After experiencing discomfort and sometimes pain after practicing piano and
performances a few years ago, I began to suspect that I had a repetitive
strain injury (RSI). I went to my family doctor, and his diagnosis was RSI.
The problem was, he didn't know how to treat it except with anti-inflammatories
which are ineffective. They reduce inflammation and sometimes help deaden
the pain, but do nothing to cure the condition that caused the injury.
Ironically, my wife Susan Hlasny is also a pianist suffering from RSI, and she went through the whole miserable experience before I did. Obviously, I didn't learn from her experience about the injury but I did learn from the amount of difficulty, frustration and heartache that she had getting an accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment. After trying a couple of avenues of treatment which turned out to be dead ends, I cut to the chase and went to New York to consult with Dr. Emil Pascarelli, an expert on diagnosis and treatment of musician’s injuries. I got a precise diagnosis, and while I was there, I met Dr. Pascarelli’s associate Vera Wills of the Manhattan School of Music. She is an expert in ergonomics, prevention of injuries and re-training of injured musicians. Dr. Pascarelli told me what was wrong and sent a detailed report to my doctor, and Ms. Wills told me how I hurt myself and suggested what I should do about it. Susan Hlasny and I are working towards bringing these experts to Calgary next year to present a conference on RSI, which will also feature the expertise of Dr. Allen Hooper, Dr. Kelley de Souza and physiotherapist Lou Petrash of the Panther Sports Medicine Clinic here in Calgary.
For the past three years, I have been practicing following Ms. Wills advice as well as working with Lou Petrash. Lou is experienced in working with people suffering from RSI, and it has been a very positive experience working with him. He has helped me get to the point where the injury is under control (I can play again!), and for the past year or so I’ve been on a “plateau”. I’d practice and for a while it would be fine. Then, things would inexplicably go wrong, my hands would hurt, and I’d be back seeing Lou. He’d fix me up, and I’d go off and practice again. I went through this cycle a couple of times when it occured to me that I could do this roller coaster indefinitely and eventually get discouraged and give up playing, or go even further back and get to the root of the problem. Call me a lunatic, but I really do not want to stop playing the piano!
A few weeks ago, a notice for an Alexander Technique workshop appeared in my mailbox at Mount Royal College. It was arranged by Sharon Janes-Carne (thank-you, Sharon!!), and given by Trevor Allan Davies. I had already done some research on a number of techniques, including Alexander Technique and Feldenkrais (which I did some time ago with Rob Black, and it helped enormously). The workshop was very interesting, and Trevor touched on a number of concepts that had already occured to me as a result of my own re-training as well as some new concepts which helped me go further. At the time of writing, I have been taking private lessons from Trevor for about a month, and I find at least one new and useful piece of the puzzle at every lesson.
Although people tend to think of Alexander Technique as posture training, it goes far deeper than this. Essentially, there is a link between our thoughts, our bodies and how we go about using our muscles. As we age and as a result of patterns of thought that we learn, we develop a number of habits of thought. These habits determine how we use our bodies. For example, we think of soldiers as being “ramrod straight”. Every soldier is forced to stand straight whether or not their back actually is physiologically straight (it’s not!). The soldier gets accustomed to this position, and soon it starts feeling normal and good. However, in order to maintain that military straightness, the soldier must tense up a number of muscles to keep the position. This tension becomes habit, and soon the soldier doesn’t notice it. If they return to a physiologically aligned position, they feel like they slouch and are forced by their own sense of guilt to straighten up.
Pianists (I’m writing as a pianist!) are no strangers to this. Everybody, at some point in their early in life, has been ordered by a commanding voice of authority to sit up straight. So what happens? The person snaps to attention in their seat, and the voice of authority says, “That’s good”. What they both overlook is that their idea of sitting straight is with back arched, head forced down and back a bit, chest tightened up, and jaw clenched in determination. The idea that this position of extreme tension is good is reinforced until either the person gets in the habit of forcing themselves into this position, or they get into the habit of feeling guilty about not forcing themselves. Ineterestingly enough, my younger students without exception sit very well. Perhaps they have not yet received enough training in poor posture!
