Category Archives: Healthy Practice Habits

Staying In Touch With Your Reasoning

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This morning I gave an Alexander Technique lesson to one of my most dedicated students, a professional guitarist who’s been taking weekly lessons from me for over a year and a half. During his lesson I was reminded of one of the ultimate benefits of long term study of the Technique: You cultivate the skill and confidence necessary to solve your own problems.

You do so by learning to analyze the needs of a particular musical task, discerning what you’re actually doing (as opposed to what you believe you’re doing), and deciding if what you’re doing is best for the task, or not.

Then you’re modifying your thinking, reorganizing your efforts in such a way so that what you’re doing gives you the best chance of success in achieving your goal. This more often than not primarily involves subtracting the habitual (unconscious) patterns of tension that interfere with your natural coordination. It rarely (if ever) involves adding something to what you already do.

When you learn to work this way, all the inconsistencies of practicing and performing music become less mysterious, less daunting. As my student said this morning:

“If something is not going well as I play (that normally goes well), I stop and think about what in my thinking has changed to make the outcome of my playing change. Before, I used to get discouraged, believing that things just go bad for no particular reason. Now I realize that if things aren’t going well, it’s because the conditions in myself that encourage things to go well have changed. And I trace that right back to my thinking. I improve the conditions by changing my thinking, then things go back to running smoothly. I don’t go back into panic mode anymore. All I have to do is to remind myself to stay in touch with my reasoning.”

I love that last sentence, especially his words, stay in touch with my reasoning.

F.M. Alexander (the founder of the Alexander Technique), in his book Man’s Supreme Inheritance, wrote that when most people face the unknown in a fearful way, they become “absolutely out of communication with their reason.” When this is the case, he found, the chances become slim that they’ll be able to help themselves, as they are guided by unconscious habit and fear.

Much of what Alexander advocated in his work was staying in touch with the ability to reason, to discern, to make true choices (based upon what can be discerned, and what is possible), not to be exclusively guided by habit. He talked a lot about being able to “step into the unknown”, not only as a way to learn to change your habits, but also, as a way to continuously grow and develop as a conscious human being.

The really great thing about the Alexander Technique is that it is just that: a practical technique that teaches you how to reliably change and improve what you do.

When my student started with me, his thinking was all over the place. He’d tried numerous things to solve some of his technical challenges as a guitarist, most often with inconsistent (or worse) results.

As he put it, “I was always looking for the magic bullet, that one thing that was going to make everything work perfectly. Maybe it was a new hand position, or maybe it was some new form of concentrating on one part of myself, like my fingers. But what I’ve come to know is that there is no magic bullet. As I bring too much attention to one thing, something else always suffers.”

So what has he learned by taking Alexander Technique lessons with me? He’s learned how to notice his habits in relation to the natural coordination that is already established within himself.

In the lessons (through hands on guidance, visual demonstration and verbal explanation) he’s learned how to discern and judge what this natural coordination is. He’s been able to create a set of criteria to act as a sort of lens as he observes himself. When things go wrong, it always comes back to the fact that he’s doing something he needs to stop doing. (Yes, stop doing.)

And most important, he’s learned a reliable way to say no to these habits of tension that interfere with his optimum performance.

This doesn’t mean that everything’s perfect. In the realm of human experience (and especially with musicians and other artists), nothing is perfect. But, it has given him a reliable way to improve. It’s taken him out of the guessing, the trial and error, the frustration, the mystery. It’s put him back in touch with his reason. And that has helped him improve considerably.

If you find yourself becoming frustrated, beguiled and stuck in your improvement, it might help you, too.

Are You Trying To Hear Your Sound By Creating Excess Tension?

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The other day, as I was working with a new Alexander Technique student, I encountered (again) a fairly common habit that many musicians have that usually leads to trouble. Allow me to share.

My student is a singer who came to see me because of problems she’s been having with vocal strain and intonation. As she told me: “I seem to start out okay (actually, she sounds very good), but after about 5 to 10 minutes of singing my voice becomes strident, kind of thin, and my intonation gets difficult to control.” She sang for me for a few minutes and confirmed her own assessment.

It wasn’t hard for me to see how she was creating these problems for herself. As she’d start singing I’d see her stiffening her neck as she thrusted her face upward and forward. This pattern of tension manifested itself through her entire body: shoulders pulled back, lower back arched, knees locked, unyielding ankles and feet.

So I began to work with her with my hands to help her find an easier state of balance as she was standing (without singing).  She was very responsive to the directions I was giving, and was really beginning to release much of her habitual tension: freer neck, widening shoulders and back, neutral pelvis,  softening knees, flexible ankles. She said she felt like “a whole new person”. All good stuff.

