Free Alexander Technique to Your Email: Sarah Chatwin’s Seven Steps to Less Pain, More Poise

While there is no substitute for hands-on work and individual attention, these free 7 steps of smart Alexander Technique “reminders” make it worth it to subscribe.  The free e-course is called Seven Steps to Less Pain, More Poise. Put your name and email into the boxes on Alexander Technique teacher Sarah Chatwin’s site and the course is delivered straight to your in-box.

Weekly Digest: Institute for Musicianship and Public Service, Lorna McGhee, Make Mistakes!

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Institute for Musicianship and Public Service
Are you a musician interested in combining your artistry with public service? You may be a candidate for our four-day professional development opportunity, May 31 through June 3, supported by the Mellon Foundation. Applications are due by March 23. Learn more HERE.

Weekly Digest: Best Reads of 2011, Cultivating Originality, Attentive Collaboration, MLK

The Savvy Musician’s best reads of 2011

The 10 Craziest Kickstarter Projects of 2011

How to cultivate originality

Attentive Collaboration by the Audience:  Essential but Not Easy

Jazz’s encroachment on classical station upsets some

The future of classical radio?

Learn about SOPA and Wikipedia’s Blackout Page

Practice with your head, perform from your heart

So you think you know? Discovery in Alexander Technique

The three roots of Performance Anxiety

Making a good first impression

Financial Freedom for Music Entrepreneurs

The day one very determined teacher and The Philadelphia Orchestra changed a little boy’s life

In Philly, Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 7:30PM , a free talk by Eric Booth, Tricia Tunstall, and Stanford Thompson discussing El Sistema: Social Innovation Through Music Education

Wynton Marsalis:  My relationship to MLK

Edna Landau’s popular career advice blog for Musical America, Ask Edna, is celebrating its first anniversary with a contest. Music career-related questions must be submitted by January 31 in order to be eligible for the prizes, which include a free career consultation with Edna. Those submitting questions have the option to remain anonymous on Edna’s blog. Just send your questions to AskEdna@MusicalAmerica.com

Quotes of the week:

You don’t have to practice boring exercises, but you have to practice something. If you find the practice boring, you don’t run away from it, but don’t tolerate it either. Transform it into something that suits you. If you are bored playing a scale, play the same eight tones but change the order. Then change the rhythm. Then change the tone color. Presto, you have just improvised. If you don’t think the result is very good, you have the power to change it- now there is both a supply of raw material and some judgment to feed back the process. This is especially effective with classically trained musicians who think they can’t play without a score or develop technique without exact repetition of some exercises in a book. –Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play

From Martin Luther King, Jr.–Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

Images from:

http://www.artsjournal.com/bookdaddy/2008/07/

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/special/mlk/

http://www.songwright.co.uk/2009/12/16/why-any-good-songwriter-needs-to-be-able-to-improvise/

Weekly Digest: Think You Can, Elitist Classical Music, Talk Less & Matter More

Think You Can, or Making a Living as a Musician, from the NEC’s Entrepreneurial Musician Blog

When it comes to careers, musicians learn to improvise

Alexis Del Palazzo on Participatory Audiences

Is Classical Music too elitist or not enough?

Astrid Baumgardner’s latest, Finding Passion in Your Life’s Work: Do What You Love

Just live Your Own Damn Life, from the Sun Magazine

Michael Morgan of the Oakland East Bay Symphony pushing programming in new directions

Musical America’s musicians of the year

The success of the LA Philharmonic

The orchestra’s guide to looking cool

Photos from Mahler Remixed from the New England Conservatory , a creative performance featuring creative arrangements

From the blog String Visions, Breaking Boundaries with Aaron Dworkin

Coaching Advice from the author of the Talent Code:  Talk less, Matter more

Some Alexander Technique observations

Check out Yoga Nidra, thanks to John Ranck who shared this on the FLUTE list

Video of the Week:

Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull with orchestra, thanks Flutronix for passing this on!

Do What You Suck At

One of my mottos for awhile now has been “You are only as strong as your weakest link”. This picture exemplifies the idea perfectly. When I was in Army Basic Training, that was one of the things they told us almost constantly. We had to do everything as a team, and if one person was wrong, you were all wrong. If one person wanted to keep the Kevlar helmet on instead of taking it off, we all had to keep it on. If one person got punished…well, that didn’t happen, we all got punished.

The point was that you HAD to learn to do everything as a unit, as a team, and that each person was as important as the next. You are being taught to pay attention to detail and you realize very quickly that even if YOU excel in one area, your Battle Buddy probably doesn’t, and to work together as a team, everyone has to come together to support and encourage and work on their “weakest link” before you can excel as a team.

Your body works as a team as well and if you don’t address your weakest link, you are shortchanging yourself. As a musician, you know that if you don’t work on your weak spots, you’ll never reach your full potential because being a musician is made of several “links” – scales, intervals, tone, technique, body awareness, attitude, work ethic, etc.

As for my title…

You’ll have to pardon the hanging participle and bad grammar….but it got your attention, didn’t it?

Here’s the point if you do what you’re good at, you’ll never get any better. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Sure, but what do we do? We do the things at which we already accel. Why? Because we like doing well, we like feeling that good feeling that comes with doing well, and when you do something well, it’s, well…..easy.

Another way to say “do what you suck at” is to say “work on your weaknesses”. Now, honestly if I had put that as the title, you wouldn’t have stopped by to read, would you? Not nearly as interesting. But the truth is there in both statements. When you take a good look at the areas in which you lack and you go forth and WORK on those weaknesses what happens?

