Strings, Spirituality and Stillness with Jennifer Roig-Francolí

Jennifer Roig-Francolí shares her journey from a young violinist finding solace in her art, to a place of spiritual exploration and self-discovery. We discuss the challenges she faced in her artistic life, including a pivotal moment when she realized she was not using her creativity in a healthy way, and the profound neck pain that changed her path. Through the Alexander Technique, Jennifer found not just relief from her physical discomfort, but also a new way to reconnect with her creativity. 

Jennifer discusses her creative childhood, Suzuki training and meteoric run of competitions and solo work, before the ambition dissolved, orchestra life set in, and her relationship with music dimmed. 

When no treatment could alleviate her stubborn neck pain, a friend urged Jennifer to revisit the Alexander Technique. Within a few lessons, the pain vanished and something deeper shifted – mood, movement, and a sense of ease that didn’t require effort.

Together, we unpack what Alexander work actually is beyond posture, and Jennifer shares a simple on-air exercise that anyone can try in seconds, demonstrating how noticing without fixing often melts strain and steadies the voice. 

Jennifer is the creator of the Art of Freedom Method built around five pillars – purpose, mind, body, spirit, artistry – to help musicians and non-musicians create from presence rather than pressure, and author of Make Great Music with Ease: The Secret to Smarter Practice, Confident Performance, and Living a Happier Life.

Find out more about The Art of Freedom and Jennifer here

creativityfound.co.uk

Researched, edited and produced by Claire Waite Brown
Music: Day Trips by Ketsa Undercover / Ketsa Creative Commons License Free Music Archive - Ketsa - Day Trips

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Transcript

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Jennifer Roig-Francoli 1:01

I felt that it was easy to be myself and express myself through the violin, and I did not find it easy to be myself and express myself verbally. I did progressively get less happy and frustrated. I know now, looking back, that I was not using my creativity in a healthy way, well, I wasn't using it, basically. I was gonna say in a healthy way, but I really wasn't using it much at all. Really, within a few lessons, my neck pain was completely gone. But not only that, everything else in my body felt different and better and freer, more mobile, flexible, and I just was blown away by the change. I also started feeling happier very quickly.

Claire Waite Brown 1:51

It was very easy and also very difficult. And I'm like, oh no, that sounds very challenging for me.

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 1:56

I could teach you right now, really quick, if you want. Go on then. You know, I can do it in a way that anybody listening can do it too. Yeah, yeah, that would be lovely.

Claire Waite Brown 2:06

Hi, I'm Claire. For this podcast, I chat with people who have found or refound their creativity as adults. We'll explore their childhood experiences of the art, discuss how they came to the artistic practices they now love, and consider the barriers they may have experienced between the two. We'll also explore what it is that people value and gain from their newfound artistic pursuits. And how their creative lives enrich their practical, necessary, everyday lives. This time I'm chatting with Jennifer Roy Franco Lee. Hi Jennifer, how are you? I'm great. Thank you so much for having me here today. You're very welcome. I'm looking forward to our chat. Start by telling me about your current creative life. What does that look like right now?

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 2:58

Oh my goodness, what a question. Well, right now I am uh developing my ability to be in the present and go with what comes up. And that's not an easy thing to do always. So I'm I'm actually practicing that really more for myself at the moment. That's my creative practice. If I talk about what I'm doing on the outside, I have courses for musicians and I do coaching for musicians, and that's a really creative outlet in the teaching of it. Brilliant.

Claire Waite Brown 3:28

So music then.

Young Jennifer 'Needs' a Violin

Claire Waite Brown 3:29

Tell me about the environment you grew up in. What kind of creative activities were encouraged in you as a child and as a young person?

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 3:39

I feel so fortunate because, well, especially my mother is incredibly creative. She has tried pretty much everything I can think of and done it well. Anything from stained glass to painting to all kinds of crafts and arts. And so I was really encouraged from a very, very young age to just do things every day. We would just have fun making things together. And then in school, I was also fortunate to go to kind of an experimental school that was part of the university where my dad taught. There was a lot of emphasis on being creative and critical thinking, doing your own thing. And both my parents are musicians. So I was told, I don't really remember this, but my mom says, I said when I was two years old that I needed a violin. So I got one when I was four and um became highly focused on that ever since.

