Inch by inch: incremental progress

One of the things I love about Bikram Yoga is the fact that the postures and their order is always the same. while some people criticize this aspect of Bikram, but I really enjoy it because it allows me to see the progress I am making in strength and flexibility in a more clear/tangible way. Take this pose for example:

This pose is known as "separate leg stretching pose," unfortunately I don't look this good doing this pose. As you can see, in this pose you are supposed to bend forward, grab the outside of your heels and eventually bend your elbows and touch the top of your head to the floor. When I first tried this pose I couldn't even come close: the teacher told me to put my hands on the floor between my feet. At first I could only touch a bit more than the tips of my fingers to the floor, a few months later I could set my hands down flat on the floor, several months later I was able to occasionally touch my big toes, a few days ago I started to be able to touch the outsides of my toes. By objective measures I'm still not good at the pose (I look nothing like the picture) but when I look at where I was before I can see that I have made progress, one inch at a time.

So how does this fit with violin teaching? As a teacher, I believe that it is my job to be aware of the "inches" of progress that students are making. It is very easy as a student to feel like you are stagnant in your progress, but easier for a teacher to hear the incremental progress being made.  I always try to make it a point to point out to students the progress I am noticing, especially when a student is struggling. I have had teachers that feel that it is a waste of time to point out what is going well, and instead focus on constructive criticism.  I fundamentally disagree with this philosophy (which fortunately is becoming more rare). I believe that positive feedback about even small improvement is just as important, if not more so, than pointing out what still needs work. Especially when the problem areas are more obvious, such as missed shifts, wrong notes, etc., the student is often already very aware of these faults, but may be so distracted by these that he/she misses the fact that, for example the rhythm problem they had the week before has been fixed, that they played with an especially beautiful tone, or even that they kept their thumb bent on their bow hold for the entire piece. 

(Solid bow hold)

In these cases since the student is already aware of their trouble spots it could actually be more productive to also point out something that they do particularly well or improved on recently to that they can strive to continue their work in that area, and also keep them from feeling too discouraged from what they perceive to be a lack of progress. While the student certainly needs help fixing their problems, sometimes a bit of thoughtful positive feedback about a small area of progress is enough to ward of any feelings of discouragement or hopelessness. One of the things I love about my small Bikram studio is that I fairly frequently get positive feedback about a particular pose that is improving, as it is easy to feel that I am not making any progress especially among the many more flexible yogis in the studio.