Well, it’s hard.
It’s generally not much fun.
You might fail….a lot.
But in the end, you end up succeeding and ultimately not only gaining a greater sense of achievement due to the feeling of overcoming something at which you used to not do well, but it gets easier from there for you to get better at it.

Two examples: music and fitness, of course 🙂

Fitness

Take your pick: squat, pushup or pullup.

Sure, there are other hard exercises like deadlifting and benching and rowing but in all honesty, these are tough for me and most women. Most people do a HORRIBLE job of squatting with good form. They either

• don’t go low enough
• elevate their heels and squat on their toes
• have their knees cave in
• point their toes way out

It’s sad really, because what should be easy to do (we did it as 2-year olds without another thought) becomes so much more difficult as we age.

Side note:
This is why I suggest EVERYONE get some training in Alexander Technique. It’s not just for musicians and you will relearn how to use your body the way God intended and the way you used to, as aforementioned 2-year old but with better motor skills 🙂

Walk into almost any gym in the country and undoubtedly you will see a lot of the same things: the treadmills, ellipticals and bikes will be mostly full (sadly, mostly with women), lots of people using machines, and in the free weight section, the few people you see will be mostly men, mostly doing chest and bicep exercises. Occassionally you’ll see a man doing a squat….probably only going half-way down with too much weight (because it’s always better to improve your ego by using too much weight with bad form than to use no weight with good form, right?) and even more rarely, you’ll see a lady in there, doing “toning” exercises with the pink dumbbells. She’s doing it because she knows she needs to do something but isn’t sure what, so she sticks to what’s safe, what isn’t challenging, and pats herself on the back for venturing into the “guy’s” part of the gym. And year after year the ladies on the treadmills wonder why their bodies haven’t changed the way they “should”.

The guys do their same routines for the same reason: they work the vanity muscles using some outdated routines they found in magazines (that really only work for newbies) because they don’t know any better, it’s safe, it’s what the other guys are doing and hey, what woman looks at a guy’s legs – they look at his GUNS right? And year after year, he does the same stuff, blindly going forward, his gains decreasing every year and wondering why.

I’ll tell you why. It’s because they don’t work on their weaknesses.

Music

Where is your weakness when it comes to music? Ignoring etudes, scales and technique exercises – only focusing on working on pieces? Not really “wood shedding” the music, but just playing it over and over again? Putting off memorizing something? Not practicing much at all?

As a musician, my biggest weakness is 1) not making the time to practice and 2) not giving myself structure during practice time….which leads to feeling like I”m just wasting my time, so I end up not practicing at all! If you are one of those musicians who has been out of school for awhile, you know how easy it is to get out of the habit of daily practice, espcially when you aren’t surrounded by other musicians pushing you, endless rehearsals and recitals. If LACK of practice is your nemesis, ask yourself why? And chunk it into manageable goals: 1) I will practice every day or every other day 2) I will work on these pieces and these exercises, etc. Just write it down and give yourself structure.

If there is something specific you suck at and you’re just avoiding it, it’s time to take the bull by the horns and go after it! If you are a person who plays by ear and has a difficult time deciphering rythms on the page…..well, you need to start reading more music with difficult rhythms. If you suck at sightreading, the only way to get better at sightreading is to sightread a LOT.

See how this works? Identify your weakness, have the courage to put your ego aside and say “ok, what do I really suck at?” and then do THAT.

Take your dreaded evil and look it square in the face and say

“Today , it’s you and me and while I may not conquer you today, maybe not tomorrow, I will not fear you, and I WILL do this”.

And from there, you start with Moyse Gamme Arpegge and work your way through 🙂

So Do What You Suck At

If you are a gym “bro” who splits his workouts into “chest days’ and “arm days”: have the courage to do a full body workout,

If you are a lady who does nothing but stay on the elliptical or do curls and crunches in the “guy’s part of the gym”, have the courage to pick up some 20 pounders or hire a personal trainer and learn how to do a real deadlift…I can tell you, there’s nothing more empowering than deadlifting your bodyweight (with excellent form) in a gym full of men who are doing superflous exercises (with bad form).

If you are a musician and you’ve been putting off attacking Berio’s “Sequenza” GO FOR IT! You just might find that it’s way more fun than you ever realized.

In the end, we all have to work on our weaknesses, because there is only so far you can go in the areas you already excel.

Related Articles

• Are You Ready to Change? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• What Interests You? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• The Flutists’ Pain Points (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• The Flutist’s Pain Points (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• Multitasking Move: Burning Squats (fitsugar.com)
• The Exercise You Hate Is Probably the One You Need Most (fitsugar.com)
• How I Discovered The Alexander Technique (lukeford.net)
• 3 Exercise Form Mistakes to UNLEARN Now (joshsgarage.typepad.com)

The Flutist’s Pain Points

Ask almost any flutist that has pain brought on by playing, and odds are they will mention one of these sites as giving them trouble: wrist, upper back (between shoulder blades), shoulder area or lower back. Sometimes the problem is that the pain is in ALL of these sites.

Studies have been done, but the results are inconclusive as to the results of what causes pain. A study I read recently studied the “History of Playing-related Pain in 330 University Freshman Music Students”. The interesting point is that MOST of the students had pain brought on by playing. The frustrating point was that the study was inconclusive as to the cause of the pain.

