Every day we meet new teachers who share their views on Yoga. In this article, we will tell you about the relationship between Yoga and music by sharing the experience of Antonio Luciani, a professor at the Cagliari Conservatory of Music who offers Yoga to students and school staff through a specific course. We hope you will enjoy reading the interview.
Please tell us about your background and your experience with Yoga?
I find it exceedingly difficult to define myself. The simplicity of the well-known existential question, so dear to the world of Yoga, always produces a gasp at its magnitude so I refrain but can qualify my service.
My name is Antonio Luciani and I was a five-year-old child when I started making music and had just entered adolescence when Yoga overwhelmingly drew my attention and passion. In both cases, over the years, I have had the immense good fortune to be able to study with the best teachers possible.
Can you tell us about your project with the students of the Cagliari Conservatory of Music?
I am not the promoter of the projects I am carrying out within the Cagliari Conservatory of Music, where I am a tenured professor of “Piano Practice and Reading.” It is to the credit of the current Director M° Aurora Cogliandro that, after years of resistance, I gave in to the request to teach the “Body Awareness and Expression Techniques” course for academic students and Yoga for staff, designed for colleagues and other employees who would like to benefit from the related practice.
For students, this is a subject of only 15 hours but essential for developing a sharper general awareness of the body, with adequate knowledge of how to care for it over time, taking into account the conditioning that prolonged study and musical activity tend to provide.
For the staff, it is a gift from the administration to those who want to avail themselves of Yoga techniques for their well-being.
How did the students react to your project?
Students have signed up in droves, and in a short time, the courses have exhausted the maximum number of participants I set for them to be adequately attended. Future ones already have waiting lists.
The students of the conservatory are for the most part extraordinary young people and ideal practitioners since they already have on their side a very refined sensibility, an established discipline, and also, if not always, a great capacity for concentration and awareness of the importance of knowing in detail the folds of our being for its ideal employment both in the body and in emotional and mental management. Consequently, they are passionate and grateful for this opportunity.
Along with the training, you also thought of a practice kit to suggest to your students. How important is it to have the right tools and what can make the most difference?
Especially when taking the first steps using the physical body as a tool for understanding and action, aids can be crucial in helping the accuracy of perception and action.
The greater quality of the mat, the Yoga blocks (we are in the land of cork here, which therefore takes on additional psychological significance) and the belt can contribute greatly to the speed and accuracy of learning.
How would you like to see your project evolve? What are your goals for the future?
As a result of their enthusiastic participation, the fondest dream would be for these teachings to be propagated among young people beyond academia, and for the example of the Yoga course offered to staff in our institution to be taken as a model in other conservatories and schools of different orders and grades.
