Help?

Hi. Ok, I bought Dr. Fraser's book and first off, it has helped a lot. The pain, albeit minor, in my forearms close to my wrists vanished pretty quickly, but now I have different problems. I am now experiencing sort of random pains that go away (and then return) pretty quickly while playing and which I can't seem to pinpoint the cause of. This is mainly because the pains are so diverse, but in general they are either in the high upper arm (pretty close to the shoulder), the lower forearm (closer to elbow than wrist though) and then in the fingers. At first it was just in the pinkies, but now its completely random; I'll be playing and then I'll get a mysterious pain in my third finger LH and then a few minutes later its my fifth again. Another thing is that at first when my pain initially cleared up after buying the book I definitely noticed I had more control (over my sound and my execution) but that seems to be lost as well now that these pains creeping in...I tell myself to relax and have tried all manner of things but I'm just getting really frustrated; as in, I really love the piano as an instrument and normally love to practice but I can't really have an satisfactory control of the sounds I'm producing anymore to the point where everything feels uncontrolled and without vitality, if you at all understand what I am saying. My playing just doesn't feel interesting to even myself sometimes. So, do you have any suggestions/comments/ideas? lmh

This is a great post and I appreciate you sharing it with us. In Feldenkrais Method there exists a phenomenon we practitioners call 'chasing the mouse.' A client comes to you with a complaint of pain, you work with them in a Functional Integration lesson, they begin to relax, certain muscles let go, certain skeletal alignments begin to become clearer, and the pain goes away. But a few moments later it crops up somewhere else. So you change your strategy to deal with this new pain, it disappears and again crops up somewhere else. Sounds like what is happening to you, but in this case you are your own practitioner! Don't worry, all is not lost. The body's organization for movement consists of a very complex system of muscular contractions and de-contractions, all designed to maintain or change the alignment of the various parts of the skeleton. The brain manages literally thousands of these muscular actions every second: we are talking real complexity here! When you begin to play more skeletally, accessing the innate power of your hand's arch, the skeleton of your hand takes over the effort of certain muscles that were overworked up until now. The pain goes away. But the trouble with learning is that it doesn't happen all at once, it's a multistage process. A baby learning to stand up and walk takes its time about it, going through many failed essays before succeeding. With your skeletal alignments changed, some muscles will now have to work than they did before. Dormant muscles may have to wake up and activate. I suspect this is the case with your upper arm pain. I had a student whose upper arm really grew a lot bigger in the few months she was learning Tchaikowsky concerto because those muscles had to develop so much to support the strong work of the hand. As a gross generalization I generally tell my students that any pain below the wrist or above the elbow is good, signaling dormant muscles getting into the game for the first time and not really used to it, whereas pain in the forearm generally indicates stress and structural disorganization in the hand itself. For your forearm pain, remember that when we activate the lumbricals & interossei that empower the hand's arch, we relieve the deep and shallow flexors in the forearm from overwork. But sometimes when we succeed in activating the lumbricals & interossei, the whole hand feels more powerful and we end up inadvertently placing stress on the deep and superficial flexors: we didn't make the necessary differentiation of function. Learning generally proceeds from lesser differentiation to greater; along the way you may run across anomalies that existed before but remained outside of your awareness - the path to improvement is seldom straight and narrow! For the finger pain I would need a more detailed description of where it is located: in the flexor muscles, the extensors, or in the joint itself? I would also need you to describe what exactly you changed in your technique as a result of reading my book. As for enjoying your playing less, I too have experienced this many times. I used to get so caught up in these physical issues, and my own body took so much time for many of these physical adjustments and technical discoveries, that I lost track of the enjoyment of music making. Rest assured, this is temporary! AFF

Thank you for your reply. The pain seems to have cleared away for now; if it returns then I will try to be more specific, but upon taking your suggestions things seem to be resolving themselves. I do have a question though. I ready your review of this article: From a purely anatomical point of view, the lumbricales and interossei play a very insignificant role in moving the fingers. These muscles in the hand seem to help with abduction and extension, but with the exception of the pinky and thumb, their role is negligible in piano playing. Here the article makes a number of what seem to me to be claims that are simply not consistent with anatomy as found in any standard textbook. For example, it claims that one cannot have a functional/flexible wrist without using mainly these muscles located in the hand. Also, his idea of isolating these muscles from the forearm muscles seems anatomically impossible, yes? And then he claims that "It now becomes clear that in order to develop a good finger technique on the piano it is necessary to reverse nature", which sounds very potentially damaging, if not directly making oneself prone to injury. The thing is, unless I have read this wrong, you seem to imply as much in your book. Perhaps you could clarify this issue for me? lmh