I have my own hypothesis, however, because this study did not cover my area of expertise: strength training. This is what the study found:

• More students did than did not exercise, but pain occurred in 79% of the exercisers and in only 76% of the sedentary. Data were collected though not analyzed regarding exercise type; jogging appeared to be a favorite, as was the use of a variety of exercise machines
• Most of the pain problems reported by instrumentalists are associated with the musculoskeletal system
• Several factors have played into the lack of regular exercise for musicians. First, those who start their instruments early in life…often have been warned of the potential injury that might befall especially their hands and fingers by participation in athletics. This avoidance behavior becomes habit as they grow older.
• There apppears to be an association between poor conditioning and musculoskeletal complaints, and vice versa; those who do have a regular exercise routine appear more resilient.
• When asked about “regular exercise” …our definition for inclusion here was exercise of at least two times per week for a minimum of 30 minutes. We did not differentiate between exercise modes, but just from casual scanning of the data, jogging was by far the most frequent activity, followed by some kind of machine and/or light weights and biking. A minority did heavy resistance weight training, swimming, soccer and/or basketball.

It is GLARINGLY obvious to me what could possibly be the cause of so many musician’s pain, here, but this was not covered by the researchers.

1. The type of stretching done, is probably out-dated, static stretching, which has been shown to be more detrimental than helpful
2. Jogging is a favorite activity….this does NOTHING to help weak muscles. If you play an instrument held in front of your body (aren’t they all?) then your body is forced to compensate after the primary muscles holding up the instrument fatigue. Thus leading to pain.
3. The MINORITY did heavy resistance training and soccer, swimming and basketball – sports that require a high degree of movement.

Can you see the pattern here?

So getting back to the flutists’ pain points

What are the points of chief complaint?  From what I have heard (though if you have another spot, please leave a comment below!) these are the most common

• wrist
• upper back
• shoulder
• lower back

With the exception of the wrist, the other three points are located on what we call the “posterior chain”  This is the back half of the body, responsible for a lot of pulling movements and fighting against the pushing movement of the front of the body, including keeping the body upright.  If your posterior chain muscles are weak, it causes them to stretch.

Example:

You sit all day, in rehearsals, driving, typing, practicing.  You probably slouch, meaning your chest comes forward, your abdomen caves in and your back rounds.  You are not balanced on your sit bones.  Your shoulders round forward.  Your head protrudes.

What does this lead to?

Try taking that posture for awhile and I bet the answer will be:

• my neck hurts
• my upper back hurts
• my hips hurt
• basically, everything on the back half of my body HURTS!

Can you see how this  posture, practiced day in and day out is compounded with holding a heavy instrument (or maybe your instrument isn’t heavy but after several hours of playing it becomes heavy to you) can wreak havoc on your body?

Solutions!!!!

The part you’ve been waiting for!  You can see where the problem lies, by now, I hope.  Weak posterior chain can equal pain.  What to do?  Strengthen it!  Let’s take this on a spot by spot basis.

Wrist

If your wrist hurts, there can be several causes, some of which may not have anything to do with your wrist, but  may actually be a symptom of poor upper body posture, shoulder position, etc.  Assuming you play an instrument that puts your wrist in somewhat of a contorted position (flute, guitar, violin, etc.) there are some stretches you can do.  Hold each for a count of 10, and follow with movement.  It is very important that after you do a static stretch (a stretch you hold without moving) that you follow that with a dynamic stretch (a stretch that involves movement).

                                                                             

These are stretches and of course there are exercises you can do to increase your wrist/grip strength.  However, I’m not sure that that is necessary, as my guess is that the reason the wrists hurt has more to do with being tight and needing to be stretched due to being in an awkward position for long lengths of time, rather than being weak.  However, grip strength is important when it comes to lifting weights.  Diesel Crew has a lot of information on improving grip strength.

Upper Back/Shoulder

This area could take all day to address, and I have in two posts and a guest post by Dr. Perry.  For detailed information see Shoulder Pain Part 1, Shoulder Pain Part 2 – What to Do About it, and Dr. Perry’s Post: Shoulder Pain Secret.

The chief culprits of pain are the rhomboids (the muscles in between your shoulder blades that work to pull them together), lower traps (pull shoulder blades back and down) and rotator cuff muscles.  When you lean forward with a rounded posture, or have your arms extended in front of you for a long time, these muscles that do the pulling in your upper back get stretched the opposite way and get kinda angry about it.  They are designed to pull the shoulder blades back, but if you do not strengthen these muscles, if they do not get used the way they were intended.  You get pain.

I think this is the biggest problem area among musicians and the most overlooked!

Strengthen your rhomboids and upper back by doing pulling movements and see if your pain doesn’t improve, not to mention your posture!

My favorite exercises are:

Lat Pulldowns/Pull ups, any type of rows (inverted, seated, barbell or dumbbell) and exercises for the rotator cuff: soup can pours, prone lower trap raises and wall slides.  You can see all three of the rotator cuff exercises in Shoulder Pain Part 2.

Before doing any of these exercises, however, it’s not a bad idea to stretch the muscles that are tight, before strengthening the muscles that are weak. That’s another post for another day. 🙂

Lat pull downs/Pull ups.

     Good form                       BAD FORM!!!

(Coaching cues – keep spine neutral – curve in lower back, no leaning backwards, and keep shoulder blades down)

The big thing to remember here is to that before and DURING the movement, keep your shoulder blades pulled back and down.  This will prevent you from going into full shoulder extension and increase shoulder stability.

Huh?

