Category Archives: Musician’s Health

The Importance of Understanding Your Human Design

Be Mindful of This Very Important Connection When Playing Your Instrument

Whether giving an Alexander Technique lesson to a musician, or simply observing myself when I practice, I’ve come to notice one particular postural/movement habit that we all seem to have in common when faced with a potentially “stressful” stimulus when playing our instruments.

This is also something I can see as I watch musicians (and other performing artists) during performance.

When I say “potentially stressful”, I mean to include a wide range of things, from mild to powerful.

For example, a mildly stressful stimulus might be to slightly increase the tempo of a particular etude you’re practicing. Whereas a more powerfully stressful stimulus might be anticipating playing the first note of an important audition for which you’ve prepared.

In either case, there is an almost universal tendency with respect to your movement and posture when faced with these types of stimuli:

You begin to lose your connection to the ground.

It is your connection to the ground that is the basis of support that encourages the freely fluent, agile and powerful movements you need to perform at your fullest potential.

Nearly all of our movement/posture, with respect to our human design (and with respect to our relationship to gravity), is based upon support (the ground) and suspension (the elasticity of our musculoskeletal system).

When you lose support, you also begin losing the elasticity necessary for optimal suspension, and ultimately, optimal coordination.

So what does “losing connection to the ground” look like?

Here are a few examples when you’re standing:

You stiffen your feet and ankles, losing the mobility necessary to respond effectively to changes in balance.
You roll to one side or the other of either/both feet (this too, involves stiff ankles).
You hyper-extend (“lock”) your knees.
You clench your buttocks and/or compress you hips, while at the same time “lifting” yourself off the ground slightly.

And even when you’re sitting you can lose this very important connection to the ground. Here’s a few ways how you might do so:

You stiffen your legs, thereby diminishing the necessary contact of your sitting bones to the support of the chair.
You begin to push (or pull) toward one side or the other of your pelvis (and thus, your sitting bones).
You begin to draw your knees up into your pelvis (as your feet come up slightly off the floor).
You lift yourself up from the support of the chair by narrowing your entire torso. (This is something you also might to when standing.)

I should also mention here (with respect to the principles of the Alexander Technique) that when you’re engaging in any of the above listed posture/movement reactions, that you are at the same time stiffening your neck, interfering with how your head needs to freely balance on top of your spine (in order to allow optimal coordination).

And these tendencies are not only potentially problematic to the “mechanics” of your coordination, but are also (perhaps even more important!) evidence that your quality of your attention is less than ideal. It has gone from being flexible, integrating and expansive (inclusive), to inflexible, disintegrating and narrow (exclusive).

(There is always a reciprocal relationship between the quality of your attention and what you do in your body. It’s sort of like, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” In any case, one conditions the other.)

But here’s the good news:

You’re not stuck with any of these tendencies.

Because they are only that. Tendencies. Or “habits” as we would refer to them in Alexander Technique jargon.

And habits can be changed.

Start by paying attention. Notice both when, and how, you lose your connection to the ground.

Notice what types of stimuli (thoughts, circumstances, conditions, etc.) seem to invite you to lose your connection (the “when” part).

Notice what you do with your entire self (including your attention) when you lose your connection (the “how” part).

Once you notice, you can practice pausing to gently redirect your attention, allowing yourself to be easy in your body and regain your connection to the ground. (And allowing yourself to reconnect to your intentions, and with the music itself.)

Finally, there is a difference between being “planted” (stuck hard and fast into the ground) and being “grounded” (surely, but dynamically connected to the ground).

Aim for being grounded, letting your weight pass freely down through your legs, through your feet, and into the support of the ground (when standing), or through your sitting bones as you allow the chair to support you (when sitting).

Then think of yourself as going up lightly, freely and expansively from your supporting surface. Let the earth play its role in helping you make music. Notice the difference.

Don’t Overlook This Important Element For a Satisfying Musical Life

Physical Efficiency in Playing Music: A Question of Economy

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Many highly skilled and accomplished musicians have lots to say about efficiency in playing their particular instrument.

Whether it is about what the hands/fingers should (or shouldn’t do), or the arms and legs, or how any particular part of the oral mechanism involved in playing functions optimally, there seems to be no shortage of opinions about how to play without “wasting effort”.

And I have my opinions, too, of course, which are based upon my experience teaching the Alexander Technique to musicians, coupled with my growing knowledge and explorations of anatomy and neuroscience.

One of the ideas that can cause considerable problems for some of the musicians who come to me for help, is “economy of movement”.

In playing saxophone, for example (the instrument I play), there are those who advocate this concept: “To move your fingers with the greatest amount of speed, you need to move them as little as possible to raise and lower the keys.”

On the surface, this seems like a good idea. It’s kind of variation on the “shortest distance between two points is a straight line” concept. It obviously takes less time to move a shorter distance than a longer one, all other things being equal.

I describe this concept (in reference to what I’ve written above) as “economy of movement”.

So what are the potential problems with this?

Well, for many musicians, this attempt to limit movement can often begin to manifest itself as stiffness and rigidity.

Not just stiffness and rigidity in the specific parts of the body involved in carrying out the movement, but in the entire organism itself: stiff neck, shoulders, jaw, knees, ribs and more.

And with this comes yet another form of “stiffness and rigidity” as well. Specifically, in the cognitive functioning of the musician.

I describe this as the “deer in the headlights” syndrome. In the focus to “limit” the movement often comes the narrowing of the focus of attention in general. Not a good thing, as this tends excludes and disintegrate (rather than include and integrate) the various experiential elements necessary to play optimally.

So instead of thinking “economy of movement“, I encourage the musicians I work with to begin to think more in terms of “economy of effort“.

Now, to be clear, I’m not necessarily advocating less effort (as that in itself can have the same negative unintended consequences of “less movement”).

More specifically, what I am advocating is the “optimization of effort”. That simply means that the effort applied to the task of playing is directed in a way that is most conducive to the task itself.

It means that the effort you use to play your instrument is best directed when it’s based upon what you want (sound, time, articulation, etc.) in cooperation with design.

Design includes your human structure (and how it optimally functions), the acoustic principles of your instrument, as well as how your brain works to bring it all together to make music.

Playing with optimum effort means not forcefully using your neck muscles to do the work most suitable for your arms, for example. Or to not strain your jaw in doing the work better suited for your soft palate (when playing a wind instrument).

And sometimes you actually have to let something move more than you might think it needs to in order to optimize effort. Try walking sometime as you limit the movement of your ankles, and you’ll immediately realize that less movement isn’t always better movement. (This is analogous to not allowing your “MP”, or, “knuckle” joints to bend the way they need to if you try too hard to limit the movement of you fingers.)

One of the things I love most about the Alexander Technique is that it employs a clear set of principles that teach you how to recognize misdirected effort as you play music, or do anything else.

As you learn to recognize and prevent your habitual pattens of misdirected effort, you simply play better (and feel better, too!)

So consider replacing the idea of “economizing the movement” with “optimizing the effort”. Really explore the contrast between these two concepts. In doing so, you’ll open up a marvelous new world of possibilities for yourself.