Category Archives: Musician’s Health

Freedom To Choose

Nothing has helped me more to improve as a musician than the Alexander Technique. By applying the principles of the work, I’ve been able not only to save my performing career, but also, find a means for continuous improvement as a musician.

Musicians come to me for lessons for a variety of reasons. Initially, most seek me out because of one main concern: pain. It might be a violinist with a stiff shoulder, a flutist with chronic jaw tension, a pianist with back issues, or a saxophonist with neck problems, etc. What often accompanies this pain is the worry of injury, and the sickening fear of not being able to enjoy the career that they love and have worked so hard for.

I know. I’ve been there myself. To be able to play music again without pain and dysfunction is a marvelous feeling. Pure optimism and joy. And if that were the only benefit of studying and applying the Alexander Technique, I’d be beyond satisfied.

Yet most of my students discover (as I have) that after studying the Technique for a good length of time, there are so many other benefits to be enjoyed.

Some of these benefits have little or nothing to do with playing music. (For example, one of my students is a professional guitarist who has greatly improved the quality and enjoyment of his daily recreational runs, thanks to applying what he’s learned from the Technique.)

But it is in the realm of music making where often the most surprising changes can take place. Better intonation. Better technical control. A richer, more powerful sound. Better time. Better sight reading. More spontaneous and flexible performances (whether of improvised or interpretive music). Greater rhythmic imagination for the improvising musician. And perhaps most important, a deeper connection to playing music, and the enjoyment and satisfaction that comes with that.

All the benefits I’ve listed above become possible because of an acquired ability to solve problems of movement and coordination. This cultivates a more efficient and effective approach to musical practice.

And that brings me to what I think the ultimate benefit of the Alexander Technique is: The freedom to choose.

Musicians (like anybody else) are strongly guided by habit. Some of these habits are good, others, not so much. Without exception, the problems that all my students have playing music are problems of habit. They get stuck doing things habitually the same way, no matter how strenuous, harmful, inefficient or counterproductive it may be to do so.

They lose touch with their ability to choose. Stiff necks, tight shoulders, rigid hands, noisy breathing, locked knees…all beneath the realm of awareness, and thus not really what could be called a true choice. Habit.

The Alexander Technique goes right to the heart of habit. With the Technique you learn to become aware of your unnecessary patterns of tension, especially as they apply to how you function best as you carry out an activity. You become clear about what works (and more important, what doesn’t) and why. You develop a consistent, constructive approach to anything you do. You find the means for change and improvement.

You learn to say “no” to the things that interfere with your ease and efficiency. Then you’re free for something new to happen. Something good. Something surprising. You’re free to choose. And not just freedom from physical problems, but also, freedom to express yourself more deeply and authentically, the freedom to explore more of the creative possibilities in your music, the freedom to take chances. The freedom to be yourself.

Liberating yourself begins with your decision to be guided by choice instead of habit. It really is as truthful and simple as that.

I’ll leave you with this powerful quote from Holocaust survivor and psychotherapist, Viktor Frankl:

“In between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lie our growth and our freedom.”

Today is the day to choose.

Want To Improve Your Playing? Stop Trying

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“Trying is only emphasizing the thing we already know.”

F.M. Alexander

Musicians often struggle with their technique because they misdirect their energy. Put simply, they don’t always organize their efforts in the most constructive possible way as they play. Too much tension here, not enough there. Over using one part of their bodies, while not engaging another adequately. This ultimately manifests itself as a roadblock in their technical development, limiting improvement.

The reasons for this can be many, but mostly come down to these three things:

Erroneous misconceptions-Misunderstanding (or ignorance) of your anatomical structure and functioning can lead you blindly into doing the wrong thing. The same for not understanding the acoustic principles that govern your instrument (voice, too!) and how your anatomical structure and functioning impact (or interact with) these principles.
Faulty sensory awareness-In the simplest sense, you’re often not doing what you think you’re doing. For example, you might be stiffening your head, neck and shoulders as you play (significantly interfering with the use of your hands), even though it doesn’t feel at all like you are. (In fact, it might feel to you that you’re “relaxed”.)
Force of habit-When your habit is influenced by numbers 1 and 2 above, you develop very prominent (yet ultimately counterproductive, even harmful) habits. All your efforts in playing become guided by these habits.

If these above obstacles are not dealt with, frustration eventually sets in. And when that happens, you might do what many musicians do in order to break through the barrier: try harder. Seems obvious, doesn’t it?

But does trying harder help? Well, if trying harder means (as quoted by Alexander, above) that you are “only emphasizing” the thing you already know, then, I can tell you from personal experience (both as teacher and performer) that it doesn’t.

As a very wise person once said, “If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.”