That means that when your arms are as far away from you as they can be, if your shoulder blades are properly retracted and depressed you will still be able to let your arms go farther away.  So, when you are reaching up for the bar, don’t let your shoulder blades float away – keep them back and down.  If you find you can still let them go a bit farther (like in the second picture), you know they are not properly retracted. Think of keeping the bottom of your shoulder blades squeezed together throughout the movement.  This may cause you to not use as much weight as you would like, but so what?  If you use more weight than you can with good form, what are you really accomplishing?  THAT’S where you get into more pain and injury.

Inverted Row

Coaching cues: keep body “straight”, keep shoulder blades back and down.

Coaching cues: keep shoulder blades back and down, keep neutral arch in back, do NOT round your back when reaching for weight or pulling forward

Lower Back

If your lower back hurts, ask yourself how much you sit.  If the answer is “a lot”, you may have found your problem.  When you sit, your hips “flex”, this means that the knees come towards the body by means of the hip flexors   The hip flexors are pictured here and I know the Alexander Technique teachers will jump all over the psoas, as they should! That’s where I first found out about this very important muscle.  You can see how it attaches to your leg AND your low back. When you sit, this muscle flexes, or shortens, which (especially if your abs are too strong – aka, don’t do situps or crunches!!!!) causes you to bend forward, this muscle pulls on your low back.  The muscles on your low back (Quadratus Lumborum and spinal erectors, etc.) get stretched, just like the upper back muscles.

Solution?

Stretch the tight muscles, strengthen the weak muscles.  In this case, stretch the hip flexors, strengthen the low back muscles  and muscles of the core.  The CORE is actually made up of your entire torso and if you want an EXCELLENT book on strengthening the core in the non-traditional way (there is not a single “ab” exercise in this book!) I HIGHLY recommend getting New Rules of Lifting for Abs. 

I’m just finishing up this book myself and not only has it improved my posture, it has improved my balance, core strength and overall body strength.  I can lift heavier weights than I have in a long time and I have better posterior chain activation as well!

There are WAY too many exercises to list here for strengthening the core and lower back, and in fact, if you want more information on that, I cannot recommend anything here safely, which is why I recommend hiring a personal trainer to help you do these exercises, because done incorrectly you can cause more pain or even injury to yourself.

As for stretching the hip flexors, I have some great ones.

You can do this standing as well.  Make sure when you do this stretch, you lean backwards with your torso until you feel a stretch in the front of your hip and SQUEEZE your put on the stretched side.  When you stretch the hip flexor, you want to activate the opposing posterior chain muscle, in this case, the glutes.

This exercise is one you can do during rehearsals, while typing, or while lying down.  It will stretch your piriformis muscle (the angry little muscle in your butt that gets stretched out when you sit for too long).  I recommend doing this lying down: take the chair out of the picture and put the person on his back.  Grab the vertical leg and pull it towards the chest.  The horizontal leg (the one that is bent across the other) will feel a stretch in that glute and hip.

A good stretch for the psoas is this stretch:

Lie on the edge of a bed, bench or table and pull one leg towards your chest.  The other leg should dangle off the edge of the table.  DO NOT do this exercise if your doctor has told you not to or you have major back pain.  Check with your doctor first if you have concerns.  When doing this stretch, you should feel a deep pulling feeling in your abdomen, that is difficult to identify.  This is your psoas.  Hold for a count of 10-30, depending, and switch sides.

You can also do this on the floor to test for hip tightness.  Lie flat on the floor just like in this picture.  If your lower back comes off the floor and rounds, it can be a sign of hip flexor tightness.

What are some exercises I need to NOT do?

As you can see in this post, training the posterior chain is of utmost importance.  Therefore, training the frontal chain, is not as important.  If you have muscular imbalances, you do not want to add any more strength to those muscles.  The opposite of the muscles covered in this post would be: chest, quads, biceps.

Exercises I do not recommend if you are in pain:

Chest presses, bench presses, cable flyes (basically any chest pushing exercise), crunches, situps, any kind of oblique twisting ab exercise,  leg extension machine.

Other GOOD exercises to include would be exercises that train the entire body:

Pushups

Deadlifts

Squats

Make sure you perform these exercises with permission from your doctor and under the supervision of a properly certified personal trainer.  If you have any kind of health condition, check with your doctor first.

Related articles

• Shoulder Pain Secret (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Shoulder Pain Part 1 (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Identifying Shoulder Pain Part 2 – What To Do About It (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• Identfying Shoulder Pain Part 2 – What to Do About It (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Identifying Shoulder Pain – Part I (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• De-Mystifying Support and the Diaphragm (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• Geoffrey Gilbert and the Use of the Body: Taking a Look at “The Gilbert Legacy” for Tips (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• 3 Exercises + 1 for Core Strength and Stability (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• What Interests You? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)

What Interests You?

So as you all know, I have two main passions when it comes to career: Music and Fitness. I’ve gone into mostly uncharted territory with promoting myself as a Musician Health Coach, or a personal trainer for musicians. What does that mean to you, though? What does that mean and what do I do and how does that actually benefit you?

• I am a NASM certified personal trainer. This is one of the top rated personal training certifications in the country and, along with the NSCA, is considered the gold standard. In addition to this, this particular certification agency focuses on addressing the different muscle imbalances that everyone tends to develop – especially those who do repetitive motions like driving, sitting at a desk or computer, practicing an instrument, etc.
• I am a classically trainer professional flutist. I have studied music performance for a long time, ending (so far) with getting my Masters in Music Performance from FSU. What does this mean? It means that I LOVE to play my flute and perform for people. It means that I am one of those people in the above categories, practicing my instrument for hours, sitting in front of a computer (typing this), and I understand the demands that are placed on a musician’s body. We are unique in what our discipline requires from us. I get it, because I’m just like you.

