As both a musician, lecturer and somatic bodyworker I offer lectures and concert lectures over a wide variety of topics close to my heart but where the act of Listening is essential:
Listening - seen as a concious act of directing our awareness towards our aural surroundings as well as into the internal neurological and physical realities of our own bodies
As a musician and music theoretician I give lectures and concert lectures about listening, musical awareness, unfamiliar soundscapes, hearing colors, Psyco-accoustics and biological listening intentions, concert hall-battlefields, listening as a way of awareness, musical sculptures and instruments of wonder and amazement, music as a political weapon and our inner and outer filters of perception.
Among other things..
The common denominator for all these lectures is an ever-lasting curiosity for anything connected to the listening experience and a wish to share how we all, by becoming more concious listeners, have the power to affect both the way we experience listening as well as life.
As a Timani teacher and somatic bodyworker I also give lectures about the Timani method and topics concerning musicians´ health, performer psychology and basic anatomical and neurological topics of significance to musicians, teachers and performers or everyone who wishes to know more about topics like the Autonomic Nervous System, the Fascia system and how knowledge of these systems can be used to broaden our understanding of movement, stress-management, trauma, pain and our miraculous fluid body.
These lectures are usually combined with practical workshops with mental and somatic techniques for increased body-awareness and ways to approach challenging life situations with the body and mind as supportive allies.
Can increased knowledge concerning our neurology and biology make us into more present and confident musicians?
This lecture offers a basic understanding of the autonomic nervous system, how it affects musicians during everyday playing and performance as well as ways to interact and train the nervous system.
A lecture tailored for professionel music students which offers:
- Basic knowledge of the autonomic nervous system
- The three-part stress model and how to use it to effectively undertand and meet stress responses
- Self-regulation, what it is and how to use it actively both during rest and relaxation but also during rehersal and playing.
- How the mind influenses the body and how the body affects the mind - awareness of the way you use your body during playing and how to work with movement in a richer way.
- Ways to meet and adress the situation of working as a musician and music student during the Covid pandemic.
Part of the lecture is practical and consists of physical and mental exercises useful for performers and musicians of every age.
- This lecture is part of the annual program on Performance Psychology at the Masters of Music program at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim and has also been presented at the EUJAM (joint postgraduate programme for young elite jazz performers and composers at five European jazz schools in Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Paris and Trondheim.)
"I think everything was mostly interesting, but for me it was the lecture with Miriam Hlavaty and Scott Cohen that i felt was most relevant for me personally."
"I especially liked Miriam's lecture, as it was incredibly useful information to understand your own body and performance better."
"The most interesting thing for me was the lecture with Miriam since I learned something special in an area I never deeply thought about."
"Miriam Hlavaty Very interesting subject, we need to talk about mental health more nowadays"
- Testimonials from student participants from the EUJAM (joint postgraduate programme for young elite jazz performers and composers at five European jazz schools in Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Paris and Trondheim.)
Interested in booking a lecture?
I have held lectures at Symposiums, Universities, Music schools, Festivals and online events, for
yoga teachers, music teachers, therapists, music students, university staff, tango dancers and people just curious to learn about
the Autonomic Nervous System, the Fascia System, Performance Preperation, Movement training, Body-Mind connections, Listening or Musical Perception
Send me a line and we´ll tailor something to fit your specific interest and situation
mirhla@gmail.com
• To «accept and allow» whatever comes?
• To rigorously follow a specific physical and mental regime?
• And should we even try to down-regulate something which can also be a logical reaction to the reality of today?
In this lecture/workshop we will cover ways to interact with the nervous system from a body-mind perspective, - through gentleness firmly rooted in scientific facts, and with a direct relevance to our unique world situation today.
• The polyvagal theory and the science of safety
• The neural and chemical systems involved in your stress responses and what affects them.
• Mental and Somatic techniques for increasing resillience, self-soothing and down-regulation of overwhelm and stress responses that seem stuck
• A four step-process to increase the ability to contain difficult and challenging situations and emotions
Duration: 2 hours, with the possibility of an extra 15 - 30 min for Q&A
Modality: online or live
I am very grateful for the clearest presentation of the polyvagal system and the nervous system I have ever encountered. Miriam helped me far more than my many efforts to understand Porges through his writing. This lecture underscored all that we do in therapy, and gave me some new ideas and lots of reminders. I wish many of my colleagues had attended and will share the announcement for the fascia lecture with them.
-Naomi. Dance therapist
The fascia system is the construct which holds and connects all the other systems of the body.
