Why Attention Matters

Attention is a key benefit of integrative education. And there is a strong connection between music and attention. Sara Parkinson, a long-time friend of Integral Steps and professional musician, teacher, and executive leader, shares her experience: 
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• “Music is a recalibration. It is for me and I see it with my son too. He’s now a teenager and he’s played his violin since he was a kid. Whenever he’s struggling with a paper or something I tell him ‘Go play the violin’ and I see how the recalibration occurs, even after 5 minutes of playing the violin.”  
• “As I reflect on my childhood, I see that I was drawn to music and piano because it was a place for me to shut everything else out and be totally engaged in one activity… Today, I still look for ways to re-create that environment [a music practice cubicle] to be focused. I’m a hyper-productive person when I’m in that zone.”
• “There’s no other place where I feel more stimulated than with a music score, be it a piano score, vocal score, or a full score as a conductor. [In front of a score], you experience the creativity, the mathematics, the sound, the direction of the phrase, the feeling... It’s a whole world of things that you explore as a musician. [In the ‘outside world’], this translates into being a person who is creative and can see things from different perspectives.”
  
  

Sara shares the role of music as a way to connect with, and get to know, ourselves:

• “Music was a place to safely express myself as a young girl and is a space where I allow my own students to express themselves.”
  
  

Music, and its wholeness, truly connects us with our mind, body, and emotions - creating a unique environment for us to create neural pathways to enhance attention.