So what the heck is a Musician Health Coach?

Besides my anatomy/kinesiology knowledge that came along with the personal training certification, I also have studied the Alexander Technique (taking classes/lessons at Interlochen Arts Camp, Appalachian State University and Alexander Murray), Body Mapping (taking the “What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body” class from Barbara Conable, and several other classes and presentations) and taking 2 years of Dynamic Integration with Eva Amsler at FSU. All three of these different modalities focus on the body; learning about the actual layout and how the body works, understanding how we move, remapping our idea of what we look like on the inside, learning to move with only the amount of tension that is necessary, UNLEARNING how to move in some ways, and most of all becoming hyper AWARE of my body and how it functions/moves.

As a musician health coach, what I do is to help musicians make that connection between their brains and their bodies. Huh? Playing the flute involves more than just your lips, arms, fingers and lungs. You use your entire body to play the flute, trombone, drums, etc. Do you ever think about these things while playing?

• When I breathe in my spine compresses and when I breathe out, my spine lengthens
• I am conscious of the space in-between my shoulder blades, and there is no tension there
• I feel my feet while playing
• When a difficult passage comes up, I consciously shift my weight to my right foot to make it easier
• While breathing, I notice whether it is my chest or abdomen moving
• During times of nervousness (either playing or about to play) I notice what my different symptoms are in all areas of my body, I can feel them, and I accept them instead of ignoring them.
• Most times while playing, my attention is on my big toe, the back of my knees or noticing if my shoulders are holding excess tension rather than notes and phrases
• I’m playing, but I’m feeling my feet
• While playing, I check in with my body and notice where I have pain and am able to connect that pain (or not) to how I play my instrument
• I can get up and down out of a chair without tensing my neck
• When I sit to play I’m aware of how my body is balanced between my sit-bones
• I feel strong/weak in certain areas of my body when I play

Ever thought any of those thoughts? I think of that stuff ALL THE TIME. Whether playing, practicing, preparing to play, weightlifting, driving, etc. As a musician health coach I see it as my job to help other musicians get out of their heads and into their bodies. Meaning that I use several methods to “coach” other musicians into being the best musicians they can be. I teach flute lessons but in these lessons the focus isn’t just on notes and phrases. A lot of the time we focus on body awareness, feeling your feet while playing, understanding how to sit in a chair and get in and out of it, noticing our emotions; how it feels to play with the different emotions and learning how to accept them instead of hide from them (including nervousness!).

If a musician or student complains about playing in pain, I begin to cross into the strength training aspect of my career. After learning how to “check in” with our bodies, I ask them to pinpoint the pain. I might show them some stretches to do before, during and after playing to combat the tightness that might be there.

Among musicians, especially those who have not been taught body awareness, there can be some pretty severe cases of muscle imbalances, and most often these imbalances lead to pain when playing. Most flutists I’ve surveyed complain of pain in and around the shoulder and neck area. A lot of this has to do with not being strong enough to hold our instruments in their proper positions for long amounts of time without compensation. Compensation is what happens when a muscle or body part is too tired or weak to be able to perform its intended function so other assistant muscles start taking over. We call this “synergistic dominance”. For example, if your shoulder and rotator cuff muscles are weak and other muscles are tight (especially your chest muscles), after awhile of playing you might start noticing pain under, around or between your shoulder blades (left, for flutists). The muscles you were asking to hold up your flute are not strong enough to continue, so other muscles like your chest and trapezius muscles have started to take over the job. This pulls on your already weak rhomboids and shoulder girdle which causes you to lean over to take the weight off the shoulder.

Now you are slouching to the right, your spine is out of alignment and your core muscles are not engaged to keep you upright. Most likely they were weak too, or else you would be able to hold up your flute. Now that the core is weak, other muscles of the hips have to take over which can cause your hamstrings to be weak, your hips to hurt, calves to be tight and possibly knees to hurt.

Now you’re a mess. Do you see how the body works together to play the instrument? We didn’t even talk about breathing!!! 🙂

So, here is my question to you. In the still relatively uncharted waters of musician health and strength training, what interests you? As a musician, what would you like to read about? What are you specific health concerns? What kinds of articles do you want to read about that you think might help you? Go outside the box here. Do you want to read about stretches? Weight training? Body Awareness? Travel tips? Overall health and well-being relating to the body and playing? There are a ton of topics, but I want to write about what interests YOU because I want to help YOU.

What interests you?

Feel free to post a comment on my Facebook page, hit me up on , leave a message below or take the poll below. Love to hear from you!

Click here to take survey

Related Articles

• What Interests You? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• NFA Convention Brochure (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• De-Mystifying Support and the Diaphragm (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Developing Body Awareness and Self-Trust (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• 3 Exercises + 1 for Core Strength and Stability (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Lessons in Body Mapping and Alexander Technique (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)
• Are You Ready To Change? (innovativeperformanceandpedagogy.wordpress.com)

Stretching ADEQUATELY Before/During/After Playing

What does it mean to stretch adequately? And why should I bother?

Stretching is underrated and underdone and people, especially musicians, are paying the price for it. The body was designed to move and it was not meant to hold static positions for long lengths of time, be that sitting in a car, typing, playing an instrument, etc. If one is confined to a rather static position for a long length of time, the body will become stiff and tight in certain areas. If, after that, you try to move suddenly, or for example, spend a long day at work in front of your computer (or several hours in a practice room) and decide then to go lift weights, if you do not stretch and warm up properly, you are literally begging for an injury. You are asking muscles that are tight/weak/stretched to do things that they are not ready nor capable to do.

