A recent study suggests that musicians experience discomfort differently, both in their bodies and their brains. Apparently, learning an instrument doesn’t just make you interesting at dinner parties; it may actually rewire your relationship to pain.
Which is fascinating.
And also mildly offensive.
Because now I’m sitting here wondering if I abandoned not just the recorder and clarinet but also my shot at becoming some sort of neurologically enhanced, pain-tolerant superhero.
Let’s pause and appreciate this.
Somewhere out there is a violinist stubbing their toe and thinking,
Ah yes, discomfort. A familiar melody. I shall process this with nuance.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are hopping on one foot, whisper-screaming into the void.
The science (which I both respect and side-eye) suggests that musicians develop:
1. Heightened sensory awareness
2. Better cognitive processing
3. And an increased ability to tolerate discomfort
Which makes sense. If you’ve ever listened to a beginner play the recorder, you know pain tolerance is required by both performer and audience.
I say this as someone who once was that beginner.
Yes, I too had a brief, shining career in music.
The recorder. The clarinet. A few valiant attempts at reading sheet music before deciding that perhaps my gifts lay elsewhere, like overthinking and snack acquisition.
And now, years later, I learn that sticking with it might have turned me into someone who gracefully absorbs discomfort like a well-trained cello.
Missed opportunity.
Although to be fair I do have a decent pain tolerance.
I gave birth without an epidural.
Now, before I fully ascend into martyrdom, let me add an important detail. Active labor was approximately 12 minutes long.
Twelve.
Minutes.
Which in childbirth time is basically a cameo appearance.
And yet, those 12 minutes?
Spectacularly painful. A masterclass. A symphony of why is this happening to my body.
Which leads me to a new question. If musicians process pain differently should I have been playing the clarinet during labor?
Picture it.
The room is tense. The stakes are high. The medical team is focused.
And there I am, mid-contraction, playing something vaguely resembling a scale.
Do… re… WHY… mi…
Would my brain have said,
“Ah yes, we are not in pain, we are in performance”?
Would I have transcended?
Or would someone have gently but firmly removed the instrument and said, “Ma’am. This is a hospital.”
There’s something deeply comforting and slightly unsettling about the idea that we can train our brains to reinterpret discomfort.
That pain isn’t just pain. It’s context. It’s meaning. It’s practice.
Which, if we’re being honest, is also how many of us have survived life in general.
We didn’t all learn instruments.
But we did learn endurance.
We learned how to sit with things.
How to push through. How to laugh inappropriately at the worst possible moments.
Which may not make us musicians but does make us, arguably, highly trained in the art of coping.
Still.
I can’t help but wonder what might have been.
A life where I casually mention my clarinet training while also demonstrating an almost eerie ability to tolerate discomfort.
A life where I don’t just endure pain. I interpret it.
A life where, perhaps, I am both deeply resilient and mildly insufferable at parties.
Or maybe I am exactly as I should be.
A person who once played the recorder. Who survived childbirth (albeit briefly, but dramatically).
Who feels pain, questions it, jokes about it, and keeps going anyway.
No instrument required.
Although, just in case, I’m not ruling out buying a clarinet.
You know.
For resilience.