Pianists and piano teachers tend to spend a lot of time analysing and worrying about technique. We spend years learning to put our arms, hands and fingers into certain positions that we or our teachers have thought best for playing. We get into the habit of doing things in a certain way and once we can make it work, we live by the old saw, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”. I have no quarrel with this saying, depending on the definition of the word “broke”. I used to think that if I could get through a passage and have it sound the way I want it, that was good enough, and it wasn’t broken. However, when I listened carefully, I could hear a tiny voice in my mind saying, “This is too difficult; there’s got to be a better way”. Whenever I listened to the voice, I would work out whatever was bothering me. My playing would become effortless for a time and my sound was more beautiful and effortless. But old habits die hard, and partly because I was playing so much, I soon went back to the place where I got through stuff. The voice of reason got fainter, drowned out by my modest success. It came back with full force when I started experiencing real, painful discomfort while playing.
It ocurred to me that for any technique to be effective, a musician needs a stable and relaxed platform to work from. Although I have been working on posture since I was diagnosed with RSI, it took a while for me to admit that I didn’t really know what good posture was. I spent a fair amount of time sitting “straight”, and paid for my diligence with a strange assortment of aches and pains that migrated around my back and neck, depending on which version of “straight” I chose that day, how I slept, my mood, and so on. In his workshop, Trevor connected the concept of posture with the phrase “ready to move”. A light bulb popped into existence above my head (I’m surprised that nobody noticed - perhaps they were blinded by the glow of their own light bulbs), and I realized that I had always thought of posture as being a single ideal position. That concept is fine for refrigerators and telephone booths because they rarely move around (Monty Python’s Keep Left signs notwithstanding). But people, and this includes piano players, need to move to produce a sound. As soon as movement begins, posture must change to help it. In other words, posture is not a position that one moves in and out of. It is a dynamic situation where the body automatically and effortlessly adjusts to help any movement. If the body does not adjust appropriately, muscles must tense up compensate. This tension affects the movement, and since sound at any instrument depends on appropriate movement, the tension also affects the sound.
Alexander Technique provides the means to learn how to effortlessly maintain good posture, whatever one is doing. Since the state of one’s muscles depends entirely on the way one thinks, a large part of Alexander training is in give oneself appropriate directions and observing the results. This is dependent on being aware of subtle sensations and thoughts. People tend to prepare themselves for any movement by unnecessarily tensing up in various places. Through retraining, it is possible to inhibit this habitual tensing up and complete the movement by adjusting posture rather than bracing muscles. A couple of weeks after beginning training with Trevor, I was practicing one day while giving myself the Alexander directions (or giving myself Alexander directions while practicing; I’m not sure which!). I noticed that while playing the left hand ostinato in Gyorgy Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata # VII, my arm was getting tense. I spent about ten minutes simply observing my thumb movement on the F, and found that even thinking about moving it triggered a sensation in my second and third fingers. I took a break, walking around my studio while giving myself the directions again and simply noticing various sensations in my body. I sat down again at the piano and feeling unusually comfortable, I started to play Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 28 (Pastorale). I watched in astonishment as my hands, feeling like limp dishrags, made their way through the first movement effortlessly, accurately and beautifully. I made no discernible physical effort to control them, and yet some voicing and subtleties of nuance that had so far eluded me were there. In retrospect, I had the sense that I could have done anything I wanted and that freedom was intoxicating. While I was playing, though, nothing existed but the music. There was the sense that I “became” the music, a sensation that I am quite familiar with when composing. I tried again, but to my acute disappointment, the simple act of trying made the whole thing fall apart. However, the same thing has happened several times since then and I am convinced that it comes about as a result of the Alexander training.
I have also noticed changes in my teaching. I am finding ways to help my students play better without focussing all attention on the activities on the keyboard. Through my work on myself, I am becoming more sensitive to problems with posture and as I try to help students make adjustments in their lower back (for example), I also notice that their sound or ease of movement improves dramatically. This is very exciting as a teacher and musician because it provides immediate confirmation that I am on the right track. My experiences playing, practicing and teaching after just a few Alexander Technique lessons suggest that starting training was a good decision at the right time for me.
If you would like more information on Alexander Technique, you can contact
Trevor Allan Davies at (403) 228-0310.
http://www.alexandercenter.com/pa/index.html