Let me give you an example. For my bodyweight workout this past week I did not take the time to adequately stretch and warmup before hand and for the last two days, my hips have been paying for it. They have been so incredibly tight that I was almost limping. This led me to stretching ever opportunity I got yesterday, almost to no avail. Today before my workout, I spent the better part of 20 minutes, if not more, stretching and warming up, making sure my body was ready to meet the demands I was about to put on it.

How did I know I was ready? Well, let me tell you. After sitting for a long time, the hip flexors get shortened, the hamstrings and lower back can get stretch and the glutes fall asleep and fail to fire. What is the first thing I did when I got in the gym today? Dynamically and statically stretched my lower body and did plenty of glute activation exercises. It took awhile, but when I finally felt like my glutes were working (there was a burn starting to happen, I could feel them working) and my hips no longer felt like they were going to snap, but instead started to feel loose, and move more freely, I knew I was ready to go.

Let’s apply this to woodwind players and the upper body. What can you do? Make sure you warm up your upper body before you practice, during and after.

Next time you are about to practice, try this little warm up sequence and tell me how it went for you:

Arm circles 2 sets of 10

Doorway chest stretch 2×30 sec.

Wall slides 1×30 seconds each side

Do all three once before repeating.

What is happening? Well, if you play an instrument, more than likely you will have your arms in front of you. These stretches will warm up the chest, upper back and shoulder girdle allowing the muscles to move better and fire more accurately. If you have extra time, (and ideally, an exercise ball) do a couple sets of prone lower trap raises and/or YTLW’s. These will really fire up your lower traps and upper back.

What about if you are going to be sitting?

One thing that you can do is to do the standing warrior lunge stretch. Stand tall. Take a long step forward and descend into a lunge. Stretch your pelvis back, you should feel a deep stretch in your hip on the trailing/semi-straight leg. For added glute activation/hip stretching, squeeze your buttock on the trailing leg, let the arm on the trailing leg side drop towards your leg and raise you opposite arm high until you feel a longer stretch up into your abs on the trailing leg side. Hold this for 30 seconds. repeat on the other side. Do twice on each side.
If you have some time before a rehearsal, you can do some glute bridges, but if you have nowhere to lie on the floor, an easy way to get your glutes firing (so your hips and quads are doing less work) is to take long strides as you are walking to rehearsal/concert/ the bus/around, etc. and squeeze your butt with each step.

Anything I can do while I’m playing or even walking around?

Yes! If you recall the neutral position you are to take whenever you begin weight training (chest out, back arched, stick your butt out, shoulder blades back and down), you can modify this stance to be useful during the day. Basically, if you will depress and retract your shoulder blades while you are playing/practicing/rehearsing and even just walking around throughout the day, you will accomplish several different things:

1. Your chest will open up, stretch out and be less tight.
2. You will have taller, easier posture with less effort.
3. Your upper back will hurt less, and be less stretched and weak.
4. You will automatically have more confidence as when you depress and retract your shoulder blades you have to stick out your chest, which is a subconsciously vulnerable area and to do so signifies confidence, whether real or imagined, eventually it will become real.

Try this for a week and tell me how it worked for you!

Related articles

• Stretch to Increase Strength (fitsugar.com)
• Tim Ferriss, Glute Activation, and Why You Probably Suck (healthheralds.wordpress.com)
• How to do Inverted Rows (projectswole.com)
• Stretch It: Shoulder and Neck Stretching Backbend (fitsugar.com)
• 16 Tips for Desk Jockeys: What to Do About Sitting All Day (marksdailyapple.com)

A Free Neck: Lessons in Alexander Technique and Body Mapping

Today I had my second lesson of Alexander Technique, which began with the question:  What did you notice since your last lesson?

For sure I have become more aware of feeling grounded, feeling centered and balanced in my movements, but once I have the flute in my hands I know I lose this feeling as I get more and more into my practice session.  Even with stretches and mindful breaks I still have a ways to go to freeing things as much as I would like. I discussed the tension I feel in my neck in particular.

As I was sharing these observations while standing, the teacher was doing the gentle presssings and guidances with my body, bringing awareness to various places where I was holding tension.  But also I noticed that it’s easy to forget about certain parts of our bodies, that we can just go into automatic pilot and walk, stretch, and play our instruments so that we’re tuning out and not being really aware as to what a particular part of our body is doing.

I know that sounds a little strange, but I think as I’m developing this deeper sense of kinesthesia I’m realizing the disconnection I’ve had with my body.  It’s like my shoulder was just doing its thing without me really thinking about having any say in it.

After this first part of the lesson, she had me lie down on my back, my knees bent, feet flat on the floor.  She began the little guidances, and gave me imagery and gentle reminders about how I can release the tension in various areas she was focusing on.  She worked first on my right side, the neck, shoulder, arm, hip, leg, foot….and I literally felt the right side of my body as taller/higher, wider and more tingly, more present.  Then the left side, and the same feeling.  At one point I felt my entire body was very flat and very wide like a big puddle on the floor. She then asked me to get up slowly, and walk around.  It was the dreamiest little walk I’ve had in a long time.

I can say that for me thus far Alexander Technique has been more effective than a massage.   The sensation is more long-lasting because you bring awareness of how you can relax and be balanced and grounded on your own.  I’m learning how to relax my own muscles and take some control over the amount of tension I carry in my body.

The last part of the lesson I played for her, and she helped me to think about taking a breath without moving my head back or putting tension into my neck.  She also had me thinking about supporting my arms with my lower back, which in turn freed up my neck. Wow, what a difference!

