Gravity- Primarily At The Wrist Rather Than At The Fingers?

Following up from the things in the other topic, I'd be interested to hear whether Alan would be more inclined to agree that seeking to feel gravity would be important- if consciously felt very little at the fingertips, but primarily at the wrist, in balance with the force that the keys push back? I'm realising more and more that this is where it really matters, if you want to avoid either locking or bobbling up and down over the keys (or worse still, alternating between both). My problem with the idea of starting primarily with muscles exerting or releasing here, is that it doesn't really do anything to describe what DEFINES whether an organisation is possible. I think a major reason why the locked or collapsed wrist is so common, is quite simply that people have no idea quite what a simple aspect of physics dictates what is possible for them to do. So they just do what they do, with little idea as to why they have to be so stiff in order to stay in a consistent position, or why they are unable to play legato, due to constantly being repelled. Few people like being repelled, when they organise in the wrong way. So almost everyone stiffens instead, or presses through it. Now, I'm not anti-pressing outright. But I do have a very hard time believing that anyone who cannot stabilise their wrist by releasing the correct amount of gravity will be in any kind of position to press in a healthy way. I know that I certainly wasn't. Now, you could argue that the 'mechanical' approach might help you to understand what goes on academically, but may not help with the sensory aspects. Possibly quite true, if you look to go into too much detail for such a complex mechanism. However, certain implications are so overwhelmingly strong, that I really feel that they should be the very first step of understanding what to look for in the sensory aspects. The detailed explanations here may be a little complex, but the strong implications that they lead to are really very basic. I believe that certain mechanical issues are strong enough, that they should the goals of sensory based work. The return force of the keys is a case in point. I'll go into more detail in another post about the potential dangers of playing too often with horizontally angled fingers (due to a return force that will try to pull you sideways- which I feel sure is the reason why many people resort to even greater locking still and also leads to a number of very strong implications). However, let's assume for now that the hand is almost flawlessly aligned and that the return force acts basically perfectly upwards. Alan showed me a way of exaggerating the standing up- where the hand is drawn upwards by a pulling finger. He talks about 'internalizing' this where the action is retained but the wrist stays stable. I feel quite certain that, while this is satisfactory as a sensory explanation, a notably large aspect of the mechnical explanation is that more gravity is released to cancel this out. If it's only the muscles doing it all instead- surely we are going to be going back to stiffening, rather than the 'floating' wrist? I was experimenting with students yesterday and I have found it exceedingly useful for them to first perceive this exaggerated action, but then to practise collapsing (but not pushing) their wrist down in Grindea's style. Now, Grindea makes no terribly rational explanations whatsoever, but if you take these two motions as your yardstick,I believe that it's tremendously useful to pit the two things against one and another. Neither will be seen, but the degrees of each will be felt and will cancel out- leaving no movement, but perfect balance. If you perceive just how much of each is needed, the forces feel like they merely dissipate- rather than go head to head in an uncomfortable way. The wrist can then 'float' in the middle- even in louder passages of legato fingerwork. However, the finger itself need not feel tremendous gravity against the keybed. I think this might be the big issue here. At high levels of volume, muscular effort can be added if the return force exceeds what a gravitational force can cancel out. You might call this 'stabilization', but it is certainly not 'only stabilization'. It will have a big effect on what force the finger can apply. Playing with wrist weights is an unbelievably clear example of how much more stable a hand remains even in loud passages, without any need to press (and how much more sound that allows them to squeeze out). Gravity is a spectacular shock absorber, when used in the right proportions (and I stress this is with proper legato finger action, not instead of it). Muscular effort on top of an effort to continually withold gravity at the wrist could do the same thing, but would there be any desire to do that at the wrist? Why would a contrary force via added effort be better than an equivalent force via release (and wasn't release of the wrist a major goal for comfort