful experience can continue to generate a stress reaction.

But there’s a part of you that doesn’t seem to have digested the message.

Then before you know it, you’re just about to sit down to eat, and the meeting rears its ugly head all over again.

No amount of understanding the theory seems to be able to intercept this habit.

Because knowing something and being able to apply it when we need it are different skills.   The first comes from knowledge.  The second comes from practice.

What Does Neuroplasticity Have to Do With Mindfulness?

Experiential learning comes through practice and the possibility of this deep learning comes from our brain's ability to adapt and change in response to experience.

This is known as neuroplasticity.

This is the foundation of what seem to be dramatic claims such as mindfulness can "rewire your brain".  The science is more nuanced.

Research into meditation has identified changes in areas of the brain networks involved in attention and emotional regulation.  Exactly how long it takes for these changes to develop, how long they last and what that means for everyday life, is still being studied.

What we can recognise is something much simpler.

Our skills improve through practice.  And that means repetition.

It's why the pianist plays scales.

It's why an athlete trains.

That’s why mindfulness becomes an entirely different consideration when we see it as training, rather than a ten minute relaxation exercise.

What's the Difference Between an Altered State and an Altered Trait?

This distinction sits at the heart of Altered Traits, by Daniel Goleman, best known for his work on emotional intelligence, and neuroscientist and meditation researcher Richard J. Davidson.

Meditation can change how we feel in the moment.

Perhaps our breathing slows.

Our body feels less tense.

Our thoughts become quieter.

And we may finish a practice feeling noticeably calmer than when we began.

That's a change in our state.

And sometimes that's exactly what we need.

But there's another promising possibility.

What if repeated practice gave us a skill that became available to us beyond the meditation time.

That's where the idea of “altered traits” comes from.

It isn’t because meditating turns us into people who never become stressed or irritated because life always has its challenges.

The real question is whether repeated experiential practice changes our traits and influences how we meet those moments when they arise.

So rather than limiting our expectations of mindfulness to:

Did that make me feel calmer?

perhaps we can also ask:

What am I practising?

How Could Focused Attention Help With Stress?

Just for a moment, let's reflect on that 11am meeting and why it’s still on our minds at 8pm. 

At some point it re-captured our attention.  A thought arrives as if from nowhere and all of a sudden:

• we're replaying what somebody said;
• thinking about what we should have said and
• imagining what might happen tomorrow.

The mind is doing what minds do.

So we consider what we’ve been practising:

FOCUS → WANDER → NOTICE → RETURN

And in this moment, we wonder if we need to replay that conversation.

We wonder whether we can interrupt that pattern and return our attention to a focal point.

We don’t label thinking as bad.  The mind is a wonderful tool but a poor master. The useful skill is recognising when we've moved from problem-solving into thinking that is simply keeping the experience going.

And that's where something we've practised on the cushion, chair or wherever we happen to meditate may become useful in ordinary life.

We can recognise where our attention has gone and decide whether continuing to follow that train of thought is useful. If it isn't, we have an opportunity to redirect our attention towards a chosen focal point.

The Breath Isn't Magic

We don’t need to overcomplicate this or make it sound mysterious.

The breath is always there.  It’s always available to us.

We can feel it.

And in focused-attention practice, the breath gives our attention somewhere to rest.

So we practise:

• Finding it.
• Losing it.
•  And returning.

Over and over again.

There’s more to those piano scales than becoming good at scales.  Noticing the breath isn’t about becoming good at breathing, but noticing our mind and returning to a focal point.

And that returning becomes invaluable when we want to learn to meet stress in a different way.

From Focused Attention to Stress Interruption

These simple but effective techniques formed the basis of my own research and stress interruption intervention which is built around four distinct stages:

NOTICE → INTERRUPT → RESET → REWIRE

It recognises that eliminating stress isn’t practical or realistic.  Stress is part of life.

The real opportunity is recognising when the moment has passed but our own habits are keeping us stuck in the same situation.

Focused attention helps us to notice that loop and to recapture and refocus our attention.

So just as the scales help the pianist to play the music, attention training practice helps us to notice when stress has captured our attention and to return to a focal point.

What If My Mind Wanders During Mindfulness?

Practising focused attention training can have its own challenges.

When I ask people to focus on their breath – inevitably their minds wander.

Repeatedly

It comes up on my courses time and time again:

"I can't do it. My mind keeps wandering."

It's one of the biggest misunderstandings I come across.

Because something rather insightful happens between that wandering and the return.

We notice.

At first, the guide may remind us that the mind might wander. We wonder if they're a mind reader just before returning our attention.

But with practice, something rather interesting can begin to happen.

We start noticing for ourselves.

Why that matters is something I'll explore in my next article.

Perhaps Mindful Calm Was Never the Whole Point

Don’t get me wrong.  I love the feeling of settling into my mindfulness practice.

My body and mind know the drill and drop into this place quite quickly and sometimes ten quiet minutes tuning into the movement of the breath, is exactly what I need.

Those immediate benefits matter.

But judging our practice simply by measuring how calm we feel afterwards, can underestimate what’s happening beneath.

Yes – that calming state can be useful.

But so can the practice that helped us get there.

Every time we focus, wander, notice and return, we're having an experience.

And that experience is practice.  Just like those piano scales.

What comes next is not whether we can find our breath sitting quietly on the mat, but whether we can find our way back when we need to.  Whether we can notice that we’re trapped in a meeting that actually finished nine hours ago.

Perhaps that's where mindfulness has something in common with learning the piano.

We don't practise because life will always be easy.

We practise so that the skills are there when it's time to play.

About the author 

Julie Perrigo MSc is a Stress and Emotional Awareness Specialist, mindfulness teacher and creator of the Stress Interruption Method.

She holds an MSc in Mindfulness from the University of Aberdeen, where her postgraduate research explored the use of a structured digital mindfulness programme to support stress and emotional wellbeing. Julie combines her research and teaching experience with more than 25 years working in corporate environments.

She is also the author of The Emotional Hustle and founder of Just Breathe Solutions, where her work focuses on helping people understand the patterns that can keep stress going and develop practical skills to interrupt them.