Categories: Culture, mental health, music, Psychology, research
psychologistmimi 
SMiLes Dear Miriam as Tesla (Not the Truck that Looks Like a
Dumpster Rolling Down the Road on Wheels) Related Our UniVerse
Is an “Orchestra” ‘Composed By Energy Vibrating at Specific Frequencies’
Ah Yes How Our Positive Emotions Provide a
Lighter State of Being Energetic
More to Be and Do
Sort of Like my
250 Pounds Much
Heavier in Feelings
And Senses Than When
i Engage totally in Flow of
A Free Verse Dance of Moves
And Or Song of Words Where This
Digital Keyboard Becomes A ‘Beam me up
Scotty’ Way to Transform the Energy of my
HeART SPiRiT SoUL Organically Real into Avatars
of Soul Song Words That Bring Emotional Energy Free
And True by Intuition i may Lower the Vibrations and
Slow the Frequencies to Relate Darker Emotions too
Yet to Materially Reduce the Feelings and Senses in Synergy
That Comprise Our Emotions to Better Understand How Neuro-Chemically
And Neuro-Hormonally The Music of Words and Moves Come to Reduce Anxiety
Yes Stress
And Pain
Oh Dear Lord
Emotions are the
Glue of Cognitive Executive
Functioning including Focus
Attention Span Short Term
Working Memory and
Long Term
Memory
Retrieval
too as Of Course
Music of Words and Moves
Flowing From Toe to Head
Through Human Practice
Regulates Dopamine
Serotonin Endorphins
And Even the Warm Social
Bonding Love Hormone Oxytocin too
Yet That’s Like the Primary Colors that Mix
to Generate Billions of Colors More The Nuances
of Coloring the Free Wind of Our Human Experience
Far Beyond
Only Primary
Colors of Emotions Indeed
Hehe or just “Chopsticks” on a Piano
And Of Course Even a Silent Meditation
May Provide this Healing Flow for Pain
Stress and Anxiety too So Many Ways
Hehe even the’Zen Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance’ too Rewiring Our Brains
in Neuroplasticity Away From Pain Centers
Yet Perhaps a Free Dance And Song Particularly
Shared With Others as Always Ancestrally Free
Creates Us as
An Instrument
Capable of Generating
Our Own Definition of Happiness Within
to give share care heal
with most respect and
Least Harm
at Best Yes
for Others All
With SMiLes
Emotional Intelligence
is an Art and Never a Science Alone
However there are some mighty Hard
Headed Folks in the World Who Cannot
Seem to Understand Anything Without a Reason hehe
Like when folks come up to
me and ask me why i dance
Heaven doesn’t Need a Reason
To Exist i Just Do it All For Free
With SMiLes
Of course these days
Folks Who wanna know More
About the Bones That Help
Human Beings Create the Flesh
and Blood of Real Organic
HeART SPiRiT SoUL May Find
So Many Reasons Now Just
By Asking the
Google AI Mode
Tool All For Free
As Once Again Some Folks
Just have no ability to believe without a reason
And That’s Okay as they May Evolve from Bones to
Flesh and Blood Real…
As always Master
The Tool Yet Do
not become used
abused or Replaced by the Tool
Sort of Like When the Onward Christian Middle
School Marching Bully Boys Threatened me Verbally
Then With Violence if i dared to Smile at the City Park
And Middle School Halls Expressing Higher Vibrations
And Frequencies of the Energy of Positive Emotions
Of Course by Tradition of Desert Ways of Scarcity
to Take Away the Aversion to Kill the Other Tribe
Who Look See and Do Life Differently as Usual
In continuing
Unwarranted Wars
The Ignorance of
HeART SPiRiT
SoUL Indeed
Is Responsible
for Much Harming
Raping Maiming and Killing in This
World
For Real
And Taylor Swift is worth
More than a Billion Dollars
For Attempting to Save the HeARTS
SPiRiTS SoULS of Young Women Who
Are losing the Frigging Will to Flesh and Blood Live
In a Cold and
Disconnected
World from the
Free Dance And Song
of Warm Positive Uplifting
Human Emotions Together For Real
Indeed We Need Something Other
than “Trump Babies” To Inherit and Birth our World…
Yet as Always i’ll Find A Way to Tune This to SMiLes Again..:)
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Well, it’s a LITTLE late, but do you know where your clarinet is? Maybe there’s a late addition capability you could trigger.
I don’t have the stamina for either the piano (7 years of lessons until my mother let me quit – she had visions of a concert pianist daughter, don’t know why) or the guitar (I used to be the proverbial Girl Guide campfire/college hippie self-accompanist) any more, though my guitar sits patiently behind my door.
But as you get older, you can pretty much do as you please – do you WANT to develop that part of your brain?
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Lulu: “Our Dada used to play clarinet in high school band, but he eventually got kicked off of it because he ‘sounded like a chicken’ and put on bass clarinet instead!”
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