Instead of trying harder, you need to simply proceed differently. A shift in your thinking about the problem has to occur. You have to go from the “known to the unknown”, as Alexander would say. You have to start becoming what I call “constructively curious”.

Instead of trying, you have to start asking questions. Then you can implement a strategy for change. Here are some guidelines to help you:

Start by stopping-If you’ve tried some technically difficult passage 53 times in a row with no success or improvement, don’t try it a 54th time. It’s only going to make things worse. Instead, stop what your doing so that something different can happen. Then, use the procedures below.
Identify the problemI-Once you’ve stopped, you can take some time to analyze what the problem is. Try to understand clearly what has to happen (both acoustically/mechanically, and with your physical structure) to become successful in your attempts. The more you understand about how your body functions best (an Alexander Technique teacher can really help here) and the acoustic principles of your instrument, the more constructively you can think. Take time to educate yourself. You’ll never look at that as time wasted. Never.
Observe yourself to find the cause of the problem-Once you become clearer about what has to happen in yourself to get the best results musically, notice your habits. Especially notice the tension in your head, neck, shoulders and back. Notice your breathing. See if you can make the connection between what has to happen to get the best results, and the habits you might have that interfere with these results. (Again, you can be significantly helped with this by a skilled Alexander Technique teacher).
Consciously prevent yourself from going into your habit-Once you’re clear about your habits, you can make a conscious decision to prevent those that interfere with your ability to play your best.
Shift your emphasis-To change, it is most important that you do something differently. (Actually, it’s most important that you stop doing your habit.) Therefore, you should shift your emphasis from “playing the passage up to tempo”, for example, to “playing the passage without my habit”. Every time you play without your habit, you weaken the habit, and free yourself. When this happens, you’re on the road to improvement.

So what do you notice about yourself regarding your practice? Where do you get stuck? If you shift your aim from trying, to asking (with a healthy dose of stopping to help it all along), you’ll find something excitingly different. And perhaps you’ll discover for yourself the most constructive method to address your own technical challenges with your instrument. Consistent improvement will follow.

F. M Alexander was in good company as far as this is concerned. I’ll leave you with this quote by Albert Einstein:

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”

Let me know what you think.

Play Better While Standing By Following This Simple Principle

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The other day as I was giving an Alexander Technique lesson to a saxophonist, I noticed something in my student that I often see in other musicians who stand as they play. Specifically, my student wasn’t allowing the weight of his body to pass through his feet into the floor as he played.

I could see him bringing his weight to the outsides of his soles as he played, stiffening his neck, back and legs as he did so. He did this especially as he perceived some kind of “effort”, such as playing into the altissimo register, or articulating a very rapid passage. Put simply, he was pulling himself out of balance in an attempt to play his best.

It was as if he were refusing to let himself be on the floor, trying to defy the laws of gravity as he played his instrument.

I won’t digress here as to how I approached his issues (that’s for another article), but I can tell you that for him to stop the habits of tension in his feet, he had to start with thinking about the stiffness in his head and neck as he played. (In Alexander terminology, the relationship between the head, neck and torso is called the primary control; it’s called so for a good reason, as it conditions what we do with the rest of ourselves in any activity.)

Instead, I want to talk a bit about a very simple principle to help you play better as you stand: For you to be in good balance as you stand (mobile, flexible, light and easy), you must allow the weight of your body to pass through your legs into your feet and into the ground (or floor, as the case may be).

To help you understand this principle, it might be helpful to explain a little about how your feet bear weight most efficiently. You can think of your foot as a three-legged stool. One of the “legs” being your heel, another leg at the base of where your big toe meets the rest of your foot, and the third leg being at the base of where your small toe meets your foot.

You can think of each of these “legs” as the most essential points of contact between you and the ground. Between each of these points an arch is formed. You actually have 3 arches in each foot: one between the base of your large toe and your heel; another between the base of your small toe and your heel; and a third between the base of your large toe and your small toe (see image above).

It is the dynamic relationship between these arches that help you stay in balance. Whenever you interfere with this relationship, you interfere with your balance, ease and coordination. The most common ways this interference occurs is by placing your weight too far forward, or by pulling your feet up off the floor from either side.

When you stand in natural balance, your head is poised on top of your spine in an upward release, and the rest of you is sort of stacked underneath all the way down to the ground. No tense shoulders. No thrusting hips. No locked knees. No stiff feet or toes.

The weight of your body is free to pass directly downward through your spine, into your pelvis, through your legs into your ankles and then very slightly into your heels (one of the legs of your “stool”) as you allow your feet to spread toward your large and small toes (the other legs of your stool).

