The Dynamic Musician Series Blog

Sold on the Feldenkrais Method

I ran across a blog tip from MaryBeth Smith, a voice teacher in Houston, TX about the benefits of the FM. Here’s the link: Sold on the Feldenkrais Method

Although this may not seem to directly relate to musicians, it does fact have very much to do with the process of making music. As stated in the article, “...the nervous system is often the forgotten element in physical training:  when we move and train our bodies without awareness, without new stimulus, we wind up reinforcing old patterns. We're driving with the emergency brake on. Corrective resistance exercise, which trains primarily muscle tissue, is the long way around. Feldenkrais targets primarily the brain and nervous system, which is infinitely adaptable and can elicit change almost instantly.”

We could change this to say that the nervous system is often forgotten in music training and that practicing without awareness can reinforce old habits, i.e. mistakes. These mistakes may not take the form of missing notes but in overusing or straining our bodies. This overuse may not be apparent right from the onset, but begin to show its effects later after many years of practicing and performing.

Doing Feldenkrais Method Awareness Through Movement lessons, as also stated, can provide the musician with a great deal of benefit away from the instrument. In this last quote we just need to replace athlete with musician: “I think there's a lot of potential in this kind of work:  not only to heal injury and correct poor function, but also to help us find the equivalent of the athlete's 'zone' of relaxed readiness in everyday life and in athletic activities as well.”

Enjoy the weekend and thanks to MaryBeth Smith for the tip.

And...

Be sure to check out the DMS podcasts, Feldenkrais mini lessons for musicians and speakers as well as "The Dynamic Musician Series: Dynamic Stability and Breath Volumes 1 & 2"

From iTunes
or direct

If you have any specific questions or comments on breathing and posture, send me an e-mail and I’ll try to respond in a future blog. Until then, breathe, sit and stand well!

Playing With Awareness

I was perusing though the forum “Talk Bass”  because I saw that some of my blog referrals were coming from there. First off, I want to thank you for the referrals. The post I read was entitled, “Avoiding Arthritis, Tendonitis, etc.” To summarize, a young, aspiring classical bassist was asking how he could avoid getting tendonitis and arthritis from practicing up to 5 hours a day. There were many good and useful responses to his inquiry. For example, warm up and stretch properly, get exercise and lead a healthy lifestyle. There were also those that suggested 5 hours a day was too much and that he could do other things to learn his craft like listening and studying scores. And of course, make sure he has a good teacher who can help him with these issues. All of this is good advice.

To my mind though, what was missing is the idea of playing with awareness. All of the above suggestions (except those saying to make sure he uses proper technique) dealt with the “before and after” of playing. No one asked the question, “How do you feel while playing? To be sure, musicians have a great deal of awareness while playing. They are aware of tempo, pitch, volume, style, musical form, and how they fit into an ensemble amongst other things. But how many of us are more aware of what’s going on outside than what’s going on inside, and of our physical sensations? By physical sensations I mean the feeling of how much pressure, force, and strength are needed to play. Are we using more force than necessary? Are we sensing a connection of our arms, shoulders, and head to our spines, torso, pelvis, and feet? Even if there is a highly developed form of awareness of the body parts that contact the instrument or produce the sound, we often neglect other parts that are just as vital to making music such as the spine, ribs, and pelvis etc.

Some may respond with the question, “Who cares what my pelvis is doing?” or “I can’t think of so many things at once.” Well, what your pelvis is doing may have a large impact on your sound and certainly your comfort. And yes you can become more aware of your body parts farther away from where you contact the instrument. We can all increase our abilities to be aware and include more of ourselves in our self-image, even while playing.

How does one go about this? I’m glad you asked because that’s just what makes the Feldenrkais Method so useful for musicians. By engaging in a process of using movement to develop awareness or “Awareness Through Movement” (or ATM) as it’s called, you learn to better sense more of yourself more of the time. Most of the movements used in ATM are not related to specific tasks so they give us the opportunity to develop awareness without having a goal to achieve or to “succeed.” This newly learned awareness transfers over into playing or singing. If you’re curious, try out some of the DMS podcasts or even the lessons in “The Dynamic Musician Series,” then you’ll see/feel what I mean.
Be sure to check out the DMS podcasts, Feldenkrais mini lessons for musicians and speakers.