I can’t wait for my lesson again next week.  Off to practice with a freer neck!

Related Articles/Sites

Easing a Stiff Neck–http://www.alextechedin.co.uk/easing-a-stiff-neck

Alexander Technique Books and Links–http://www.alextechedin.co.uk/books

Habit and Choice Blog–http://habitandchoice.com/blog/

Alexander Technique Blogs–http://alexandertechniqueblogs.com/

Uncommon Sense Pedagogy–http://uncommonsensepedagogy.blogspot.com/

Developing Body Awareness and Self-Trust

Once upon a time…

Like most people who learn an instrument in the USA, I learned to play the flute in 6th grade. I had wanted to start playing much earlier than this as I knew my mother had a flute hidden away under the stairs. Sometimes I would take it down off the shelf, carefully (like it had magic and I didn’t want to disturb it) and I would open the box to reveal the gleaming, silver tube inside. Seeing that shiny instrument, nestled in dark, navy velvet, I would reach out with wonder and touch the keys, thinking to myself “one day, I am going to get to learn to play this! One day, it will be mine to play and I won’t have to stare at it from a box”. After a few minutes of staring I’d put it away back on the dusty shelf and sigh with longing that I had to wait till 6th grade to learn.

the shiny buttons...

When the day came to sign up for band, I was first in line, waving my arms and proclaiming to everyone who would listen “I have a flute! I already have an instrument! Please, I want to play the flute!” I would rush down the halls every day at 2nd period with a giddy excitement that I, yes I was going to play that beautiful, shiny instrument and because of ME it was going to make sound!!!

I was one of the first in the band room, when it was time to wait for the bus, I would sneak down there to practice (once actually missing the bus and causing my mother to come get me….something she made known was NOT acceptable) and I always made sure that when I put my flute in the storage room with the other flutes that it was upright and protected. It wasn’t just that it was my mother’s instrument and I felt the pull of responsibility to take care of something that I undoubtedly cost a fortune, but I felt it somehow fragile, and extremely special because with it came the ability to express myself and communicate in a new way.

On lesson days I was uber-excited because I knew that I got to stay after school and play to my heart’s content…well, for an hour and a half at least. Some of my friends were taking lessons that day too and we’d play duets which was thrilling, and then when I was last, I’d have the huge empty room all to myself. I’d love to listen to my sound bounce off the walls.

As I grew up through high school and even into college, that same excitement followed me – sneaking down to the band room, getting special permission to not have to sit in study halls so I could go practice, playing every chance I got and going to every honor band I possibly could. I had an in-exhaustible curiosity to learn new things, new music, and lessons were always something I looked forward to because it wasn’t about not being prepared and playing for the teacher it was the thought of “what will she say that’s new to me today? What will I learn today? When I leave here, I’ll be better than when I came in!”

The beginnings of body awareness

In all those years of teaching, very seldom was any emphasis placed on being aware of my body, save hand position being correct and an awful lot of talk about my embouchure. In fact, it was the teacher in 7th grade who taught me my current (more or less) embouchure and thinking back on it, she put a great deal of emphasis on awareness of my lips. She had me play in front of a mirror to see what the embouchure looked like, and then step away, play and see if I could feel it without looking. I would go down the hall to the bathroom and stand on my tippy toes to see in the mirror, enjoying not only the sound of my playing bouncing off the walls of the deserted bathroom and down the hall, but enjoying the thrill of discovery with how my body worked.

Image via Wikipedia

From there, I started to notice that I was becoming increasingly interested in the body, especially mine, with how it worked in regards to playing my special instrument. I heard about Alexander Technique and took classes in it at Interlochen Arts Camp.

Then, I was told that there was a woman named Barbara Conable giving a workshop at a nearby university and her workshop was an all-day event titled “Everything The Musician Needs to Know About the Body“. My friend, a music therapy major, and I packed up and spent the day learning things that to this day, I have not forgotten.

Image via Wikipedia

At the time, I was still recovering from tendonitis acquired from my practicing at Interlochen. She asked for volunteers who had present or previous health issues. Of course, I volunteered, and she began to give me a body mapping lesson in front of the class. She told me to take my finger and run it all the way down one finger until I felt a mass of bones together: that was my wrist! Where the finger bone joined the wrist was actually the first joint of the finger! She told me: move your fingers and feel how they move….not move them from the first joint. It felt soooo much freer!

The grad school experience

I went on to graduate school where I took a class in Alexander Technique at Appalachian State for a whole year. It was wonderful to learn how to move and to learn how the body is supposed to move. But it wasn’t until I got to FSU that I REALLY began to be aware of my body.

Now, all through these years I had had an interest in exercise and weight training. I had been going to the gym since 7th grade when I was on the tennis team, but I really got into training regularly when I got to college. I read EVERYTHING I could get my hands on, and while I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was determined to learn and in the process of lifting, I began to develop mind-body awareness. My programming skills might have been seriously lacking, but I knew that when I did a one-arm row I supposed to feel it in my back, and I tinkered around with it till I did. I have no doubt this set me up for great body awareness come grad school.

At FSU I began to take Dynamic Integration (Feldenkrais) classes with Eva Amsler. This class began with all students lying on the floor for an hour every Thursday morning while Prof. Amsler walked around the room, asking us the strangest, easiest, and yet most difficult questions, in her Swiss accent.

“Do you feel your left leg lying on the floor? Which way are your toes pointing?”

“How much space is there between your ankle and the floor?”

