As satisfied as I have been with the Chopin year this year, a celebration of 200 years of one of my favorite composer’s life, I now think back to a time when I had contemplated quitting piano entirely.

A concert pianist is a rare specimen, bred out of a panoply of nerves, dedication, auspicious encounters and fatigue. There are so many mood swings born out of hundreds of thousands of moods themselves, it is impossible to predict what one will feel like 2 minutes before showtime. Concert pianists could ideally just live off of pills and then leave the music-making to some higher power. How can one avenge the sanitized marketplace needs of a perfect recording, note-perfect performances and not be allowed to satisfy an ephemeral whim of spontaneous outrage and fantasy?

I had enough. Yes, there are still days when I actually use the present form of that phrase, but let’s put the the negativity aside.

I was sick of the profession, sick of the system that grinds itself dry.

I wanted out.

I hid away.

Music no longer satisfied me, instead it had devoured me alive.

It took me several months until I picked up the phone and convinced myself that hypnosis could help me get my A.S.S. (Associative Sixth Sense) back on track.

After spending the first few sessions on forgive and forget techniques that certainly served their purpose in getting me back into a positive mood. I spent the next few sessions on depersonalization techniques designed to allow me to view the world from another person’s shoes.

The breakthrough came to me when my ever clever hypnotist instructed me to climb up a mountain and at one point asked me whether I would like to continue climbing up or I can take the ‘easy’ way down.

I continued climbing up and when I reached the top he said, “now take a look around you, see all the people?” And indeed, there were hundreds of them. And then he added, “they’re waiting for you!”

And that’s when I completely shivered.

Eureka! Everything made sense at that one moment in time.

Einstein once said that to solve a problem a person has to enter another state of consciousness. That’s exactly what hypnosis does.

Incredible can be hypnosis when it is done by the right person who can tailor their program to the patient’s direct needs.

Then again it takes two to tango and after all, concert pianists do make great patients.