too? Is using some gravity to serve a purpose really worse than working harder at the wrist?). Why withold the force of gravity with one muscle and oppose with a push instead (which MUST happen if gravity is not being put against the return force). Alternatively, you could talk simply of muscular release at the wrist. But unless you have something to gauge it against, isn't that rather similar to when a teacher simply says 'relax more'? What is the purpose? What am I aiming for? Perhaps I know to relax my wrist, but do not understand how to make a global balance of forces that does not demand a solidified joint for everything to add up? Precisely what things are you weighing against each other to achieve balance and what do you primarily seek to judge from? I think this really ought to be the first step (considering how simple the answers actually are). No matter how good your self-perception is, if you cannot find an easy way to absorb the return forces that finger action causes, there is no solution but to stiffen or press at the wrist. In my, case I had basically given up on finger action, because I did not understand how to avoid stiffening- despite the fact that my wrist was able to flop like that of a drag queen, the instant I took it away from the keyboard. If you have never tried to perceive gravity working to fade out the return force (as smoothly as if it never even occured), how do have the faintest idea as to whether you are unnecessarily tense or not? Aiming for muscle release at the wrist is a little vague, whereas starting from muscle action brings in the danger of the overworked wrist. Why not complete the explanation by perceiving the missing variable in the equation- ie. what proportion of the available gravitational force you choose to release against the force that repels you? So, while I have the utmost respect for Alan's hand functions and very much believe in them (this is directly based on them) I have a very strong belief that the fullest understanding ought to start with knowledge of what the return force does against a finger action and that striving for release in the wrist serves TWO purposes (firstly to avoid discomfort but equally to balance out this force, without need for stiffening). With this starting premise, I believe that it's overwhelmingly easier to put Alan's ideas into action. I just do not understand the benefits for failing to explain in terms of gravity- where it provides such a fundamentally simple way to avoid locking up in the most vulnerable and perhaps most widely misused part of the entire mechanism. It's absolutely fundamental to the mechnical equations. If you start with those, I think you have a much clearer sense of aim, behind the sensory based work. Few people even have the inclination to think about the return force. So they have not the slightest idea why they instinctively seize up against it. In the past, I'd worried that I might have been confusing students- sometimes saying to use more weight, sometimes trying to get them to float more and stop digging in so much. By explaining how the two sides operate against each other to allow the wrist to hover (all in tandem with the actions of the hand), it's extremely simple to be clear. While the more detailed musing above delve into complexities, it's really very easy for a student to grasp the basic idea of trying to feel both forces levelling out- with no more seeming contradictions of sometimes being told to go down more and other times being told to go up more. Alan's functions for the hand, in particular, are tremendous and I'm absolutely in favour of all sorts of advanced exercises and experiments. But for this basic fundamental of balancing the wrist in either standard legato or staccato playing of mid-volumes upwards, I think there's a simpler way of understanding what is needed for sustainable balance, before you proceed into subjective ideas about 'floating' etc. I think the most direct approach is to start from the trying to feel the interaction of two very simple forces. I'm thinking of gravity as being almost like the wind on a golf-shot, in some respects. You have to start with that and then construct your aim accordingly. No golfer will tell you that the wind is what is responsible for a fine shot. But if he doesn't take that into account, before he so much as lines up with ball, the wind will most certainly be responsible for a hopeless shot- no matter how well he uses his body. It's easier to subconconsiously adapt to the constant direction of gravity than a wind that changes in both angle and intensity. But I think that, in some ways, that can make it even more important to remind yourself what gravity actually does, rather than get too used to simply doing things. While you can't change the nature of gravity itself, you can certainly determine how much of the force it generates you withold/permit to work in your favour. That's virtually like a golfer being given the option to set the strength of the wind.