From

iTunes

or direct:

If you have any specific questions or comments on breathing and posture, send me an e-mail and I’ll try to respond in a future blog. Until then, breathe, sit and stand well!

A Feldenkrais Lesson at the Conservatory of Music

Today's post  is an article I wrote for a newsletter for the "Institute for the Study of Somatic Education."

The article illustrates some important aspects for music teachers and for somatic practitioners working with musicians. If you would like to read more about the Feldenkrais Method, click the link to the "Institute for the Study of Somatic Education" below.

A Feldenkrais lesson at the Conservatory of Music

The Feldenkrais Method is practiced in many settings. This is the story of a Feldenkrais lesson given to a voice student as part of a team-taught master class for singers. Annelise Kohler  - voice teacher at the Conservatory of Music in Bern, Switzerland - and I have been experimenting with this novel format since November of 2006. Each morning and afternoon session begins with Annelise leading the participants through vocal warm-ups. Then, in ensemble, they sing a chorale. Next, I teach a Feldenkrais, Awareness Though Movement (ATM) lesson chosen for its relation to the theme of the vocal exercises and chorale. After the ATM, Annelise once again takes the class through vocal exercises and ensemble singing. This gives the participants the opportunity to integrate what they learned from the ATM lesson into their singing.

Then we begin working with individuals. The student sings an Aria or Lied with accompaniment as if it were a performing situation. The other participants are listening and watching. When finished, Annelise leads the student into a discussion about how they felt and what they’d like to improve. She then critiques the performance from a voice teacher’s perspective and I give feedback from my experience as a Feldenkrais teacher. After discussion about the similarities and differences in our observations with the student, we all three decide what will be the focus for the individual Feldenkrais lesson, or Functional Integration, (FI) that follows.

At this point I begin working with the student in front of the class, giving some explanation of what I’m doing and thinking so the others can follow along.As you will see later, the lesson and my narrative can create surprising results! After working for a short time, usually 15-25 minutes, Annelise has the student sing their piece and compares it to the first performance.

This is the story of one student’s lesson, which turned out to be especially interesting from both musical and Feldenkrais perspectives.

M. is a young man hoping to make a career of singing and teaching. He sang his Lied and did fairly well, but the performance was not very moving, especially considering the piece’s tragic character and potential for dramatic expression. When Annelise asked him what he would like to improve, he said his head and neck felt awkward and uncomfortable. She mentioned that his diction could be clearer and that he needed to better convey the mood or feeling of the Lied he was singing.

Annelise asked what I had to offer and I said, “I would like to take a look at how his head is sitting on his spine.” I had him lie on a mat on the floor and sat down by his head. I noticed that his head was slightly tilted to the left and his left shoulder was closer to the left ear than his right shoulder was to the right ear and saw similar signs of this pattern in his chest, pelvis, and legs. I mentioned this to the observers and that I suspected that it wouldn’t be very comfortable for him to have his head in the visual, objective middle. To check my hypothesis, I gently lifted his head and moved it the slight amount needed so it would look as if his head was centered over his body. He reported that this indeed felt uncomfortable, so I put his head back to where he had spontaneously chosen to place it when lying down. I told him and the group that it was actually fine for him to have his head where if felt most comfortable. If he held his head in the objective “middle,” he would be in a less neutral position and actually had less freedom to move his head in most directions. For M. this was a revelation. He recounted that he had been instructed by other voice teachers to have his head centered in order to sing well but never felt comfortable when striving to do so.

I continued using my hands and voice to demonstrate how the curve of his spine, the height of his shoulders and position of his pelvis all played a role in how his head was positioned. My focus for the lesson was for him to be better able to more completely and accurately sense his own degree of comfort in various positions. Additionally, it was important for him to understand that the feeling of comfort in his head and neck was directly related to the organization of his spine, shoulders and pelvis and that just changing his head’s position alone would not make singing any easier. I did not try to teach him how to hold his head in the anatomical middle place or to correct him in any other way.