Claire Waite Brown 4:38

Yeah. Violin, I always think of those ones as perhaps more difficult because you don't have as much guidance with where to put your fingers. It's very much sound-based. Like I've played clarinet in the past. I've got guidance of where to place my fingers, but but violin must be more, I don't know, it's more soundy, intuitive to know you're in the right place and hear that you're playing the right notes.

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 5:01

Yeah, that's right. And it's not like a guitar that has frets either, or a piano that has keys. And you really have to train your ear, your hearing, to be able to hear what the pitch is that you want to create in your mind before it actually comes out. I took some Indian classical violin lessons some years ago as an adult. I gave up pretty quickly because it's a huge shift and I didn't have the time to practice it basically. But one thing that I learned that fascinated me is that they aren't even allowed to play an instrument until they've learned how to sing first. And part of the training in singing, a big part of it, is to be able to hear what you want to sing. So it's really training the mind and the inner ear and the intention to be able to produce what you want to create. Wow.

Claire Waite Brown 5:54

How did you learn? You already said that you were very single-minded about this, and it was from a very young age. How did that whole process of learning and continuing and having the passion and practicing, how did that all play out for you as you grew up?

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 6:10

You may have heard of this method called the Suzuki method. Yeah. Which is a Japanese method started by Dr. Shinichi Suzuki. And when I was four, my mom found out about the Suzuki method and got me into that. When I did it, it was in the early 70s. And my mom learned the more traditional way of doing it that was being done at that time. It's evolved over the years, of course, like anything. But at that time, the way it was taught was that the parent, usually the mother, would be your main teacher and work with you and actually learn the instrument with you every day. So I had weekly lessons and there were group classes with other kids. And it was so much about enjoying what you're doing and making it fun and creative. There are two principles that come to mind. One of them is that Suzuki called it being nurtured by love. He has a whole book called Nurtured by Love on that methodology. And the other one is what he called the mother tongue method, where you're actually learning how to play music as if you would learn your mother tongue, your language. So you learn by listening and imitating and repetition rather than from reading. There are other, especially Western methods where you start by learning the notes and reading what's on the page. And that's not how you learn a language. Your first language, when you're a baby, you learn by listening and imitating. So that's how I learned from a young age. And it was fun.

Claire Waite Brown 7:51

Yeah, that is so interesting. Were you planning on continuing that and having music and the violin as a major part of your grown-up life?

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 8:03

Yes. I had absolutely no doubt in my mind. And I was encouraged. So there was no reason for me to doubt that I would become a famous international violin soloist someday. So that was my childhood assumption. And my parents just supported that and did all the things that needed to be done to get me there. So I started competing pretty soon when I was very young, and I was performing really soon. I tended to win the competitions, and so I performed a lot with orchestras as soloist and just actually was doing that as a kid and a teenager all the way up until pretty much age 19.

Claire Waite Brown 8:50

Do you have an inkling now, looking back, or maybe you did at the time, of why violin was so important and this trajectory was important to you?

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 9:02

Yes. I mean, now I'm 55 and I've spent many years looking back on my life journey and making sense of things the best I can. And of course it's not over yet, and there's still a lot to uncover and discover. I think I chose the violin. I did choose it myself because my mother was a cellist at that time and my father played the viola. They used to play string quartets in our house when I was really little. And so I'd listen, and I just liked the sound of the violin. And my personality, I guess, fits with that. I liked the melodies. I'm a bit of a leader type, so I liked the voice that stood out, right? With the melodies. And um, so I was attracted to the violin itself. And another piece of all of it was that I felt that it was easy to be myself and express myself through the violin. And I did not find it easy to be myself and express myself verbally. I had a hard time being part of groups and in school. I didn't really connect very well to other kids my age. It was easier for me to be around adults and connect with the teachers and things like that. So there was something about music that came really easily to me. I also got an incredible amount of positive feedback for my abilities. And so I got a lot of love and attention from doing well as a violinist that fed it, and so there's a lot of that.