I've been having a huge amount of success over the past few days, with this approach of weighing up the upward force generated by the fingers- against the downward force generated by release of gravity at the wrist. In a couple of lessons that I had recently, it was pointed out that I was moving up way too much and I was encouraged to think much more about weighing down again. This has confused me at first, but with this dualistic manner of thinking, it's making perfect sense again. From wanting to lighten up, I'd simply gone way too far away from gravity and didn't have enough to cancel out the return forces (that are so notable when you use high quality of finger action). I'm thinking more and more that the idea of 'floating' ought to be reserved solely for the sensation of the final product, but not so much to contibute towards trying to finding it. If someone is way too heavy (particularly if they have bulky arms of a great mass) they are more likely to benefit from this. However, the lighter the arm, the less the return force will dissipate of its own accord, into the mass. For a lighter arm, the only ways to rationally dissipate the force is to release something extra downwards (well or to push, or a combination of releasing and pushing). So if the thinking is only about witholding, it could be particularly harmful to the ability to perceive the balance between the up forces that occur with each depression and the down force which must act against them for stability. Today I've been feeling lighter than ever before- but through the seeming contradiction of generally releasing gravity at the wrist- so as to prevent any bouncing at the wrist and the muscular effort that inevitably follows. I'm firmly convinced now that the only way to seem to float is to deal with this interaction between up and down with great sophistication. This might feasibly occur subconciously through mere 'feel', but I believe that it's much easier to start from a few conscious guidelines. If gliding is the first goal, you are likely to be repelled by the variable upward forces. But the more you perceive them and balance them out with release of gravity at the wrist, the more you can contibute to what looks like a simple action- where the hand merely seems to glide from side to side. I'm feeling very 'light' in terms of effort within the forearm, but I think this a is a very different issue to actually pretending that the arm is becoming weightless. Ironically, it would be arms of GREATER mass that could most easily approach it that way- because the mass would dampen out upward forces much more easily (even when perceived as drifting weightlessly via extreme witholding the gravitational forces). It's like the example of trying to push a ping pong ball on a piece of string compared to a wrecking ball, again. Would anyone call the wrecking ball' weightless', merely because it is being supported from above? As soon as you prod at it, it's entire mass becomes an issue- no matter how well it's mass was witheld in the instant before you apply a force. The level of mass is a HUGE factor in whether you will be able to find balance by thinking primarily in terms of holding gravity back- because that gravity comes into its own again as soon as the return force acts. I've had an especially clear illustration of this via the practise with wrist weights- in which I really must feel more much more that I am witholding. Despite witholding from the muscles, the added mass makes the return force feel like it does virtually nothing to repel my hand. But when I take them off, added release of the arm's weight is required to find an equivalent balance, with much less being witheld. The return force becomes a big issue, without the extra mass to damp it out. So I must release more of the mass that I do have into that force, rather than seek to hold it back as much. Where armweight schools can 'fall down' (sorry) is to encourage releasing blindly. I don't release blindly. I seek to release in perfect balance with what is needed for the upward forces to dissipate. Anyway, any thoughts on this? The more I'm thinking about it, the more I realise that there is extremely strong cause to consider what a tremendous difference mass makes. However, at the same time, I believe that whether the arm is hugely heavy or very light, the key to finding what works for an individual is to perceive virtually everything by beginning with the return force of the keys and trying to perceive how much you do to counter that with gravity at the wrist (before then going on to think of countering with a little extra effort, if gravity does not offer enough). In my own teaching, from now on I am never going to merely talk of aiming to be heavier or lighter, but always explain from the point of view of trying to perceive both the up and the down- to be absolutely clear that there is a balance to be found between them. Merely aiming for heaviness or lightness does not necessarily contribute to anything better in the long run, unless it is understood that it is supposed to be converging on a certain interaction. Trying to perceive how to converge on this interaction would always be the primary goal. I realise now that I've totally missed that goal, with a lot of what I'd been doing- sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other. Whether getting closer requires releasing a little more or less weight it doesn't matter. What matters is whether up and down forces are balance, so as to make it possible for hand to merely (seem to) float from side to side, without bouncing up or digging down. Striving to be heavier or lighter would never become a goal in itself. The only goal is to feel an interaction that is both comfortable and 'light' in effort within the forearm (rather than necessarily in perceived weight). I believe that the fingers should come first in this interaction and that release of gravity should be weighed up against the return force- rather than start from collapsing and then to try to match enough finger action to counter that with a return force. However, I really cannot see how to make a full and clear explanation of what goes into this essential balance without that gravitational element being in the same forefront as the hand's actions. So, any thoughts from anyone? Is the scientific reasoning behind this idea about the interaction coming across as fairly clear or confusing? Equally, if anyone sees any holes in the reasoning itself, please do point them out. While I'm pretty confident that it's sound logic, from my basic understanding of mechanics, I'm no advanced engineer.