In Alexander slang, I’d say she went from doing too much, to a nice state of non-doing (leaving herself alone, to allow for a natural, virtually effortless balance).

I explained to her that this  state of non-doing was a very good place from which to start singing. It was like starting with a blank canvas, and could help her see how much tension she was creating when she sang. So I asked her to sing.

She went immediately from a calm, pliable, free state, to one of immense tension (same pattern as before: head thrusted forward, narrow shoulders, etc.) I asked her if she could sense all that tension she created as she began to sing, and she replied (with a certain amount amazement) that she could:

“Wow! I had no idea I was doing so much in my entire body to try to sing. Working way too hard…”

So I asked her to sing again, but with the thought of not going into that tense pattern, of leaving herself alone. But as she sang again, there was little, if any difference. She’d go right into that tense pattern again.

(This isn’t uncommon when encountering performance habits. They can be quite stubborn. Yet if addressed effectively and consistently, they can be changed. That’s what the Alexander Technique is all about.)

As we proceeded to work more with her singing, my student suddenly came to a great realization: “You know, I think I’m making all this tension in myself as an attempt to hear my voice.”

And she is absolutely right.

You see, to her (and to so many musicians) the sound  is more than what the ear takes in. It can involve other senses (feeling resonance, for example), beliefs (often also about what should be felt), and other expectations.

In the case of my student, she was trying to feel the sound a specific way. She said that’s how she was gauging her intonation. Yet by her own admission, her intonation was dubious as she created this tension.

So we worked on getting her to change her thinking. We shifted the goal from trying to sing well, to leaving herself alone as she sang: no face thrusting, no shoulder raising, no back arching, no knee locking. The aim was not to sing in tune, or even with a good sound. Rather, it was to begin to sing without going into her habitual tension. It would be a bit of an experiment.

In fact, I told her that if she sounded bad, even worse than she’d ever sounded, that she could consider herself successful in this experiment, because it shows she did something differently. She liked that idea.

Well, after a few takes, she finally had a moment when she started to sing without her habits. I had my hands on her, and could tell that she was leaving herself alone very nicely. She continued to sing for about 5 minutes. Her voice was clear, beautiful, consistent…and her intonation was spot on.

She was thrilled, to say the least. “That was hard. I don’t know if I could do that again”, she said. I assured her she could, perhaps not consistently at first, but eventually she’d be able to with considerable consistency.

I asked her, “How was your intonation? Did you notice it?” She replied, ” Oh yes, I could her my pitch so clearly and easily. But the strange thing was, I wasn’t trying to hear my pitch. I could just hear it, and knew it was fine.”

I explained to her that it was this “trying” to hear her pitch that was tempting her to create so much bodily tension, and that this excess tension was interfering with her ability to truly hear herself. That seemed to make sense to her. I’m excited to meet with her for her next lesson to see what else she’ll discover.

As I stated above, so many musicians I teach are struggling with the same habit: trying to feel their sound, both color and pitch, through excess bodily tension. Besides being counterproductive to the goal of a good sound and good intonation, it also carries with it the risk of strain, injury, poor technique and fatigue.

But there’s also something that comes with it that is equally negative. All that tension leads to a kind of physical and artistic prison when making music. You can become so dependent upon feeling your tension that you’re not free to experience the possibility of the unknown, the possibility of discovering something new in yourself as you make music.

So how are you when you play? How much tension do you create as you get ready to play your first note? Remember to allow your neck to stay free so that your head can balance easily on top of your spine. Let your shoulders widen. Don’t lift your chest and arch your back. Don’t lock your knees. Let the weight of your body travel easily into your feet as you let your ankles remain free and mobile.

Leave yourself alone as you play, and you’ll hear yourself so much better. To paraphrase F.M. Alexander, “If you stop doing the wrong thing, the right thing will do itself.” My experience as a musician and as a teacher (and student!) of the Alexander Technique affirms this every day.

The Nagging Truth About Chronic Pain And Injuries

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Recently I was reading a thread on a Facebook page (for saxophonists) about chronic pain. The thread started out asking about the value of chiropractic work for musicians, then quickly morphed into a discussion of the merits and/or shortcomings of various modalities to address pain and injury.

Lots of experiences, opinions and ideas were offered up. Several of the participants stated that chiropractic was not addressing the root cause of the problem. They thought that simply manipulating the bones neglected the deeper issue of muscles, fascia, etc. (I don’t necessarily agree with this, by the way).

