Posture and Tension: Alexander Technique Workshop

As players we face many issues with posture and tension. Every player of any instrument should learn since the very beginning how to control their body’s position, breathing and muscular tension to avoid injuries and naturally enhance their playing (no, it’s not just an issue of how number of hours you practice). In fact because of tension our playing cannot get any better after reaching a certain level and a certain speed, and serious problems may arise after many years of practicing with the wrong posture and building too much tension.  Unfortunately in the majority of the cases those problems are overlooked, and a “popular” culture for body tension and posture control still needs to be developed. A number of top level players  had to interrupt their career because of problems caused by wrong posture and long exposure to exaggerated tension in their body. Luckily, in the most recent years  some performers and scholars started sharing their stories about long paths to recover after injuries and how they were able to do it. Guitarist and educator David Leisner recently published the first book about the topic “Playing with Ease”, with a particular focus on guitar playing. And some of the best School of Music, including The Juilliard School, Manhattan Schools of Music, Mannes School of Music, started introducing Alexander Technique classes for their students to raise awareness and help the students to be successful and healthy.

The most successful method and technique for body posture and tension is the Alexandre Technique.

I personally started learning AT last Summer while looking for a way to effective release tension in my body while practicing and performing. I was working on difficult pieces and felt stuck at a certain level of my playing. I understood it was not the time of practicing or the quality, but something else related to my body. My scales couldn’t get faster, and while playing some difficult passages I felt my fingers getting very tense, to a point I couldn’t move them anymore. I knew tension was one of the blocker and I started exploring various new ways for releasing it. After some months of trials, some of them successful, I felt as I learned as much as I could by myself but needed some help. After some researches, I found that Alexander Technique could be the solution to my problems and concerns. And looking for an instructors, after trying out some others, I found the amazing Lori Schiff, Alexander Technique faculty at Juilliard School. I went for weekly lessons for a couple of months and started feeling much better, Lori’s expert suggestions about posture were positively affecting my entire life. And I was amazed to learn about her professional story: she was a trumpet player, and while studying at Conservatory, she learned AT and felt in love with the idea of helping the others to enhance their playing and feel better.

I immediately thought I needed to share all what I learned with my students as soon as possible. I wish I could learn all those concepts many years ago, and I want to fill the gap for my students. Anyway I still have a long way for learning those techniques before being able to share them with you! So I decided it was time to invite Lori to DalMaestro for having you learning from the expert some foundations for enhancing your playing through posture and tension releasing.

You can learn more about Lori’s activity in her website: http://lorischiff.com

If you’d like to attend the workshop, please fill the registration form at the bottom of this post.
DalMaestro students can register directly from the calendar: just click on the event the appears in March 24th, and put your name in the list. The fee will be charged with your fee in the month of March.

I hope you’ll enjoy this interesting workshop and support my willing to help you becoming better players!

To register, please fill the following link: https://www.formget.com/app/form/share/PpzX-149433

If you want to know how it went, look at our next blog post!

Sincerely,
Isabella