You're "sorry for me" because I found a simple way of understanding how to dissipate the natural force that is responsible for the classic problem of excess tensions in the wrist, rather than have to fight against it? And because I have found a way of clearing up the seeming conflict between striving for weight or lightness as a singular, scientifically explicable understanding- without the two notions having to exist in any kind of mysterious contradiction against each other?

Hello Cziffra. My question is how do you feel the rest of your playing apparatus? From the way i see it you have a valid point thinking wether we should feel gravity at the fingers/wrist etc. What do you feel in your other body when you stabilize yourself when you play? For me the greatest problem is to maintain an unstable equilibrium.How to sit correctly without stiffening.Parts of my problem with the gravity afairs was that i sat down and did not pay attention to how i was balancing my self. Kind regards

Hello Cziffra. My question is how do you feel the rest of your playing apparatus? From the way i see it you have a valid point thinking wether we should feel gravity at the fingers/wrist etc. What do you feel in your other body when you stabilize yourself when you play? For me the greatest problem is to maintain an unstable equilibrium.How to sit correctly without stiffening.Parts of my problem with the gravity afairs was that i sat down and did not pay attention to how i was balancing my self. Kind regards It's an interesting point. To be honest, I'm really not worrying too much about the rest right now, though. I think that the practise I did with wrist weights made a lot of changes to the way I align various things further back and to how I try to line up gravity behind the hand. One issue is that I'm making a bigger effort to turn the hands inwards and coming much more from the outside with the elbow, rather than allow the fifth to slant off line. The more the 5th leans sideways, the more the return force is sideways and the less gravity can do to help cancel that. I think it's a lot harder both to release effort in the forearm and to use gravity for stabilising, when you add notable sideways forces to the equation. This alignment is fundamental to playing the up against down, but I think that's largely working pretty well. So, I'm neither claiming to have mastered the upper body elements 100% nor that they don't matter- but I think that what I'm realising at the wrist is far more important to progress at the moment as long as I feel that the weight is aligned to act in the correct path against the return force. I think a stable but suitably weighted wrist even contributes to freeing up the upper body from the need to push. I'm finding countless places where my balance between the return force and gravity is off. Sometimes I feel a little effort and release it- expecting that release to work the hand harder. But then I realise that it actually 'lightens' the effort and that I actually released myself from to utilise it properly? Sometimes its really not what you expect (of course, this might not be as productive for someone with very bulky arms of greater mass, though). I think I need to remember that gravity is the result of released muscles (not of all those in the hand, of course) not simply a downward force. I think this is a key distinction to make, if you are to avoid working against yourself. At other times I realise that I am bouncing too much, or straining the finger into the keybed- and need to release more gravity downwards. It's not a matter of consistently going one way or the other, but by remembering the balance issue (sometimes approaching more from the finger side, sometimes more from the release of gravity side) in order to match them up better. I'm even feeling the 'gliding' result within octaves- by starting from the key and using finger action to push the hand up against the weight while releasing the wrist, to cancel it out. There's honestly no downward effort at all for now, but a big sound comes from playing off the fingers explosively against the weight. I'm getting close and closer to playing them with no visible up or down motion, but with no sense of 'holding' centrally against the up force either. The released weight is matching it better. The strange thing is just that, to stay level, you have to feel what is up and what is down very acutely, if you are to cancel the two components. You have to feel the up and down to cancel it, and stop it happening. So it resutls in the appearance of no up and down at all- but only the appearance. While I don't wish to be downplay the value of any of Alan's exercises, which have given me countless foundations in terms of movements (including the action that generates the up motion), I really wish someone had explained this simple up against down to me some time ago. This has been a major break through in terms of understanding the most basic foundation what is actually being balanced against what in standard playing. I feel much greater awareness of how to get back on track should anything slipping, thanks to an extremely simple feedback loop to monitor things from. Alan's work is superb, but I think this has provided me with a missing link in knowing how organise the interaction of the different elements and what defines the possibility of how you can bond them all together (without having to leave your subconcious to do all of the blending together). It's so much more clear how to put all of these things together, rather merely leave the brain to try to internalise the actions. With high quality finger action, return forces are all the more pronounced. When using that, I think it's extremely important to have simple yet clear rational understanding of how to make these forces fade into the mix.