Others talked about the the value of a good physical therapist to address muscle imbalances and flexibility issues. Deep tissue work was endorsed with great enthusiasm by others. Iyengar Yoga, Pilates, Myofascial  Release, and other therapeutic work were also mentioned.

The thrust of the discussion was about getting to the root cause of chronic pain. Lots of debate about the hierarchy of importance of the structures of the body (bones, nerves, muscles, fascia, joints, discs, etc.) in preventing  pain and injuries.

Yet nobody once mentioned the real root cause of most chronic pain and injury: Habit.

Your habits of thinking determine your habits of posture and movement. Period. You move and maintain posture in accordance to your conscious (and even unconscious) thoughts. And what predominately causes pain and injury for musicians (and others, as well) are dysfunctional postural and movement habits.

When you practice your instrument, you’re repeating movement patterns over and over, hundreds of times in a single session. If you’re doing this in an overly tense and unnatural way, you’re going to invite problems.

To be clear, I think there is a great value in the majority of the modalities that were discussed above. Without a doubt, manipulative work (massage, chiropractic, acupuncture, Myofascial Release, etc.) can be highly effective for ending the pain by bringing the structures of the body back into a healthy balance. It’s often a great place to start to get quick relief from pain.

Well prescribed exercise (Yoga, Pilates, etc.) can also help to change the structural organization of the body, which can help significantly in the long run.

But ultimately,  unless you change how you maintain balance, posture, and how you move in general (with and without your instrument) throughout your daily activities (i.e., change your habits), chances are good that you’ll eventually return to having the exact same kinds of structural problems you had before treatment (or exercise program).

So what are your choices? You can continue to get the same treatment, viewing it as a kind of “maintenance” for your pain. You can try a new form of treatment or exercise and see if that makes a lasting difference.

Or you can learn to change the habits that are causing your pain. You can learn to replace tense, harmful movement with light, safe and easy movement.

Besides being a professional saxophonist, I’m also a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, and I’ve found this Technique to be the most effective way I’ve yet to discover to make lasting changes in postural and movement habits. If it weren’t for this work, I would no longer be able to play saxophone. As it is, I’m playing better than ever. Completely pain and dysfunction free.

You see, the Alexander Technique goes right to the root of the problem: your habits and the thinking that shapes them. A qualified teacher can help you to become aware of the various harmful postural and movement habits you have, and give you the tools to prevent them, so you can make lasting changes for the better.

You’ll learn a new way to think about how you move, how you sit, stand, hold your instrument, use your breath, and more. You’ll clarify misconceptions about your body, and discover a way to move with far less effort and a minimum of strain. You’ll learn to move in accordance to the natural design of your body.

You’ll learn self-care strategies to rest your body and and restore your spine. You’ll even learn how to be calmer and more clear-thinking as you practice and perform music (or carry out any other activity, for that matter).

But most important, you’ll unlearn the habits that are causing the harm (the nagging truth about your chronic pain).

Sound too good to be true? It’s not. It does involve responsibility on your part, and a considerable amount of time and persistence (after all, you’ve spent a lifetime learning your habits). But it does work. Very well. One of my greatest satisfactions in life is seeing all the musicians I’ve been able to help by applying the Alexander principles.

Even the prestigious Juilliard School of Music knows the value of the Technique, and integrates it into its program to help serious musicians play pain-free and avoid injury.

So if you’re struggling with chronic pain, or suspect you have an injury, make sure you see a qualified physician first. It’s important that you rule out any kind of disease or other kinds of damage that must be addressed directly through medical means.

Ask your physician if any of your problems could be caused by dysfunctional movement and/or postural habits. If the answer is yes, then remember that you have a choice. Consider finding a certified Alexander Technique teacher in your area, and commit to taking some lessons. You can change. I have. So have my students. And for us, playing music is pure, pain free joy!

Refresh Your Thinking To Greatly Improve The Efficiency Of Your Practice

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The quality of your practice is directly proportionate to the quality of your thinking. Contrary to what many musicians believe, you’re not “training muscles” as you practice, so much as you are directing your thinking so that your brain can readily coordinate the muscular activity necessary to play well.

Mindless, repetitive practice usually yields limited, often disappointing results. Deep practice, where you are cognizant of your specific, in-the-moment goals, as well as what you hear, and sense in yourself as you play, is what leads to consistent improvement.

If you practice when you are distracted (maybe you didn’t get enough sleep, are in an angry mood, worried, about something, really hungry, etc.), you know that you won’t do very well. In fact, you might even finish your practice session with the feeling that you wasted your time.