Claire Waite Brown 10:39

Interesting. Okay, what happened at age 19

Shift in Ambition

Claire Waite Brown 10:43

then? Was there a big thing that made you stop? Or yes.

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 10:52

Okay. What I did stop was having the ambition to become a famous international soloist. I really dropped that pretty much from one day to the next. And this is touching on a subject that really is deeply personal and the most important thing in my life, actually, is the creative spirit. People can use whatever word they want. It could be God or spirit or source or universe or nature. To me, it doesn't really matter what word we use, but I grew up in a family that was very loving, but didn't have any kind of spiritual basis. It just wasn't part of my upbringing at all. So for me personally, I think I turned music into that. It was my spiritual sustenance without knowing it. It was also my emotional refuge because when I was upset or feeling lonely or down, you know, as kids and teenagers get, of course, we all do, um, I would often go into my room at night and then in the dark, turn the lights off and just play my violin until you know I got all the emotions out and processed them. And so it was really a huge support for me personally. And when I was 19, I met my husband to be, who introduced me to a different way of looking at life. And I was curious, I was open-minded, and he had a lot of interesting things to say about spirituality. And so I listened, and it was obvious to me that that is actually what I was looking for all along, but suddenly I had words for it and also some practices that I could do, like meditation. And I was interested in contemplative practices and comparative religions. And it was like, oh, I don't need the violin anymore. So I I did sort of throw the baby out with the bathwater in hindsight. And it's been a long, interesting journey along the way. But I didn't actually quit the violin. I kept playing. I just my heart wasn't in it in the same way. And I started playing in orchestras, which is something I never really wanted to do as a kid because I saw orchestra members and they didn't look happy to me. So that's part of why I wanted to be a soloist to do my own thing and be happy.

Claire Waite Brown 13:20

So then when you were playing in orchestras, were you happy?

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 13:26

No.

Orchestra Life and Losing Joy

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 13:27

Well, I guess it's yes and no. Yeah, there's so much there. I never had any performance anxiety. I always had performance excitement. I played at Carnegie Hall two, three times before twice, I think, before I was 20. I've since played more times than that. But even that, I didn't get nervous being a soloist at all. But the first orchestra job, real orchestra job that I won an audition for, the opening that they had at that time was for a position in the back of the second violin section. So I won that audition and ended up in the back of the seconds. And that's the first time I ever felt nervous because I was used to expressing my voice. And in this situation, I, of course, went to conservatory and learned how to be a good orchestra musician. And I was playing an orchestra since the time I was seven. So I knew I wasn't supposed to stick out. I was taught if you can hear yourself, you're playing too loud. So there was a lot of trying to make myself quieter and smaller. And it just was really hard for me to adapt to that. And I had an essential tremor that was diagnosed separately from that before that, actually, that was never an issue. But as soon as I started getting nervous, the essential tremor was amplified. So my bow would start shaking really hard. And then I was worried that people could tell that I was nervous and that that made it worse. So no, I didn't really enjoy that very much. But I have had many absolutely wonderful and transcendent experiences playing in orchestras. I will say that it's not all been negative, but on the whole, it's not really my thing. Very gradually, I became less happy. And part of it had to do with feeling uh somewhat isolated from uh other people like me. And I felt that it was getting harder to connect with people on a deep level. There are a lot of reasons for that, and I can't really go into all of them right now here, but but I did progressively get less happy and frustrated. I know now looking back that I was not using my creativity in a healthy way, well, I wasn't using it, basically. I was gonna say in a healthy way, but I really wasn't using it much at all. In fact, when I started getting more interested in spirituality, I adopted what I now think are some really kind of messed up ways of thinking about it, where um I already had some kind of a mind-body split where I had this assumption that mental activities or intellectual activities, or like reading, I was a bookworm. All I did was play the violin and read books. And so um, I had this prejudice against so-called physical activities like sports and things. My brother was the one that was great at sports. He did all the physical things and he had tons and tons of friends. And I was the more introverted, quiet, artistic one that was reading books all the time. And so in my mind, I had a really unhealthy way of thinking about that. Like there was something better about being in your head. And that worked for me as a violinist the way I was doing it. I never thought of playing the violin as a physical activity, which might seem weird to someone from the outside because immediately you start moving your arms if you're thinking about a violinist. But I didn't think about it that way. It was all about the ideas and taking those creative ideas into the violin and out with music. The fingers and arms were important and I had to learn skills, but they weren't, they didn't seem important to me. And so I know now, we can talk in a bit about the Alexander technique, how I got into that. That kind of cured me of that unhealthy mind-body split idea, the belief that there is a difference between the mind and the body, or that they're separate, because they really can't be separated. But I was doing my best to separate them for not good reasons. Um, and also spiritually, I had the totally wrong idea that the body wasn't