There is something interesting that i thought today.While most of us can walk normally in our everyday lives we can lift baggages write with pencils,dance run,walk fast slow and do miracles withoute ever thinking of gravity,when we try to sit down gravity may come as an obstacle. I believe this is the reason we call it static posture,unstable equilibrium ?hm...Here's what i did.Every 2-3 minutes that i play piano,i stand up walk use my feet,rotate my self torso,move my feet,move my legs,move knees forward,and try to have those movements and try to move all of that with tiny movements when i sit.Like when you walk on road.When you walk and talk to a friend you do not think of gravity.Why is it that when we sit on a chair so many problems show up? I do this many times.Other times i try to stand up stand well on my feet and play the piano.If someone ever feels gravity is a burden half the game is lost.We need to activate those muscles.Unfortunately activating our body while sitting is difficult.Even now that i am sitting on my chair and i am writting this i caught myself having left my whole back to have collapsed and sit pasively on the chair. I believe if you did what i do,constantly you will start to feel the need to feel gravity less.Standing while being activated versus sitting passively and just leeting the chair be a support for a collapsed body.Maybe this explains some things. I hope this helps and you can understand what i mean. Kind regards

Do you do much exercise away from the piano, in general? I've had such problems before, but I don't really have to think very hard about posture, as long as I sit reasonably near the edge of the stool and don't collapse my spine. Strangely enough, I frequently have terrible posture when I sit normally, but I haven't found it to be a particularly big issue with being seated at the piano, recently. I'm sure there are possibilities for improvement, but I don't think it's currently a major issue for me personally. While I collapse my spine frequently at a computer, the limitations to what I would be able to do would be so much worse at a piano, that it's virtually automatic to sit up much straighter, instead of slouching. I just don't feel right at all if I don't sit well (while, when typing, I settle for merely pressing the right keys in the right order). I think that exercises such as squats and properly controlled crunches might be a good idea. Personally, I don't think such issues are necessarily best solved at a piano, but rather by general exercises for the right muscle groups. At a piano it just doesn't seem like an effort to sit comfortably straight. I think various muscle groups contribute to that. If the only exercise they get is at a piano, they are probably more likely to get tired than if you often work them far harder elsewhere. Good core muscles neither lock you in place, nor are they weak against application of forces. I think it's largely about training them up properly in general. I don't think anyone would ever suffer from an excessively trained core. By the way, you say that gravity works naturally elsewhere, but I've felt much improvement in various things by trying to perceive similar things in walking. I think what is easy to forget in walking, is that we settle for simply getting from A to B. In piano playing, we need sophisticated control of sound. In walking, we basically settle for getting to where we want to without falling over too often. I naturally tend to collapse more onto one foot than the other. On that foot, I've noticed that I need to make more effort to start it's upward push from the floor and push against the line of gravity. It's a similar process- where I don't want to fall down and collapse onto the foot. But the more I perceive my body's gravity, the more I feel the muscles working properly to lift my whole body against it. I realise now that I was merely stumbling across from my right leg, rather than lifting my body up with real control. As long as poistive use of gravity isn't unduly equated to collapsing, it's definitely more of a plus than a minus. The more I perceive it as what the muscles work against, the more I feel my weaker leg working productively in the right path. Quite, honestly, the walking analogy have probably done at least as much to improve my walking, with reference to piano playing, as to improve my piano playing with reference to walking. Balance on the stool is probably a rather different issue though. It's not about movement, so much as a sustainable position. I'd definitely look more to general exercises, than to the act of piano playing itself, for a time. From my own experience, I've done little conscious work on it. But exercises on core muscles have certainly contributed to not needing to worry greatly. A few years ago I often felt all over the place before I played even one note. PS. Oh, and I have overworked my hands like hell when using pens and pencils. I'm absolutely certainly that I could have saved myself a huge amount straining during my exams, had I perceived the balance between the return force and gravity. In a similar way to a keyboard, the more you push down, the more the desk pushes back up through the pen. I strained through that force like hell. I'm certain that I would have saved myself effort, had I better perceived how to release more gravity, before starting to add any push to my pen strokes. I definitely witheld too much gravity, while forcing downwards- instead of starting with the pressure that a controlled release of gravity can naturally put behind a pen. Are you sure you are not forcing that pen down at all, where you could be achieving an equivalent force with release of some of the gravity?