It is a key factor in movement dynamics of any form, the seat of your body-awareness (our interoception) and the scaffold of your nervous system. It also plays a vital part when it comes to pain.
The Fascia system is a living structure and is constantly affected by and adapting to how we move and live within our body, for better or for worse.
In this lecture we will explore two of the four functions of the fascia system. These functions are especially related to pain-experience, neurology and body awareness.
We will cover topics like:
⁃ What Fascia is and what parts it consists of
⁃ The difference between Fascia and Connective Tissue
⁃ The pathways of pain which creates a pain sensation
⁃ The link between long term stress and contractions in the fascia
⁃ The effect of sex hormones on your fascia system related to pain and movement/training that every woman should know about.
⁃ An embodied Body-Mind strategy for approaching pain
Pain science shows that a lot of pain which was previously thought to originate from injuries in the muscles or the skeleton are actually caused by changes in the fascia system, changes which are directly affected by the states of our nervous system.
This lecture will also include some somatic modalities and examples of how you can use your interoception as a resource and support in movement practices, as well as a mental and psychological resource in stressful times.
Duration: 2 hours, with the possibility of an extra 15 - 30 min for Q&A
Modality: online or live
In this third lecture about the Mind-body connection and the fascia system we will look at the two last functions of the fascia system and how this system interacts with the muscles, in relation to playing, movement and mobility, but also in relation to stiffness, pain and inflammation. Also: how the fascia affects our ability to sense where our body is located in space when we move.
The fascia system is hugely affected by how we move and demands a specific kind of movement or loading in order to stay healthy. When in a healthy state it can greatly support our movements and our body´s capacity for healing.
We will look at what we can do to ensure that this system stays healthy and supportive through our lifetime, as well as go deeper into different ways that Fascia communicates with our nervous system - aiding our movements, but also our body-sense or proprioception.
This lecture will include some somatic movement modalities and mind-body approaches to movement, and will cover topics like:
- What kind of movement, on a micro and macro level, is needed to re-hydrate the body.
- How the Fascia stores water.
- The difference between muscular and fascial contractions
- How Fascia is linked to new understanding about neuroreceptors and pain signals
- Which specific parts of our intra-muscular Fascia is important for improving our body sensation and how we can increase this.
The workshops can be held individually, although it is recomended to book the Fascia lectures together as they are complementary in nature.
Duration: 2 hours, with the possibility of an extra 15 - 30 min for Q&A
Modality: online or live
How has the industrial revolution, the Ottoman empire and a fondness for giraffs affected the development of the instrument we know today as the grand piano?
From the modest entertainer of the salons to the mother-ship of the great concert halls: the grand piano stands today as one of the world's most popular instruments but it's road of development has been long and varied.
This concert lecture follows the history of this amazing instrument and is filled with examples of how composers through the ages have emphasized different aspects of the instrument and given it many different roles to play, and how composers and pianists of today continue to explore and expand its unique world of sound.
Due to the repertoire this concert lecture is dependent on access to a grand piano with three pedals.
Where does the music end and the listening begin?
Music reflects the essential fact that we humans are not sharing one reality but rather perceiving myriads of different possibilities of reality, all interlaced and happening at the same time. We are all aware that two people might experience the same piece of music in entirely different ways. The music is the same and yet the experience differs.
In between the listener and the music stands the listening experience. So what really happens when we listen to music? Why is one man's music another man's dental drill? This has to do with what we might call "listening intention". It is found that a listener might favour a specific listening intention regardless of the type of music he or she listens to. At the same time, even though this choice of how we listen is very often taken on a sub-concious level, our specific listening intention might be “open for negotiations” - in other words: we ourselves have the ability to change the way we listen provided we have some guidence.
In this lecture you will experience how you consciously can change how you experience music by training your ability to change between different listening intentions.
The lecture contains several listening examples which invites you to a richer and more conscious way of experiencing music.
Due to its use of music examples this lecture is dependent on access to playback equipment.
What is relevant physiological knowledge for someone who aims at performing music on a high, professional level? Why do musicians need knowledge of how their body works?
Musicians are, as a workforce, subjected to extremely specialised physical demands when it comes to performing their art. The need for endurance, strength and stability needs to be coordinated with dexterity and detailed fine motor control on a level which few other needs or, indeed, are able to master.
No matter which instrument we play: the real instrument of a musician is his or her body; a biological organism completely unique and to a large extent shaped by the life experiences (physical as well as psychological) which it has accumulated in the timespan between birth and the present moment.
Our real instrument is something we can never put down and in order to learn how to use it at its optimum capacity we need knowledge.
This lecture is about that.