Practising in Flow
A Holistic Practice Method

Practising in Flow – The Method

The 4 Principles of Practising in Flow

Flow states when practising are created by sensitizing the three essential senses needed to play an instrument:
Sense of touch, hearing and body feeling.

The 4 Principles
of Practising in Flow

Interview with
Andreas Burzik, 2025

In each of these senses, fine qualities are sought that can easily be 'overlooked'. The cultivation of these qualities ensures a deep internalization of the instrument and has the potential to take your own play to a higher level.
The fourth principle refers to a special approach in the development of a piece.

1st. Tactile Sense

This is about the points where you have immediate contact with your instrument, especially the points where you shape the sound: hands, fingertips, in winds lips, embouchure, in strings the fingertips of the left hand as well as the contact point, the connection of bow and string.

Tactile Sense

The contact with the instrument

Physically speaking, a tactile fusion with the instrument is created when the energy coming from the body can flow into the instrument without disturbances or disruptions via the points of contact.

An optimal power transmission is expressed in the feeling of a 'rich' tactile connection to the instrument. It offers you the highest level of security and information in the development and management of difficult passages. So at the points of contact, you ensure a permanent, 'rich' well-being.

2nd. Hearing

For every instrument: Consistently ensure sound beauty, no matter what you play, so also when practising technique! Without an aesthetic sound, essential parts of your brain remain uninvolved, brain areas that are desperately needed on stage!

Hearing

The development of the sense of sound

Experiment with the conscious variation of the overtone spectrum by changing your way of playing and look for a sound quality that you like.

Such a concentration, directed at the sound quality, promotes an extremely enjoyable merge in the self-generated sounds. It can make 'high' when used consistently and is able to carry the entire practice process.

3rd. Body Feeling

This is about kinaesthesia: everything you do on your instrument should happen in a sense of effortlessness. This does not mean a complete relaxation, a slackness, but a body feeling of the unstrained, light, flowing doing, a feeling of dancing, swinging. Maintain this feeling of effortlessness at all times.

Body Feeling

Permeable effortlessness

Pay attention to your body! Your body signals you a strained movement by a subtle contraction. So for a technically difficult passage, you will first have to find a simplification with which you can execute this passage without the feeling of contraction.

With growing security, the desire arises spontaneously and from the inside to go ever closer to the original version, i.e. to push the limit of what you can master in the feeling of effortlessness further and further.

4th. Practising Content

At the beginning of each sequence, you should first look for the fine qualities described above in the respective senses - in the form of individual notes or light melodies. If you begin to perceive these qualities, you can start working on the current study material.

Practising Content

Playful approach

Play around improvising with the notes of the studied piece. Note values, slurs and dynamic signs do not have to be observed yet. First, convert the music into optimally sounding notes and pay attention to the dense and 'coherent' contact with the instrument and the sound produced. Immediately improve what you notice disturbingly!

Be sure to consistently make this search for quality in the tactile sense, hearing and feeling in a musical kind of way! Without this musical approach, there is no flow, no creativity, you get 'stuck in practising'. Your musicality is the fuel that drives you to the desired final version of your piece in a self-organized process guided by your senses.

Practising in Flow and the Brain

Learning in Alpha Mode

In 2005, in an exploratory EEG study, the brain waves of students during Practising in Flow were measured. The results showed that deep immersion in an activity is accompanied by strong alpha activity and high coherence of the brain wave patterns.

What Happens
in the Brain during
Practising in Flow

Interview with
Andreas Burzik, 2025

Learning in alpha mode is highly effective because information is deeply stored in long-term memory. High coherence in brain activity makes the brain permeable to creative ideas and spontaneous problem solving.

Contact

Andreas Burzik
+49 160 966 11 699

Practice:
Bahnhofstr. 5 (Side Entrance)
D-28195 Bremen
Germany