Meet Cary Tedder

We recently connected with Cary Tedder and have shared our conversation below.

Cary, we are so happy that our community is going to have a chance to learn more about you, your story and hopefully even take in some of the lessons you’ve learned along the way. Let’s start with self-care – what do you do for self-care and has it had any impact on your effectiveness?

I practice Kriya Yoga and Pilates every day. Having a strong connection between body and mind is absolutely crucial to optimal performance. Not in a competitive way, but in a method of practice (sadhana) oriented toward healing and wholeness. The effects of these practices can be observed and felt by my music students, who often are astonished to realize just how little they know about their bodies, to say nothing of their minds.

Yoga sadhana has over many years helped me deepen my personal sense of presence, wonder, ease, and curiosity. These traits, when applied to the lessons being taught, can be very beneficial for a student, as well as the teacher. It’s often not about following a lesson plan, but instead being available with the student where they are right now, and assessing what lesson and methods are needed. This organic approach is often improvisational, or tangential, which requires patience, acceptance of failure, creative thinking, and deep listening, all of which become more developed and acute with a disciplined and consistent daily Yoga practice.

Pilates is the path to return to life. As we grow and become less active, more sedentary, more infirm and ill, we feel as though nothing can be done to stave off the onset of disease and old age. But the Contrology method coined by Joseph Pilates, offers the way to Return to Life. Indeed, it’s the title of his book. Pilates practice will guarantee a person the ability to move freely in the widest range of motion, all possible movement available to the human body. This may sound like hyperbole, but I have yet to find another more effective or reliable process for developing one’s “KQ” or kinesthetic quotient (the intelligence of the physical body). Having an adept understanding of the functions of the moving body systems, a Pilates student can gain strength, flexibility, confidence, anatomical knowledge, balance, proprioception, improved lung and motor function, just to name a few. I suggest Pilates to all my students and friends due to the many benefits I have received from its practice.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

My current undertaking is a holistic music education studio called The Music Tree.

Beyond music lessons for recitals or performance, The Music Tree offers students a space to explore, play, grow, and discover who they are as creative people. We take an “Education over training” approach, which puts the student’s personal development at the center of lessons, rather than focusing on accomplishing prescribed tasks or curricula.

The reason for it being called the Music Tree is so that a student understands the profound relationship between nature and music. A few things to keep in mind:

1. From tiny seeds grow mighty lives.
We start small and grow slow! Taking time at the beginning will make all the difference in how far a student will go. Remember, plant a seed today, it takes a while before a tree stands in its place. Nourish and protect the seed, give it light and air and sun and love, and it will grow into something beautiful all on its own.

2. Root down and reach for the Sun.
Root down in fundamentals and basic principles. Root down in disciplined practice and knowing your history. Root down in learning how to really listen with the ear of the heart. Reach for the Sun when you strive to be like the artists you love. Reach again in your deepest burning to grow into something great. Reach for the Sun in the texture of your playing, your compositions, your improvisations….after all, these are your life making itself known.

3. It’s okay to branch.
Trees are made of many branches heading in all kinds of crazy directions! Let yourself branch in your pursuits, too! If you’re studying music and you want to be a better singer, you have to practice and study breathing, and if you practice breathing, you’ll want to study the muscles and bones and ligaments of the throat and diaphragm. You may start to wonder how the oxygen from your lungs gets into your blood, so you start learning about the circulatory system and the heart. And the nutrients in your blood, put there by your digestive system, so you start learning more about what you eat! And you want to know how it’s grown, so you start learning about farms and food production and the environmental factors contributing to these things. etc. etc. etc. Then, music is not the sole focus of our time in the studio, but becomes the catalyst for learning itself. What we practice at The Music Tree is how to be music makers, but what we’re DOING is learning how to learn. If you take a many branched approach, one day your wisdom will give shade and shelter to many other lives, dropping fruit in their laps and breathing clouds into the sky.

I’m just beginning to grow this seed, but already it has a good start, and much promise ahead of it. I have faith that once I can establish the studio with clear intentions, it will attract the people who might happen to need what it is I offer. Not trying to make a big thing, but something of genuine beauty.

Eventually, I would love to involve the studio and the students in community efforts as well. To perhaps donate money or time to local businesses or schools, to sponsor roads and park clean-up programs, to practice public gardening and other services. This is a very exciting idea to me. After all, if we at The Music Tree are going to practice healing ourselves, it will be necessary to encourage all people around us to heal as well.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

1. Work hard and be nice to people.
Being willing to do the hard work can really make you a valuable asset to any company or organization. Many people shy away from this, but see it as an opportunity for growth and you will be unstoppable. Also, survival of the friendliest is real. It’s said that a person’s spiritual development can be measured by their cheerfulness. Don’t be false or put-on, but instead be generous with your celebrations and thanksgivings.

2. Read books.
My mother and teachers encouraged me to read, and now it’s the foundation of my knowledge and methods of practice. Just read a whole butt-ton of books on a wide array of subjects. Become at least a little familiar with a great many things. This will fuel your drive, and heighten your curiosity. Read fiction and myths to develop your wonder, feeling, interoception, and empathy.

3. Respect your rest.
Get good rest whenever you need it. Do not let anyone try to convince you that rest equals laziness. Nothing in the universe grows without a period of rest, so rest up! Get good sleep and prioritize a lifestyle that allows you the opportunity to rest deeply at least once a day. People say “Work hard, Play Hard!”, but if you’re playing properly, it’s hard work….so now the phrase is “Work Hard, Rest Hard!” Follow this and you will generate balance and gladness.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I’m looking for collaboration with musicians, artists, community leaders, and educators of all kinds. The good thing about something like music and music education is that it is inclusive by nature. No one is not allowed here! I would hope that anyone who wanted to make music would be free to approach me, the studio, or any of the students at The Music Tree in order to generate a collaboration project.

Novice, intermediate, advanced, any level of musician. Any instrument. Lyricists and poets and storytellers, griots and playwrights, healers and empaths, any person who wishes to explore their creative and emotional potential with their words and sounds.

Also, any person who is interested in healing and the arts as a means for self-understanding and transformation. I think that often people consider “the Arts” to be a luxury or a commodity for production/consumption, but this is a very narrow vision of what is available to us all as expressive creatures. Culture and community hinge on the artists and dreamers, mystics, clowns, creators and visionaries who often play outside the lines of societal norms. Without encouragement and nurturing in this area, an otherwise brilliant artistic voice may suffer, never develop, or worse still, think that these are defunct features about themself. This is happening in an all-too-common way in the vast educational models that tend to over-emphasize mathematics, linguistics, and logic based learning, while disregarding the humanities, creative arts, and intuitive subjects that allow people to become more fully themselves, with their own genius overflowing to inspire others on their paths.

Ultimately I would like to work with any open-minded, strong-hearted people who wish to inspire those around them. After all, I believe that inspiration is one of the greatest gifts a teacher can offer their students, and indeed the world.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://themusictreestudio.com
• Youtube: Coming soon
• Soundcloud: None
• Other: Not everything will be brought to your doorstep. Often one is called to brave the treacherous, wonderful world in search of a rare and beautiful thing that grows beyond the reaches of capitalistic commerce and trade. In the very back of a distant woods, a rare flower grows….if you can search it out, and in time be lucky enough to find it, you might just learn how to heal your wounds. The wounds that haunt the past, the wounds that contort and control the present, and the wounds that await in the future. All of these are possible, but none of these is necessary.

Image Credits

Billy Tighe

Andre Quiles