“Do you feel your shoulder blades lying on the floor? Could you draw your little wings?”

“Think about how to get up, what would you move first?”

The class was incredibly eye-opening and between that class and her lessons I found myself questioning how I played this instrument that was almost a part of me, and questioning was there a better way? A different way?

While I was at FSU I continued my workouts, getting up about 6 every morning to walk to the gym, do my workout and walk home before preparing for class. I found myself asking the same questions in my workouts:

“Is there a better way to do this? ”

Am I moving most efficiently/effectively?”

“Should I feel this here or there?”

“If I increase the weight, does my form change?”

Looking back through my notebook of those two years of grad school, the practice notes in the beginning are peppered with questions to myself. The lessons revealed all kinds of new thoughts on how to think about my body, how to re-learn playing my instrument in the way that was best suited to me.

Actual Questions from my Notebook

Practice Notes:

I found that when slurring octaves my throat moves. I am attempting to only use my lips, mainly my upper lip. I find I can do this but it’s not clean at all. *How do I change octaves?

….the next day I answered this question:

I can change octaves by changing my support which creates faster air – blowing harder? But it sounds better when just my top lip moves down.

Warm up: long tones while singing – focus only on throat. Notice that air crept into cheeks. As I go lower, pitch wants to jump up, if I focus on only my aperture, I can feel it barely move to sculpt the air! Can only play very softly.

Played one note feeling upper lip move up and down and upper lip only while upper lip stays relaxed!

Long tones ascending concentrating on 1) Keeping an uninvolved throat 2) smallest possible movement in aperture 3) relaxed corners and/or air in cheeks.

The higher I go the louder I get! Why am I gripping the keys so tightly???

Flutter tonguing work: If I sing with the vowel “ih” in my mouth while I flutter tongue, the back of the tongue goes down. However, something changes when I take the voice away…I’m getting it but this is going to take WORK!

Pentatonic scales – focusing on feeling in whole body, am I creating unnecessary tension anywhere? Tension -front of shoulders, left rear deltoid. While I am just observing what’s happening in my body, tension-wise I am noticing more inflation in my cheeks only concentrating on that, not thinking about support and keeping fingers close to the keys.

When I sit on the ball and play, I notice I collapse into myself.

Lesson Notes/Questions:

The tongue is a muscle so we can relax it. When double tonguing, let the air move the tongue. Tongue is only interrupting the air.

Figure out which way I learn – hearing, visual or muscle memory. Sing it, write it down, or play it without blowing.

(about support) Just feel that you hold the tension – how it feels to play with and without.

Teaching principle: go where you haven’t been before – unexplored. You don’t have to say “I change you”

Observe, don’t control. Allow yourself to make mistakes. If you make a mistake, don’t stop, it punishes yourself. Just be aware when you do something wrong or right – was that easy? Hard? Instead of”when I do….then…” that’s controlling.

Trust = risk. To trust myself: 1) Observe when you control 2) risk 3) start to observe when you DON’T trust

For 3 weeks, every day, do finger work: practicing slowly, fingers slow close to the keys, observing – can also practice slowly pressing/lots of tension and then easy to feel the difference – but be really patient for 3 weeks before working other way.

Work on holding the body open.

There are lots and lots more of those in my notebook, but do you see the theme? The questions I was asking myself actually took a lot of guts. That excitement to discover, to learn, to play that I had in 6th grade that followed me all the way till now served me well; it gave me the courage I didn’t know I had to not put so much stock in what old teachers had told me was the “right” way, but it gave me the courage to discover and learn my own way. Not only did this make me a better player, it made me a much better teacher, I feel.

Exercises in developing self-trust and body awareness

As you can see by now, developing body awareness can go hand in hand with developing a trust of yourself. Look at te questions I wrote down as I practiced; have you ever asked yourself those questions? Has your practice session looked something like that?

1) this week, each time you practice, write down your own observations of your practice session. Notice what you are doing – can you do it without judging?

Look at the questions my professor asked of me and the way she guided me.

2) Take one of these each week and apply it to yourself and your practice session. Write down your observations

Are you afraid to observe? Do you find judgements coming up as you observe things? Do you have the courage to change if you observe yourself doing something less effectively than you would like?

3) sometime during the day take time to lie on the floor and make observations of yourself. Notice every part of your body and where it touches the floor. If judgements come up about how you are lying on the floor, just let them pass. Start on one side of your body and work your way up from your feet to your head – then compare each side to the other, and do the other side. When you get up after this, how do you feel? When you play after this, how do you feel?

4) while playing, start to feel other parts of your body than your fingers. You might be surprised to find you don’t even feel your fingers when you play. Take a day and focus on how your lips feel, what do they do? How do they change notes? Feel your feet when you play. Where do they touch the floor? All these thoughts think WHILE playing – how does it change your playing to concentrate on feeling your body and putting the “doing” on auto-pilot?

Be kind to yourself. Body awareness takes time and is constantly developing. Try some of these techniques and tell me below how you feel. Do you already have good body awareness? How did you develop it? If you have taken Alexander, Feldenkrais, Dynamic Integration, or body mapping lessons, share with others how it helped you.

Related Articles

• NFA Convention Brochure (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• The Physical Flute – Alexander Technique and more body awareness exercises
• What Interests You? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Spring is Coming, What are you Going to Do? (fluteangel.wordpress.com)
• Interview with Greg Pattillo, YouTube’s “Beatbox Flute” Guy (millenniummsband.wordpress.com)
• De-Mystifying Support and the Diaphragm (fluteangel.wordpress.com)