When he got up from the floor, he took a few moments to find the place where his head felt most comfortable.

And then he sang again.

 

This time is was entirely different. His voice and diction were much better than the first run. All present reported being moved and touched by his performance. And all this because M. felt he could have his head where it felt most comfortable and was better able to sense that in the moment! Continuing, M. experimented with “centering” his head and realized that prior to the lesson, he was actually overcompensating and bending it to the right because he had no way of knowing what the middle was supposed to feel like.

After the formal end of his lesson and at the beginning of the lunch break, I observed him putting his bag over his left shoulder. I suggested that he experiment with hanging it over the other shoulder for variation and as a way to learn more about his own sense of position. He said he had tried this before but it had always slid off. During this short interchange, he realized as well that talking on the telephone, which he did a great deal in his day job also contributed to his head position. Coming back from the lunch break, M. reported that it had become easier to carry the bag on his right shoulder.

I mentioned earlier that engaging the other people in the room with the lesson had a surprising effect. During M.’s second performance of his Lied, I noticed that his accompanist also played with more fluency and expression. I mentioned this to the class, and the accompanist agreed. She reported that she had felt quite involved my discussion of M.’s pattern and in watching us while observing herself during the lesson I gave him. It seemed that she also learned something significant about her own way of finding comfort in her head and neck, about being better able to sense herself as well during M.’s performance.

 

This session demonstrates several important aspects of the Feldenkrais Method in working with musicians and non-musicians alike. For example how a person’s “middle” as seen from the outside can be experienced very differently as perceived by the person from the “inside.” Furthermore, it shows that someone who has only been taught to strive for a position that they do not know through their own senses and how that position relates to other parts of their body will have difficulty both in finding that position, and from the errors in their attempts to “correct” the position.

 

The lesson also illustrates a related principle: the importance of respecting each person’s habits and organization as they are found. This is true for performers who need to rely on their habits as well as anyone else. In M.’s case, having a teacher tell him to “center” his head was - at best - useless information. In fact it led to other problems in his singing. He became uncomfortable from over compensating because he had no internal reference when trying to find his middle. Interestingly and very significantly, our work together of “supporting his found pattern” as we say in the Feldenkrais Method, led to him making some positive changes in his standing organization after the lesson – some automatically, and all of them by himself “from the inside.” These kinds of changes are much more likely to grow into preferred patterns of use adopted automatically and without struggle.

 

We are still left with the questions: What caused his diction to improve without having worked with his tongue and jaw, for example? What enabled him to become more expressive and dramatic? Why were the listeners so deeply moved by the second performance?

 

My answers are that the organization in the neck and shoulders can have an influence on the freedom and fluidity of the jaw muscles and more importantly, he could sing from his own neutral organization and move in various directions from there. By moving I mean physically as well as emotionally although those two are not really separate from one another. Additionally, being more aware of, and accepting his own organization, he was better able communicate with (sense) himself and thus with the audience as well. This form communication is the essence of music making.

Special thanks to Paul Rubin for helping to edit the article! Here's the link to his website:

The Institute for the Study of Somatic Education (ISSE) provides training for Certification as a Teacher/Practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method in the Europe and the United States. Paul Rubin and Julie Casson Rubin, the Educational Directors, were trained by Dr. Feldenkrais. Their website posts some interesting articles - including a few rare ones - on the Method. 

If you are interested in trying out some FM lesson for musicians, you can get mini lesson from my DMS podcast and you can order “The Dynamic Musician Series: Dynamic Stability and Breath, Volumes 1 & 2” digitally or in hard copy from the links below.

Thanks for reading!

Be sure to check out the DMS podcasts, Feldenkrais mini lessons for musicians and speakers.

From iTunes

or direct

If you have any specific questions or comments on breathing and posture, send me e-mail and I’ll try to respond in a future blog. Until then, breathe well!