I have to be honest, for the past couple of months I haven't been trying all that hard to progress with my lessons.  I've been suffering from acute tendonitis in my left elbow.  I learned from my doctor that there are 2 types, "tennis" and "golfers" because the tendons affected are on the outside and inside respectively.

Apparently I have both at the same time due to work related repetitive stress.

This has made it very painful to practice, especially when combined with my general joint stiffness, to the point I've been thinking of giving up playing all together.  With therapy and exercises, anti-inflamatories, and time off from playing and work, my arm at least doesn't hurt all the time and I can actually bend my elbow again without wincing.  It's still not healed, but I'm improving.

But that's not the miracle part.

The miracle is something I found as a snippet in a video about something else.  (As an aside, why are all these things always hidden and not in "how to" videos on their own?)  In the video the instructor mentioned the best and fastest method on how to learn new music is bar by bar instead of phrase by phrase.  (In short; play the first bar 7 times.  Then play the next bar 7 times.  Then play both bars 7 times.  Then play the next bar 7 times, play the trio 7 times, and so on.  When playing the bar, concentrate on fixing the mistakes in your playing and fingering if any.  When playing the entire phrase with the new bar added at the end, concentrate of getting the new bar integrated with the phrase smoothly.  Fix any mistakes, play 7 times to set the "fix", then go on to the next bar.)

I recently uploaded a new video of my most current lesson to my channel and moved on hoping that at some point in the next 2 months, or maybe 3, I could finish that lesson and post the video of it without crippling myself in the process.  The new lesson is the Waltz by Brahms in Suzuki 2 and it uses almost every technique I've learned up to this point.  It's not a complex piece but it's not simple either, there are dynamics for almost everything in there, and it dropped some of the helpful markings (like bow direction) I've been using.

I applied the "bar by bar" method to the new piece and that's when the miracle happened.

Within 30 minutes I could play the entire piece.  Not perfectly and there are issues with some of my dynamics, but I could play all 5 lines in their entirety.  This is something I've never experienced before.  Best part is that my elbow only ached a little bit.

I stopped after that half hour and waited until today to play again.  After warming up with scales, I tried to play the waltz again and discovered I could still play the piece from start to finish.  It's true that some of yesterdays "fixes" didn't hold and I had to work on them again today, but for the most part I could play it from start to finish without it sounding completely horrible.

To me that is a miracle and it renewed my desire to move forward with my lessons.  Which is another miracle in its own right.  So much so that I had to share the "how to" tip... when learning a new piece tackle it bar by bar and not phrase by phrase.