A musicians’ well-being begins with themselves. As a musician, you are the main instrument in your music making process. This is most obvious with voice students as there is no external instrument. However, it is equally important for all musicians.
Your basic body posture and balance and your continued ability to respond dynamically throughout playing is critical to remaining injury free. Taking the time to cultivate healthy postural habits throughout your learning process will serve you throughout your lifetime of playing and performing.
Working on postural and balance fundamentals before injury or pain occurs is significant to the musician’s success.
The more you observe the nuances of movement in yourself and perhaps your students, the more available you will be able to respond appropriately and adapt to the needs of the musical instrument and the music making. Maintaining dynamic balance requires continued recalibration of the muscular tone so that connection and flow throughout your body is available.
A starting place is to attend to the moment before you begin to play. Begin each lesson, practice, or performance with a pause, a GAP - Give A Pause. Allow yourself to find your best balance and use of your body before you approach the instrument. Make sure your breath is moving.
How to Use the GAP as Preparation:
Musicians who play while seated can do this process while sitting. If you stand to play or sing you can do this while standing. Musicians who support instruments can pause prior to bringing the instrument up to playing position.
Allow yourself to find the best balance and use of your body before you approach the instrument or make a sound.
During the pause explore thinking through each of the ideas below. Notice how your body responds, how your awareness changes, and anything else that comes up.
Sense the floor and ground underneath the supporting body parts (this does not mean to go passive or collapse on the ground.)
Notice the rebound and length in your body that can be felt as a response to gravity.
Allow your body to respond to the breathing process.
Allow for freedom in the joints of your body and notice how that helps improve all of the above points.
Notice what you noticed as you went through those ideas.
Then continue with these more specific ideas in your GAP:
Allow your head to balance (not be held) above the base of support (feet if you’re standing or sit bones if you’re sitting).
Allow for the natural curves of your spine to be present.
Sense the 3-dimensionality of your entire structure; length, width and depth.
Allow your head, neck, and back matrix to be the main support for your body so that the arms and legs are free to move as needed.
If standing, make sure the hips, knees and ankles are free and unlocked.
From this place of using the GAP as Preparation, begin to play, sing, or bring your instrument up and notice how you sense this process.
The balance and ease that emerges from using the Pause as Preparation will become a new baseline of use that you can return to before you start playing, at the end of phrases, and during moments of rest.
With repeated practice, this baseline will be refined and eventually become habitual. In this way you can recuperate by releasing any excess “doing” you have accumulated while playing.
This process can lead to a more easeful and coordinated organization from which to begin playing again.
What do you notice? Drop a note in the comments about how you experience this process.