Wow, what great questions! I will address them one at a time. What muscles, to your mind then, DO flex the fingers (the main movement of depressing a key)? The deep and superficial flexors flex the distal and medial phalanges; my whole thrust is to reduce the stress on these muscles that move parts of the digits that are more suited to fine control, and to restore exuberant flexion of the proximal phalange: flexion of the metacarpal-phalangeal joint. This action in my experience consolidates and strengthens the natural arch of the hand, and it also is a main factor in creating big, healthy, resonant, juicy tone. As far as I understand it, the lumbricals and interosseous are the only muscles involved in flexing the metacarpal-phalangeal joint, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I personally do not believe that increasing the activity of these muscles in any way goes against nature. I remember carrying a box that had an awkward carrying handle forcing me to use the medial and distal parts of my fingers more than the proximal part, and in 10 minutes my forearm was hurting! Nature says USE the proximal part of your finger to grip, it is much better at holding onto things powerfully than the more distant parts of the finger. Michael Furstner says that because the lumbrical actually attaches to the deep flexor, we must reduce the use of the lumbrical and increase the use of the interosseous in proximal phalange flexion. This is his "going against nature." Quite frankly, I have no idea how to do what he says. I don't see how one could isolate the work of one of those muscles from the other, and he does not offer any way of doing so. I myself couldn't care less if the lumbrical, interosseous or both do the job of flexing the metacarpal phalangeal joint, I just want to see it happen! Please do enlighten me if I've missed some other muscles here - maybe my anatomy books are out of date! No comment, because I have no way of verifying if this is true or not. See paragraph 3 above... I do recommend increasing the action of whatever muscles flex the metacarpal-phalangeal joint, but as I said above, I do not at all believe that this is going against nature. I believe it is restoring natural function to the hand. HOWEVER, there is another instance where indeed I DO feel it is useful to "go against nature." Lay your hand on the desk top. If it is relaxed, it will lie comfortably with the knuckles sloping down slightly from the 2nd to 5th fingers. This slope happens because the thumb is stuck under there. Its bulk prevents the hand from lying symmetrically. If your thumb were not there, the two ends of the arch from 2nd to 5th would be equidistant from the desktop, yes? This is the hand position that harpsichordists used, and I believe it is the one most useful to pianists as well. The 'natural,'s sloped hand position is not the most useful for piano playing. It's the shape of the "lazy 5th." The hand works best when the thumb is not an equal part of the hand arch but an outrigger pointing to the inside, kind of like a flying buttress supporting the cathedral ceiling arch but not actually a part of that arch. The slight movement of the arm to stand the 5th finger up and bring its knuckle to horizontal equality with the 2nd is, to my mind, a necessary way of "going against nature," that is to say, against the naturally relaxed position of the hand. But this does not increase risk of injury: it actually reduces ulnar deviation and thus makes you less prone to hurting yourself... Both Thomas Mark and Seymour Fink make a big deal of this - at first I disagreed with them but now have come around to seeing just how right they are... Thanks for wonderfully provocative and stimulating questions! AFF

Thank you again for you response. I was under the impression that it was the flexor digitorum sublimis that that flexed the fingers, but I guess I should have checked an anatomy book myself; you are correct: The Flexor digitorum sublimis flexes first the middle and then the proximal phalanges; it also assists in flexing the wrist and elbow. The Flexor digitorum profundus is one of the flexors of the phalanges. After the Flexor sublimis has bent the second phalanx, the Flexor profundus flexes the terminal one; but it cannot do so until after the contraction of the superficial muscle. The Interossei volares adduct the fingers to an imaginary line drawn longitudinally through the center of the middle finger; and the Interossei dorsales abduct the fingers from that line. In addition to this the Interossei, in conjunction with the Lumbricales, flex the first phalanges at the metacarpophalangeal joints, and extend the second and third phalanges in consequence of their insertions into the expansions of the Extensor tendons. The Extensor digitorum communis is believed to act almost entirely on the first phalanges. I suppose my confusion lay primarily in the 'reversing nature' aspect and the concept of isolating the muscles, both of which seem to be counter to what you wrote in your book. Thank you for clearing this up. Perhaps I should pick up a copy of the Thomas Mark book and/or Fink's book. On another note, what are your thoughts on C.C. Chang's book? It can be found here: It definitely has some good ideas (ex. Mental Practice, even though that was nothing new to me), but some ideas I'm not so sure about. lmh

Wow. I came across a really interesting article today. I haven't got around to reading the whole thing yet, but the implication seems to be that finger independence is even more of a myth than I suspected (I'll bet Hanon wouldn't mind rewriting his Preface were he still alive ). Just thought I'd share this for the sake of discussion. I also heard that a group of people slowed down footage of supervirtuosi like Kissen and found that they all exhibited visible sympathetic finger movement. Seems to me finger independence is more of an illusion (albeit an important one). What do you think? lmh

Just to touch base with you and to apologize that I haven't really responded. I am tremendously booked up with all sorts of other tasks and simply haven't had the time, although these materials look fascinating. In the meantime we welcome comments from other forum members! Best, AFF