Mental Practice and Imagery for Musicians: a practical guide for optimizing practice time, enhancing performance, and preventing injury

- Extensively reviewed in professional magazines (scroll down beyond this page & "related items" to access).

Musicians of every level - professional or amateur, teacher or serious student - can benefit from developing mental practice and imagery skills. As an adjunct to physical practice, mental work enhances practice time, optimizes performance, and helps prevent physical injury.

- How can mentally recreating the sights, sounds, and sensations of playing music help musicians improve their musical learning and performance?

- How can creative images be used to enhance music making?

- Is the usefulness of mental work supported by scientific research?

This book takes a practical approach to such questions. The vital characteristics of effective mental representations are discussed, and a step-by-step program for training mental skills is presented. Many examples show how mental work can be combined with physical practice for optimum results. Included are guidelines for using creative images and pointers for teaching mental skills to young students.

Update:  Malva's second book is an award-winning memoir titled, Benjamin Breaking Barriers: Autism - A Journey of Hope (2014). This heart-warming and inspiring story delves into Malva's role as mother, focused on guiding her son out of the deeply autistic state that prevailed during his early childhood. Benjamin has grown up to become an award-winning speaker/autism advocate, singer, and actor. Malva's further passions include training horses and competing in upper-level dressage. She lives in Boulder with her family, appreciates the beauty of nature that surrounds their home, and revels in the expanding adventure that is Benjamin Breaking Barriers.