Discovering the Alexander Technique

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 18:14

important. And uh, so, you know, meditation is important, but that was more the mind and the spirit, but not the body. So one day, really from one day to the next, I got neck pain. And it was really weird because my older son, who was, I think, about four at the time, was complaining of neck pain for the two weeks before that. You know, I told him, Oh, don't worry about it, it's nothing. But finally I had to take him to the doctor. The doctor said, Don't worry, it's nothing. Just make sure he keeps moving it and massage it a bit. The next day, his neck was totally fine, and mine started doing exactly the same thing. And mine didn't go away, even though I told myself, it's nothing, just keep moving it and massage it. Nothing worked. I went to doctors, I went to chiropractor, I did massage, nothing helped. And that's when I really think it was like divine intervention at that point, because I was really quite unhappy having this pain. But I found the Alexander technique, and that completely changed everything in my life.

Claire Waite Brown 19:23

Wow. Do explain to us what the Alexander technique is in as succinct a manner as as you can. And um I'm guessing you were looking for something because nothing was working with this pain.

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 19:38

The pain would not go away, and I I needed help to make it go away, and nobody was being able to help me. And it was really not such a big deal, except that I couldn't turn my head to the right. Well, we're in I'm in America, so I need to look to the right to look into the backseat of the car, right, to see my kids. And other than that, I sort of had no problem living with it, but I had to fix it. And I had a a good friend who insisted that I had to try the Alexander technique again. I had tried it twice before, like a decade before that, and maybe a year before, and I didn't really like it. I thought this is not for me. But she insisted. She said, You have to try it again. I know you would love it. You just need to find the right teacher. And so I didn't have anything else to try. So I said, okay, I'll try it one more time. And I was fortunate, very, very fortunate to find my teacher because he was the right teacher for me. So I went to him and really within a few lessons, my neck pain was completely gone. But not only that, everything else in my body felt different and better and freer, more mobile, flexible. And I just was blown away by the change. I also started feeling happier very quickly. So it was very, very mysterious to me what was going on. So I took more lessons and ended up training as a teacher in this mysterious thing. So you probably want to know what this mysterious thing is now.

unknown 21:10

Yes.

Claire Waite Brown 21:11

Especially after you just said what wonderful results it gave you.