When you allow yourself to stay grounded this way, you’ll find that you play better:

You’ll have more stability, so your hands, arms and fingers move more easily and accurately.
You’ll breathe better.
You’ll maintain a better sense of time. (Really! So much of your rhythmic perception is based upon your balance. Notice what happens to your balance the next time you rush the tempo.)
You’ll have greater access to your creativity and expression. (For the same reasons mentioned above.)
You’ll feel so much better and experience less fatigue as you play.

Whenever you can, play without shoes. Letting your feet connect directly to the floor helps you access all the receptors of the nerves in your feet to keep the delicate dance of balance alive. When I practice I never wear shoes. I advise all my students to lose the shoes whenever possible. (It’s okay to wear socks.)

So notice what you do with your feet as you practice. Remember to let your feet do their work. Allow your weight pass through them into the floor as you direct your thoughts upward. Please let me know how it goes!

Improve The Quality Of Your Playing By Asking Yourself This Question

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Musicians come to see me for Alexander Technique lessons for at least one the following two reasons: They are experiencing pain and excess tension and strain as they play. They simply aren’t improving in their playing , no matter how much they practice. (Many musicians come to me because of both of these issues.)

As they find, both of these issues are closely related and are caused by the same thing: unnecessary muscular tension. Misdirected effort, as it were. All of this misdirected effort is a result of habit and is interfering with their ability to play easily and confidently. Part of my job is to help them become aware of these habits, many of which are below their consciousness.

We can approach this problem from many angles: Where are you tightening and holding on? Where are you closing the space off in your body as you play? Where are you compressing yourself as you play? And so on.

But the one question that seems to get them onto the path of observation and prevention (of their harmful habits) is this: What are you adding on to the act of playing your instrument that is not necessary?

Such a simple question. What are you adding on?

You see, it’s mostly this adding on that is creating the problems. It’s not a matter of what you need to do to improve your playing. It’s a matter of what you need to stop doing. What you need to subtract.

Learning what to subtract begins with understanding balance and poise. How do you sit upright with the least amount of effort? How do you stand with lightness and ease? What do you do to stay in balance as your bring your hands (with or without your instrument) in front of your body. What do you do to take a breath? How do you prepare to play that first note? Etc.

My first aim is to get my students to better understand how to leave themselves alone so that they can sit, stand and move in easy upright balance. To get them to realize how easy, light and expansive their movement and posture can be. Then we use this as a standard to observe and evaluate what they do as they go to play.

Sometimes they find that they disturb this natural balance the moment they even think about playing, already stiffening up in anticipation. Or the moment they bring their hands to the instrument. Or the moment they begin to blow, pluck, hammer or bow.

And this is all good news, because they can then use their new found awareness to prevent these habits. And that’s when things just get better and better.

So ask yourself what you are adding on as you play that is not necessary. If you sit when you play, notice your balance and ease. Let your head balance on top of your spine, and let that balanced head be poised directly above your sitting bones. Don’t collapse. Don’t try to sit up straight. Just let yourself sit in easy, upright balance, the way a small child would.

If you stand when you play, let your head balance on top of your spine as you let the weight of your body travel through your legs into your feet (think ankle and heels). Let your shoulders soften and widen apart. Let your knees be soft (no locked knees). See how lightly you can stand. How little effort can you create to keep nicely upright. Naturally. Again, just like a small child.

Then take your instrument and see how your balance changes. Are these changes a necessary result of of holding your instrument in a natural manner? Or are they simply pre-anticipatory tension? Here are some things to check:

Am I pulling my head down into my neck? If you find yourself making rather noticeable changes in your neck tension as you go to play, and/or otherwise significantly altering the relationship of your head to your neck, ask yourself: Is this necessary?
Am I stiffening my shoulder? Again, ask yourself.
Am I breathing in a strained, noisy manner? Even if you play (especially if you play) a wind instrument, this is never necessary. It’s just more habitual, misdirected effort.
Am I bracing in my pelvis and legs? Not at all necessary to play your instrument.
Am I pulling myself out of balance as I play? Check some of the above questions to answer this question. Where is your head in relation to your neck? Where is the weight of your body going? (If it’s going primarily into the balls of your feet, you’re bringing yourself out of balance.) How much is your lower back working to maintain this posture? Where is the strain?
What am I doing with my hands and arms? Stiffening fingers, tightly flexed or extended wrists, arms pulled tightly against the ribs. These are but a few of the things that are never necessary to play your instrument.
Am I tightening up my face? This is more anticipatory tension that is not only unnecessary, but also, clearly interferes with the balance of the head on the spine. Interfere with that and you’ve opened up a Pandora’s box of other tension issues.

You can ask even more questions if you like. But always remember the most important: What am I adding on that is not necessary. Stop these unnecessary habits and (as F.M. Alexander would say) “you’re half way home”. In my own daily practice sessions this is always the question I’m asking myself. Answering it brings me consistent improvement. Give it a try!