But what about when you’re fully present and focused for your practice session? Are there ever times when you need to check your thinking? My answer is a resounding yes!

The more efficient I become in my practice routine, the more I realize how important it is to refresh my thinking frequently. This calls upon my willingness to stop what I’m doing. To take the saxophone out of my mouth and regroup, so to speak. Not always an easy thing to to when I’m in practice mode. If I play a particular passage less than ideally, I want to jump right back in and get it “right”, without any thought about what I need to do to “get it right”.

But I’ve learned that stopping to check in with, and redirect my thinking is always a better choice than plunging forward again with another mindless, misdirected effort. It always makes the next attempt so much more efficient and constructive. So I’ve gotten pretty good at stopping.

After I’ve stopped, I usually refresh my thinking by asking myself a few simple questions:

  • Am I tightening my neck, shoulders and back?
  • Am I allowing the weight of my body to balance through my feet (when I stand as I practice)?
  • Am I mostly expanding or contracting (releasing or tensing)?
  • How is my breathing (effortless and quiet, or tense and noisy)?
  • Am I really listening to what I’m playing (as opposed to just hearing sounds)?
  • Am I clear about what my immediate goal is with this particular exercise, passage, etc?

I pause to ask myself these questions dozens and dozens of time as I practice. Then I return to my full stature (my full length and width), finding all the space in my body again, and recharging my senses. I return to the physical and mental conditions that I need to play my best.

I’ve gotten so good at it that I can make these assessments rather quickly, then get right back to playing my instrument. For me it’s almost like I’m pushing a “reset” button for my brain, or refreshing the screen of my computer. Everything seems to flow and fall back into place when I do this.

If you wanted to simplify it all, you could  ask yourself, “Am I tending more toward contraction or expansion as I play?” Included in this question (besides noticing your body) is your ability to listen to and hear yourself. Are your senses going inward (contracting), excluding the full experience of your sound,  or expanding outward into the room where your sound actually is?

If you ever feel yourself becoming frustrated and/or fatigued as you dig deep into your practice, consider this idea of stopping and refreshing your thinking. Taking time to pause and redirect your thoughts is never a waste of time when you practice. Never. You’ll find (as I and my students have) that by stopping briefly to refresh, you’ll return to the task of practice with greater focus and clarity. You’ll make fewer mistakes (which means you’ll spend less time making unsuccessful “takes” of whatever you’re working on). In short, you’ll get more done in less time. Really.

Plus, you’ll develop a good  standard for awareness that you’ll bring into your performances. All good news.

And if you’d like to stop and take a slightly longer moment to refresh your thinking, you might want to think to yourself the Alexander Technique directions:

I allow my neck to be free, so that my head releases upwards on top of my spine, (I don’t tense my neck and jaw, jamming my head downwards into my torso)

so that entire torso can lengthen and widen, (I don’t tense my shoulders, back and ribcage)

so that my knees can release forward and away, (I don’t tighten my pelvis to draw my legs up tightly into my hip joints; I don’t lock my knees.)

so that my heels can release into the ground. (I don’t tense my feet and ankles, so that I allow the weight of my body to go through my feet)

These directions are a good description of what happens as you release tension and expand back to your full stature. If you practice using them consistently, you’ll get consistently good results (both I and my students have).

But whether you use these directions, or ask yourself the kinds of questions that I’ve listed above, or simply remind yourself to pause for a moment to regain your stature and your clarity, make a point of stopping to refresh your thinking.

Make it an aim as you practice, and acknowledge and reward yourself with encouragement when you’ve succeeded in doing so. Ask yourself, “How many times was I able to stop and redirect my efforts in the 15 minutes I’ve spent working on this particular exercise?” Notice that when you do this, you play with much less tension, and greater clarity and consistency. Make this a part of your practice habits, and you’ll be pleased with the results.

Want To Increase The Duration And Intensity Of Your Practice? Think Like An Athlete

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So you’re inspired to take your practice to a new level of commitment. You’re ready to spend the time and the energy. Ready to become more focused and disciplined. That’s great! Riding that wave of enthusiasm is going to take you into a deeper realm of self-expression (and satisfaction).

I’d like to offer an idea that might help you make that transition in your practice time more effective: Think like an athlete. After all, athletes and musicians have something in common. Both  spend lots of time practicing precise, repetitive movements.

Many years ago I became deeply involved in endurance sports (cycling and triathlon, in particular). Any wise endurance athlete knows that training has to be done in cycles. You simply can’t train hard all year long (potentially injurious and counterproductive). You need a program that includes carefully planned work at different levels of intensity and duration, as well as plenty of strategically applied rest.