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 21:16

Well, there are a lot of ways to talk about the Alexander technique, and most people think it's about posture. If anybody listening goes to look it up, you'll probably find lots of pictures of teachers using their hands to guide students gently with movement, like sitting in a chair or standing. And I was I was taught traditionally that way. But I am really, really interested in what I think it's fundamentally about, which is about getting to know how you're thinking and how your thoughts are influencing how you experience yourself and your body. So for example, if I get really angry, I get tight, you know, and there's maybe a fight, flight, freeze response. Or if I if I have performance anxiety or I get nervous talking with people, if you if you have a problem like that, the body stiffens, it gets tight, it contracts with well, basically it's a fear response. So when you're thinking a certain way, your body reflects your mind. Your body's innocent, it just gives you what your mind is creating. So when I had those first lessons, my teacher helped me to realize that I was thinking in a way that was causing that neck pain. And it wasn't that clear to me because he actually didn't talk a lot. It was mostly with touch that we that he was helping me. But I did get enough of an idea that that's what it was about that I went to the library and I read all of Alexander's books, which are not easy and I don't really recommend them because they're in Edwardian language. He was born in 1869, and they're not the easiest things to read. But I loved it. I devoured it because I was just really highly motivated to learn what this thing was. So I wanted to learn how to do it for myself, which I was not learning how to do in the lessons. They are educational, but they're also therapeutic. And with the touch, uh, it just it's very, very healing to have that touch. But I wanted to learn how to do that for myself. So I ended up going to a three-year teacher training, 1,600 hours of training to get certified. And then I started using it to help musicians. And that was the beginning of a new era in my life as an Alexander Technique teacher.

Claire Waite Brown 23:49

Yeah. And tell me then, is that what allowed you to pick up the violin in the way you wanted to again? Like the solo work. Was that all connected, do you think?

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 24:05

Yes, very much connected, but it took me many years, many years to come back and really include the violin into that again. I did bring them to my very first lessons. I took a series of 30 lessons with my first teacher over a number of months. He encouraged me to bring the violin, but there was no pushing or pressure of any kind whatsoever to perform or even play it. So sometimes I would bring it and not even get it out of the case. There were a couple lessons that were completely life-changing in terms of the violin, and one of them, it was towards the beginning of the lesson, and I got the violin, or I think I was going to get the violin out. I'm trying to remember now. And it was there in the case, and I just was standing there looking at it. And all I remember is that I thought, I don't really want to play it. I I would like to quit. And that was the first time I had ever voiced that, or probably even let myself think that thought, that part of me wanted to quit and just give it up completely. It's like that wasn't allowed in part of my brain. Who would I be without the violin? So this wonderful teacher of mine allowed me to just be myself and said, Well, what would that be like? Sure, you could quit. I don't remember the exact words, but he gave me permission that I wasn't being able to give myself to quit if I wanted to quit. And that that was so liberating. And in the next moment, I thought, well, but no, that would be really sad. And then he said, Well, why don't you get the violin out and play sad? So there was a bit of that. And then there was another time where I got the violin out and was just playing open strings and also intoning with the voice at the same time, like a hum. And suddenly it struck me really, really, really clearly that that was a prayer. It was like a light bulb. Suddenly I realized, oh, I can have this heartfelt connection with my creative spirit, God, source, love. I often use the word love with capital L because I think everybody can relate to that. I had that in my heart at that moment and was able to express that through the violin with ease. And to me, suddenly I realized that is a prayer. That's a real heartfelt prayer, the way I want to pray. And it wasn't a formal thing in any way. It was mine. It came to me. And the funny thing is that I didn't really follow up on that very much until many years later. There were just so many other things that I needed to go through. But I'm coming more and more and more back to that and starting to teach that actually these days. So that's really exciting to me. That's coming full circle in an even bigger way than doing the solo stuff. And I did do some of that again to answer your question. And I did make a solo MP3 CD during the pandemic. That was my project. So I did come full circle with the performing as well.

Claire Waite Brown 27:35

I was going to ask about the follow-up because it seems it's a very big event that happened for you. And then that doesn't necessarily mean that you skip out and you just start embracing this whole new you. Um, I can imagine that would be quite a lot to cope with and would take some time to figure out. You said at the beginning about being open to your own creativity. And so tell me about now. How do you feel now? How you embrace what you want to do creatively or spiritually, or about the Alexander technique, and then touch on if you can, if you have any thoughts for the future or aspirations for the future.

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 28:19

Yes. Well, like I started today, you ask me what I'm doing today. Yeah. More and more I'm getting the sense that the most important thing for me, and really I I believe for everybody, is to be paying attention to what's going on inside of ourselves right now.

