You are a musician, but maybe you have reached a plateau, you want to discover more ease and economy in your performance, you may experience pain or tension when playing. In using Alexander Technique for musicians I have developed many innovative exercises that focus on the specific needs of musicians.
In this post I share my favourite exercises for Alexander Technique for musicians with my own twist, you can do these at home, or share with your music class if you are a music teacher.
Gettin’ jiggy wid it
Physics, poetry, and scripture point to an understanding of the world that embraces matter as waves, undulations, vibrations, and resonance; they harmonize with the thinking of Pythagoras that the world is far more musical than we’ve dared to think. The Hebraic writer alluded to this new reality some 2000 years ago, saying, “things which are seen are not made of things that do appear.”
And a bit more recently, Shakespeare, less than half a millennium ago, put these words in the mouth of Hamlet, namely, that his “too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew.”
Vibrating bodies
Responding to Hamlet, to Pythagoras, and the Hebraic writer, we might say: Done and done. Science and soul testify to the fact that we live, move, and breathe in a state of real-world tremulousness. We are as matter, a momentary tune hummed in eternity.
How can we conduct our lives, play our instruments, perform our tasks in light of our singing selves? Let’s see.
Alexander Technique for musicians: Introducing the exercises!
As we begin our Alexander Technique class for musicians, let each of us choose an action, an activity, and perform it: a bow stroke, a dance move, conducting a musical phrase, a spoken text, a song, any activity that lends itself to class work. If you play an instrument take time to return it mindfully to its case.
In fact, that might be a great choice for an action as we begin, the removal and return of your instrument to its case. At the end of class we’ll all return to our chosen activity to see if it has changed, progressed, gotten easier, or harder. In other words, we’ll establish a control to monitor our progress.
Musician Exercise 1: Enlarging our consciousness
Our bodies are as great as our consciousness, as large as all the data of our environment that we take in, the objects in the room where we sit or stand, the objects beyond these rooms, the buildings, the cities beyond, the mountains and seas.
We can undo the hard borders of our bodies, let our consciousness run to inclusion rather than enclosure. We can open into the universe, loose the gazelles of our thinking, let them go bounding into the universe to its very expanding, trembling edge. Undoing our holdings, the embodiment of our thoughts, we can dance, move, vibrate, oscillate, sing, gyrate, and spin. We can, in other words, get jiggy with it.
Musician Exercise 2: Hip Freedom Technique
I love the hip freedom technique because the hips connect the torso to the legs and they are an accumulator of tension, stiffening the whole mechanism. When you loosen the two parts through hip movement your instrument knows it at once!
Let me introduce you to a plumb line. It’s a weighted string or small rope with a slender weight at its end. Held aloft, it points to the center of the earth. Imagine now, a plumb hanging from your pelvic floor, between the organs of elimination and sexuality.
Start that imaginary plumb line in motion, gently circling and freeing your pelvis to set it in motion, moving it in small circles and then larger, the imaginary plumb line tracing your movement on the floor. Play with it. Dance. Induce larger and smaller spirals. Move within your owns confines without involving another.
Musician Exercise 3: Heads up
Let’s do a bit of body mapping of the point where your head meets your spine. Your topmost cervical vertebra is your atlas, named after the mythological dude who held up the world. The atlas uplifts, presents your head like a skilled waiter carrying a perfectly balanced tray. Where is your atlas? Would you point to it?
If you touch the back of your head with your hand and let your hand trace down the skull, you’ll find the base of your skull turning inward toward your neck. Follow that. If you could continue that movement into the center of the neck, you would find your atlas. On stage, a movement of the head upon those joints commands attention, the motility of nobility.
Imagery: Imagine that atop your atlas there were mini-me’s, tiny versions of yourself, hands aloft, with soft tickling fingers, jazz hands, urging you to allow space between your head and atlas, lightening you up. Silly, at first, perhaps, until you notice the effect on your breathing. Place those wormy little fingers just before you at neck level.
Imagine your head upon your fingers, a head in front of your head and then, your hands aloft, a second head directly above your own. What is your experience? If your head seems unencumbered by the torso, recall that experience.
Musician Exercise 4: Cultivating freedom
If you would cultivate the freedom of your head upon its atlas, try the following. Imagine a spiral whose center is just above you on the ceiling, spiraling and opening. Let your head begin to trace that spiral, starting in the center and opening gently, sweetly, and outwardly.
Your neck is passive, an actor in the show, not the director. You may come to realize that those exercises that roll the neck round and round on the shoulders are of little if any value. They are a waste of time.
Musician Exercise 5: Head and hips
Now join the motion of the head to the motion of the hips. Let the hips move concentrically with your head and then contrarily to the spiraling of the head. More fun than this you’ve never had in a class. If you want, shout. Strum the body. In the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, slightly paraphrased: Grope in [your] soul’s very viscera and strum the sweetest and most secret catgut of the mind.
Musician Exercise 6: Liberate head, legs and arms
I love this exercise that I have created to expand Alexander Technique for musicians to help liberate the head, legs and arms.
Your head is an extremity, so are your arms and legs. They are dear to us. We hold them close, too close. We colonize them. We can, by taking thought, by directing our action, free them, free the extremities. Look about, you’ll find a basket of balls.
Pick one up and find a safe place from which to launch it. Begin to toss the ball underhanded as though you were throwing your fingers and hands away. Launch the ball but don’t guide it.
Musician Exercise 7: Get launched
Let your underhanded tossing of the ball become more liberated, expansive, and free. Notice one another. You’ll see and feel immediately if you or another are tempted to guide. You’ll know and so will the ball.
As you more freely launch the ball, your fingers, your hands, and arms, you’ll be protected from injury by the conjoined, superbly balanced action of both agonist and antagonist muscles, the concomitant and blessing of movement originating in the cerebellum, your lizard brain.
Musician Exercise 8: Winged victory
Now, abandoning those spheroids, let your arms rest at your sides. Wait a moment, and easily launch your hands and arms outwardly as though tossing a sticky crumb from your fingers. Let the hands return to your sides with a gentle slap.
Musician Exercise 9: Wait and repeat
Wait a moment and repeat a bit more outwardly letting your arms return to your sides. Again, wait and repeat until you begin to find motion wholly lacking in overt control or guidance. Find the rhythm of release and the release of rhythm. Launch your hands and arms, let them return to your sides with a soft slap.
Now, let your knees begin to comply, sending them forward, bending them easily with each upward motion of your arms. Again, a few iterations, coming to neutral between each.
Now, let the forwarding of the knees grow and mirror the action of your arms. No longer singly, but in a continuing self-sustaining rhythm. It is a bit like starting a small internal combustion engine; a few pulls of the rope and the engine catches, runs. Let your legs, knees, and arms catch on. The rhythm will take you. You can be all rhythm,
Musician Exercise 10: I can fly!
This is the “flying” exercise advocated by a beloved teacher of Alexander technique, the late Pearl Ausubel, one of my teachers and of many others. It is a tool for self-discovery, loosing and liberating the stolid solidity of the self. Shout while you fly. Sing out. Honk.
Now, take a moment and return to your chosen activity, the control we established at the top of class. Take time to notice. Cheer the change.
Do you want more?
If you love these exercises and are serious about taking the next steps here are some options good friend!
- Read my blog on skilled hands
- Book a private Alexander Technique Session with yours truly
- Book this class for your conservatory, studio, or university, 2 sessions in one day, or 5 sessions, Monday through Friday.
All you need to set that in motion is to email me at alanbowersnyc@mac.com.