Competitive endurance athletes often plan their training in yearly cycles (including several shorter cycles nested within the year), with specific goals about when to be in peak condition for particular events. At the end of every competitive season comes the “off-season”, which is essentially a carefully prescribed period of rest.

This rest season is absolutely essential to the continued success of the athlete. It promotes mental and physical recovery, as well as providing an important period of reflection about the effectiveness of the training efforts of the previous season.

After this rest period, the athlete begins to train again. And the smart athletes realize that they need to scale back their efforts considerably from where they were at the end of the previous season.

They can’t just start hitting it hard, no matter how enthusiastic they are. (This is true even if the athlete has maintained a reasonable amount of fitness throughout the off season by means of  less intense, yet regular physical exercise and activity.)

And the same is true for musicians. Even if you’ve been practicing regularly (let’s say, for example, an hour a day) and you want to significantly increase your practice time, you’re best off by doing it gradually.

One of the best pieces of advice given to me by an excellent cycling coach some years back, has also helped me in my practice as a musician. He said to attain the optimum results when increasing my training efforts, I should always aim for “teasing myself” into better condition.

In other words, each training session should leave me feeling like I want to do a bit more, go a little further. And then the next day, I dig a little deeper, but still “teasing” myself into condition. Still hungry and curious for more.

As you might guess by now, this approach to physical fitness training has helped me significantly as I apply it to increasing my musical practice efforts.

Many of the musicians that come to me for Alexander Technique lessons do so because of chronic pain and/or injury they’re experiencing as they play music. There are several causes of their pain: excessive tension, misdirected muscular energy, distorted posture, to name but a few. Often these problems are exacerbated by practicing “too hard”.

So besides teaching these musicians how to play with far less effort and tension, part of my job is to teach them how to safely build their practice intensity back up. I show them how to “tease themselves” into better condition.

Here are some things you can do to help you safely and effectively increase the intensity and duration of your practice:

  • Stop before you get tired. Don’t bring yourself to exhaustion during any point in your practice session. Even though you’re working hard, aim for feeling energized as you finish.  A “good kind of tired”, instead of a complete wreck.
  • Improve your awareness as you practice to notice where and how you might be working too hard. In particular, notice your neck, shoulders, back and legs. Think release and mobility instead of tension and holding.
  • Notice your mental states. Are you able to bring 100% of your attention to the act of practicing? Are you thinking clearly each time you start a new phrase (or attack a note)? Do you feel “foggy” or fatigued during any point of your practice session?
  • Recognize intensity. Not all practice is equal. One hour of long tones in the upper register of a brass instrument is far more taxing than 2 hours of easy, melodic etudes in the lower and middle register. So don’t just think practice time, weigh in intensity as well. Be willing to make a shorter session if it has more intense work in it.
  • Become disciplined about time. Work in pre-specified amounts of time. Avoid going from practicing one hour a day to 3 hours in one session. Spend a few weeks building up to this duration.
  • Become disciplined about stopping. I rarely practice anything for more than 15-20 minutes without putting my saxophone down and walking away from my practice area, even if just for a couple of minutes. If you get in the habit of doing this, you’ll avoid a significant amount of accumulated fatigue (both physical and mental). Also, give yourself permission to stop at any moment you feel like you’re straining or misdirecting your efforts. Mastering the art of stopping is essential to your safety and your improvement.
  • Become disciplined about resting. This goes hand in hand with stopping. Rest many times during a practice session, turning a one hour period into 4 short practice periods with a few minutes of rest between each. Then give yourself a good 5-10 minute rest at the end of the hour. Lying in constructive rest is a great way to recharge your batteries at the end of each practice hour. Take a day off each week from practicing.
  • Think in training cycles. Just like the endurance athlete, modulate your training efforts. Have some easier days, some more intense days. Also consider easier weeks, and more intense weeks.
  • Make your aim to finish each session wanting more. This brings us full circle to my first bulleted point above. Put your instrument away with a sense of curiosity, a sense of longing to explore more, to go deeper. At first this might seem unsatisfying (or even frustrating), but as you gain control over your ability to stop, your ability to rest, your ability to manage your time effectively, you’ll find a deep sense of accomplishment and confidence in your practice efforts (not to mention you’ll really improve your playing!)

The similarities between the musician and the athlete are many, and I’m certainly not the first to have drawn these comparisons. By thinking more like an athlete, you’ll change your practice in a positive, progressive and sustainable way.