By the way, I don't really follow your point: "you will start to feel the need to feel gravity less". You don't 'need' to feel gravity at the wrist, if you are happy to either bounce up and down or instinctively slip into contradictory muscular effort to both hold back gravity and simultaneously have to oppose the return force- by pushing in the direction which gravity would have provided a force anyway, had you not cancelled it. However, in order to avoid those and keep a healthy wrist, you most certainly need to feel it- whether that comes subconsciously or consciously. Arguably, f you wanted to avoid using it entirely for some reason, you would need to feel what it is doing. You can't just turn it off at will, you can only cancel it out with the correct interaction of opposing forces. So, if you are really set on attempting to stop it from doing anything much, you probably ought to seek to feel it a good deal MORE, not less (especially if you don't want to set about minimising its role by locking muscles rigid). Not feeling gravity doesn't make it go away- it just makes its role likely to be rather more erratic and inconsistent than if you perceive it. Why do you speak about it as if feeling how the return forces can be made to dissipate into the arm's gravity might be a burden? Quite the opposite, I'd say. After years of stiffness and effort in the wrist, understanding this scientifically explicable way of dealing with the return force has both left my wrist extremely free of unwanted effort and allowed me to access much greater power from the fingers, without necessarily having to push the arm at all (and with far less effortful pushing, if I do want extra power still). So why on earth would I want to prevent myself from feeling such a key force? Whether I had an arm with the bulk of Volodos' or a slender as a child's- how could I possibly control that arm if I was not perceving its gravity, as well as how much I would need to hold it back or release for specific situations? If you cannot start by perceiving these basic forces and utilising them, I really struggle to see how muscular use can be optimally focussed. If you simply pile on muscular exertions before perceiving what forces are exerted by the released state, how can you feel what you are doing properly?

Dear Cziffra,what i wanted to say is that maybe we should make our piano playing like the way we walk,feel less maybe -translated better- is like when you walk,gravity is there but you dont feel a strenous feeling. I was thinking of the everyday movements we all do,practically i noticed that the moment most people sit down a wonderful constrcted body becomes breathless "without" "oxygen",i have seen many people including myself really feeling tensed just by sitting down. I was following professor's advice regarding the key rebound.And take advantage of the keys that can lift our fingers.I noticed that by thinking and trying to maintain a solid arch and relax the muscles if the fingers are correctly aligned then they can be lifted by the keys.And there i clearly feel the force and the return force that is being sent to me by the mechanism of the piano.(so it is always a good idea to think and feel of the return force). i just think that a more activated body maybe one that is moved more produces better and healthier equilibrium. Kind regards

"what i wanted to say is that maybe we should make our piano playing like the way we walk,feel less maybe -translated better- is like when you walk,gravity is there but you dont feel a strenous feeling." Eh? As I pointed out, I'm not talking about anything that involves a strenuous feeling. Absolutely the opposite. I think I made that pretty clear. Also, increased perception of the force that I am pushing against has definitely improved my walking. I have a clearer feeling of what muscles push against what, with less unnecessary contractions. Rather than just dragging myself across, I now try to perceive my whole body being lifted against gravity, over each foot. It works one or two muscles rather more clearly, but is notably less strenuous than what my instincts have me do. Are you so sure that what you perceive as gravity is not the result of pushing through failure to perceive gravity correctly? As I said, I'm finding many places where I notice slight strain, but then actually REMOVE it by releasing the weight of my arm more. What I believed was weight was the product of undetected muscular pushes. Perceiving what gravity really does often removes traces of straining now. Maybe your arm is heavier than mine? Or maybe it's actually pushing that you ought to work on trying to cut down? "I was thinking of the everyday movements we all do,practically i noticed that the moment most people sit down a wonderful constrcted body becomes breathless "without" "oxygen",i have seen many people including myself really feeling tensed just by sitting down." I agree entirely. I just don't really see where this fits in with the idea that it might be better to ignore gravity and 'just do it'. Why take that attitude to gravity but not to muscular activities (especially as the results of the latter are defined by how they interact with that gravity)? "I was following professor's advice regarding the key rebound.And take advantage of the keys that can lift our fingers.I noticed that by thinking and trying to maintain a solid arch and relax the muscles if the fingers are correctly aligned then they can be lifted by the keys.And there i clearly feel the force and the return force that is being sent to me by the mechanism of the piano.