Awareness Through Movement & Piano Technique: An Experie

A fellow pianist and Feldenkrais practitioner, Adam Cole had earlier been helping me with the editing of and now he has sent me a nice description of his experiences with the first ATM in the book found in chapter 1. Hi, Alan, If you've got time, you might be interested in my experience working through the beginning of your book. I tried your first ATM in "Honing the Pianistic Self Imagine" today. First I moved on my sitzbone at my desk. Then I took it to the piano. I added an element that, for me, was enormously helpful. I flopped my hand on the keys and imagined that my hand was as heavy as it could be, just dead weight. I knew that this was an issue for me, since I hold so much tension in my shoulders, and moreso on my right side, especially when playing piano or writing with a pen. So I moved up and down, then left and right on my sitzbone, keeping that deadweight hand in place. It was interesting to feel the tiny places where, when I moved left a certain amount, or back a certain amount, my hand lightened. It wasn't better structure, it was tension creeping in. I moved the hand an octave to the right and did it again. There was one place in particular, a tiny spot, that I felt significant grief, and I had some weeping-type breathing there! It was a good differentiation lesson. I didn't have a good way to reintegrate it, so I just took a walk and noticed. I had the best experience on the walk when I remembered the relationship between my right sitzbone and my right hand. If I have time, I'll work through all the ATM's this summer. I'm really looking forward to it. I've greatly neglected my awareness in favor of that awful intellectualism required of a Masters degree!!! Your friend, Adam These are the kind of experiences I was hoping the ATM would evoke. When you develop your kinesthetic self-awareness, learning takes place on its own - it's a natural result. It's a type of learning more congenial to the artistic temperament than "book learning" or rote learning... AFF

This is an old post, but I chanced upon it and thought I'd post my experiences. I've been doing something similar recently - sitting at the piano and then dropping one hand onto the keys. Since beforehand I've work on myself until I'm a good state of use and awareness I'm quite open to any changes that occur. The first time I did this I experienced a massive drop in awareness - as if someone had turned the lights off! After several minutes I started to regain that awareness and noticed all of the adverse things I was doing to myself: neck stiffened almost to the point of immobility, shoulders pulled backwards, inwards and upwards (triple whammy!) and spine significantly shortened. Since that first time I've been able to partially inhibit those habits and actually experiment with some movement based around the sitting bones. This revealed how much I tense around my pelvis when I touch the piano. Although I am currently unable to imagine what it will be like when all of those parasitic contractions are gone, I am becoming ever more aware of why playing the piano is difficult - because I'm making it so in many different ways!

Excellent perceptions, Nick. The parasitism doesn't go away all at once. It melts VERY gradually. If you can believe it, I am still dealing with some of it myself... but at a vastly reduced level compared to twenty years ago. See my new YouTube postings of my Smith College recital to evaluate my progress in that domain even this year! AFF

I'll check out your latest videos, Alan. In Bonn I noticed the quality of your movement, particularly away from the piano. Unfortunately I missed the recital that time, though I have spotted some of your videos on YouTube. I hope to make it to the recital and the workshop next year.