From BodyLearning: Michael Parkinson, a bassoonist and Alexander Technique teacher in Vienna, Austria, talks to Robert Rickover about his own experiences with the Technique, and how it can help musicians.
…[R]eplacing habitual patterns of movement with something more appropriate isn’t quite so easy if one is not aware of what those habits are. With the guidance of an Alexander Teacher one learns to recognize those habitual movement patterns of “use” in everyday activities, and how to modify them to promote lighter, more economical movement and more efficient breathing.
Alexander’s teaching technique has been valued by those involved in the performing arts since he came to London from his Australian homeland in 1904. In many respects everyone is a performer in their own right, whether it be walking the tightrope in a circus, making a business presentation…or doing something more mundane like pushing a vacuum cleaner around the apartment! Irrespective of the nature of the activity, how well the body functions is very much dependant on how well it is used.
Michael was 12 years old when he started learning the bassoon. He was thin and weak and the heavy instrument quickly got the better of him. “I remember going for an audition to the National Youth Orchestra, and after I played, this lady said, ‘That was very good and we want you to come back next year. Meanwhile, you need to take care of that left shoulder.’
“I had no idea what the lady was talking about. I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror and the left shoulder was an inch higher than the other one. This had crept up on me without me realizing. I had been struggling with this beast for so long that I had adopted this strange body posture to get my hands around the keys and play.”
Michael began taking Alexander lessons with Elizabeth Langford. “It helped me realize what I was doing to myself. It wasn’t the bassoon that was doing something to me.”
“People sometimes say I have this back problem because of my computer or because I drive a lot, but it is what we do to ourselves that causes these problems. An Alexander teacher helps us to come to terms with what we do to ourselves and to change that so we can do what we do without interfering with our neuro-muscular system.”
“The hardest things to get rid of are the things that don’t exist. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it is hard to stop doing it.”
“My head twitched ridiculously from side to side as I was playing. Plenty of people told me, why don’t you stop doing that? But I didn’t have a plan of action. Lots of teachers of all sorts of disciplines will yell at their students, ‘Just relax!’ But you need something more specific.
“I remember in my first Alexander lessons, Betty saying to me, ‘I want you to think of allowing your neck muscles to release so that your head can go forward and up.’
“As I left that lessons, I didn’t want to twitch. My twitching was a way to relieve tension in my neck but I was just creating more. Many people with back ache will arch the back and pull the back in and it changes something and it’s a temporary relief.”
Robert: “It’s a rearranging of tensions. If you watch people sitting, if they’re habitual slumpers, every once in a while they’ll arch their backs and brace themselves up and that provides some temporary relief but they’re not going to stay. If they did, they’d have another series of discomforts.”
“Your teacher, using her hands and her words, guided your head-neck-torso into a different relationship and helped alleviate the shoulder issue in an indirect way.”
Michael: “Every singing, acting and dancing teacher in the world wants their pupils to be open and wide but that’s usually accomplished by stretching and bracing the upper chest open. It creates a shortening and narrowing the upper back where many people suffer from tension anyway.”
Alexander teachers look at the movements and posture patterns of their students, and help them realize which are effective and which lead to discomfort and pain. Problem patterns are often increased by the repeated movements in playing a musical instrument. After observing the student while playing or during other activities, the teacher shows her where she is tensing and instructs through touch and with verbal instructions, guiding her through activities like walking, speaking or playing an instrument.
BALANCE
The body ideally should be in constant flow and movement. Good posture is both an upward and a downward flow. The torso should flow upward from the hip joints, the legs should flow downward from the hip joints, and the shoulders should flow by widening horizontally as they float on the ribcage, in constant expansion and contraction through breathing.
Unfortunately these flows are often absent. For example many violinists try to hold a particular position with their shoulder girdle. Once they decide where they think their shoulders should be in relation to their arms and torso, they lock their shoulders.
None of this is necessary, or helpful. Whether standing or sitting, the violinist does not need to lock a single muscle in the body. Power and support do not come from a held position. They come from a balanced skeleton that is constantly rebalanced by muscles in flow. The skeleton supports the musculature instead of the muscles locking to support the skeleton.
DIRECTING
F.M. Alexander, the originator of the Technique, observed that the head leads the body into movement. When the head is properly leading or directing the body, the whole body is organized around a free neck and a lengthening spine. When teaching or playing a musical instrument, instinctive, graceful, pain-free movement requires that the neck release and the spine lengthen immediately before the body goes into movement.
However, many people habitually tighten or set their muscles before they move. When they tighten in anticipation of doing something, they lock up their musculature with the unconscious assumption that this will help them do the activity more precisely. But the body is considerably more accurate and comfortable in performance when there is no tensing before initiating movement. Most of the pain and exhaustion in music teaching and playing comes from the body compensating for poor posture, rather than from the activity itself.