(so it is always a good idea to think and feel of the return force)." That certainly makes good sense. However, what I am referring to is the return force of the key landing against the keybed in the first place. In louder dynamics, this can be considerably greater than that which comes back at you from a still key, as you release it. Are you claiming that a rapid series of notes played forte is better done by pressing the arm down, than by releasing it? Rationally, something needs to absorb that upward force. Are you saying that pushing against yourself downward, while simultaneously exerting an opposite force to stop gravity from helping in any way is somehow of benefit? Why oppose the free force fully and simultaneously have to push so much harder than necessary in the opposite way? It just makes no sense to me at all. Also, the results of this at a keyboard have proved to be completely consistent with these mechanical observations. My wrist can now feel free and I can stay balanced with absolutely minimal effort from the arms. I don't know of any reason to doubt either the scientific rationale, or the corresponding freedom and stability in the results. If I claimed my fingers did nothing, you could rightly accuse me of talking out my arse. But I'm not. I'm referring to a two sided interaction. "i just think that a more activated body maybe one that is moved more produces better and healthier equilibrium." Why? You activate muscles where it serves a purpose, and you release others where that too serves a purpose. Would seizing up every muscle in your body be better? Would relaxing every muscle in your body be better? Obviously the answer is no to both. So, it's primarily about specific purposes. Why would a downward force from a muscle be better than an equal and equivalent downward force from releasing a muscle? Also, if you can achieve stabilisation at the wrist with gravity, aside from keeping this key area free of stiffness, that puts you in a BETTER position to understand how you can employ additional muscular effort. It gives you a clear yardstick for what is possible before effort. If I'm comfortable, I don't care if some of the force sometimes comes from pushing- provided that I cam also training myself in ways to avoid needing to push unless I choose to do so. But you seem to have this idea that if any force came from gravity, it would be disastrous. Sorry, but I really cannot understand the basis for that. If you start by applying effort, without having perceived how to achieve results by releasing the weight of the arm, that leaves you with very little scope to go on to achieve anything via release- so your only way to add more is keep adding more and more effort. If you haven't done it, you have no experience of it. Wouldn't you prefer to give yourself the most available options? Nobody is ever going to be prevented from learning to use the muscles in the arm, simply because they seek to be able to operate their fingers against weight, rather than against arm pressure. I've recently discovered that I can make very big sounds in octaves from close contact, with no bobbing up or down. All the effort is felt in the fingers, but it's how I pace the release of the arm that allows them to work that hard. Imagine a trampolinist. They work their legs, to push back up. But try attaching them to a harness that stops their gravity from giving the legs anything to push against. The idea of the muscles working separately from gravity simply isn't scientifically supportable. Gravity is what puts them in a position to work muscles to their potential. The equivalent of using muscles instead of gravity would be equivalent to a trampolinist being held on a harness, but then having someone push them down from above to cancel the effects of the harness. On the piano, i'm not opposed to the equivalent of that harness, if I don't want to play too loud. By all means hold back some of the gravity. But when you need more sound, why not simply reduce how much it witholds your gravity and eventually remove the harness? Why leave the harness on (especially as, if you were truly using nothing of gravity, that harness would be suspending you in mid air). The ability of the finger to apply a large force is totally dependent on what keeps it works against. I simply cannot see a reason to believe that stabilising with arm pressure alone (which strictly speaking is an absolute impossibility- gravity plays some role, no matter how hard you might strive to stop it doing so) is superior to exploiting what gravity offers- especially considering how much ease it brings to the sensitive area of the wrist. To strive to withold gravity for its own sake is to apply limitations. To learn how to balance the amount that is released against the return force of the keys (by releasing what is needed for the situation) is to open up many different doors.