The Art of Freedom: Integrating Mind, Body, and Spirit

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 28:45

Like really, really right now. And like the practical way to do that, to integrate the mind, the body, the emotions, the soul, the spirit, everything that you believe is you. How do we be ourselves and be whole in this moment? See, I call my work the Art of Freedom method for conscious living and masterful artistry. And the Alexander technique is a huge part of that, but I've expanded the container to give myself that freedom. I think there's more to it, more to life than the Alexander technique, as wonderful as it is. So to be all-inclusive, I have five life pillars, I call them purpose, mind, body, spirit, and artistry. And that artistry is really the like the art of living. And it's the art of making music or speaking or writing, parenting, whatever the creative pursuit is, and that can be anything. We can turn anything into an art. So this is what I teach, and it's always about what's happening to me, to you, to us right now. And the question, of course, is always subjective. What's happening to me right now? And that means shifting our curiosity, shifting our attention to wonder with childlike open wonder to what am I noticing about? I can start with the body right now. It's like, what am I noticing about my body? To just be present and be with whatever's showing up inside of myself. Then there's a process that I teach based on actually it's called primal Alexander. My partner is the creator of a new kind of mode modality of Alexander technique that doesn't require touch. That's how I do all of my work online these days, since 2018, actually. So I only teach online without touch because it's all about the thinking. So for me, this is this is as creative as it gets, because if I can be Curious and notice what's happening in me in the moment. And I can let go and change things that are happening in the moment within me. Then I can also have an intention. Okay, what do I want to do next? And how do I want to do that? Maybe it's even I want to walk across the room and open the door. Well, I could do that in a mindless, habitual way and get there really fast. But the way I do it is probably going to be using much more effort, more tension than necessary. And if I keep living that way over time, I'll get back pain, neck pain, whatever. But if I pause and I become more mindful and present to my experience in the moment, and I become like a little child and curious about what's happening to me as I walk over to the door and more flexible in my mind when the body also reflects that. Open-minded flexibility of mind, all of that being present. The body is part of that. So it's it's a wellness practice, but it's also super creative. And it's, I think, the easiest thing to do and the most challenging thing to do is to be really present to our experience and then

Live Mini Practice On Air

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 32:09

decide what do I want? And then have an intention and create that in my life. So this is all really kind of abstract, but in the moment it's super practical. But like when I'm coaching my clients, we're maybe looking at, okay, do you want to take that audition and get that job? Oh, you are stressed about it, you're sick of taking auditions and you feel really bad about it. You think you're never going to win and you're never going to get a job. Then so we're looking at how those thoughts are actually perpetuating the lack of success. It's not just about the body at all. It's about what do you want to create in your life? What kind of a life do you want? So I'm trying to do that more and more for myself. Because if I don't do it for myself, how can I, you know, in integrity help anyone else? I think it has to start here. Yeah.

Claire Waite Brown 33:03

It doesn't sound easy to me at all. You said it was very easy and also very difficult. And I'm like, oh no, that sounds very challenging for me.

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 33:11

I could teach you right now, really quick, if you want. Go on then. You know, I can do it in a way that anybody listening can do it too. Yeah, yeah, that would be lovely. So right now, as you're sitting there, what are you noticing about your body? What's showing up? What do you feel?

Claire Waite Brown 33:27

Well, I'm very tense right now because I've hunched my shoulders up and I'm pressing my hand against my chest because I just said to you that doesn't sound very easy. And so now I'm like kind of bracing myself um without even knowing that until you just said what am I doing?

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 33:43

But noticing that is really easy, right?

Claire Waite Brown 33:45

Yeah.

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 33:46

Yeah, that's easy. And what happened right now?

Claire Waite Brown 33:48

What did I because I noticed it, I tried to um remedy it by relaxing my shoulders and getting the pressure off. My hand is still on my chest, but I'm not pressing it into my chest.

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 33:58

Okay. And what if what if you just notice the hand right now and you don't try to change yourself at all? You just notice it. Okay. That's right. Okay, your voice just changed, didn't it? Yes. Yeah. What happened? What did you what do you notice if you just leave yourself alone?

Claire Waite Brown 34:19

Well, it kind of went very calm.

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 34:21

Yeah. That was easy, wasn't it? It was, yeah. Yeah. That's all there is to it, really.

Claire Waite Brown 34:26

Thank you very much. That was a surprise for today. Oh, brilliant. Thank you. Um, back to the show. Um, you've written a book. Is this about these techniques?

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 34:38

Yes, it is, actually, but it's about my life as well. The book has three parts, and it is written for musicians, but I've had so many people tell me that it's not just for musicians, and anybody could benefit from reading it. So the first part of the book is about the challenges we face in those categories that I mentioned: finding purpose, mind, you know, the thoughts that we have, the negative thoughts and self-sabotaging thoughts. Then we have the body and the aches and the pains and all that. And then we have spiritual creative crises and lack of motivation and all that. And then we have the artistry, which can be for musicians, specific things like, oh, I can't play in tune, I'll never be able to play this rhythm correctly. All the artistic stuff is in there, causing problems for musicians. So that's all of part one. And I have lots of stories about people I've worked with, like client stories that make it kind of fun. It's not just about me, it's very much about musicians as a whole. And part two really is about me. It's the process. Much of what we've talked about today is in there, and of course, there's a lot more about how I found music and was then starting to suffer, and then found the Alexander technique, but then found primal Alexander. My boyfriend is the creator of that. His name is Mio Morales, credit where credit is due. So there's a lot about that, finding that missing link to what I believe is like pure Alexander, because Alexander didn't have a teacher putting their hands on to guide with touch either. And he solved his own vocal performance problems. He got hoarse as an actor, and that's the origin of this technique. He solved the problems himself by thinking differently. So I found ways to teach without my hands. That's part two. Part three is the practical methodology, sharing like what we did just now. You and me is just like the tip of the iceberg, obviously. But it shows you how simple and easy it is to step into that. And then to be able to bring that immediate instant ability to access calm, even in performance or at an audition. I'll just add that I think this technique is so, so, so important for our world right now, for everybody, because we have war and horrible, awful things going on right now. And people are really, really stressed and scared. There's a lot of fear. And if people knew how to just right now be present, there's always ease and joy and happiness on the inside. So to be able to immediately shift our attention and be like curious little children and notice the good things inside of us that are always there. We don't have to depend on so much what's going on the out on the outside. We become independent and interdependent. Because when we heal ourselves, we're healing everybody around us too. So that's the book.

Claire Waite Brown 37:45

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 37:48

How can people connect with you? Yeah, thank you. The book is called Make Great Music with Ease: The Secret to Smarter Practice, Confident Performance, and Living a Happier Life. And that's available on Amazon. And my website has lots of stuff about my work with musicians. And that is www.artofreedom.me. So it's.me. And I'm also very visible and active on Facebook. That's my main social media outlet to connect with people and very easily accessible. And I also have a YouTube channel that has my violin performances as well as lots of teaching videos. There's actually a video called Mind Body Awareness for Musicians, which would be helpful for anybody, that helps you use the ability to notice ease inside of yourself and make it a two-minute practice to bring calm into your everyday life and the things you do. To find the channel, it's just Jennifer Ruck, Franklin.

Claire Waite Brown 38:55

Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Jennifer, and um giving me a bit of insight as well that I wasn't expecting. That was really lovely. Thank you so much.

Jennifer Roig-Francoli 39:05

Thank you so much, Claire. Thank you to everybody listening. I hope this was useful.

Claire Waite Brown 39:11

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, perhaps you'd like to financially contribute to future episodes at buymeacoffee.com slash creativityfound. There's a link in the show notes. If you are listening on a value for value enabled app, such as Fountain, TrueFans, or Podcast Guru, feel free to send a few saps my way. And if you have no idea of what I'm talking about, you can find out more by listening to my sister podcast called Podcasting 2.0 in practice.