Pain AT The Wrist

I am realizing now that i am getting a little pain at the wrist now, on top and on the right. I remember the portion of the video where Alan has the student uphold the arch while keeping the wrist low. But HE actually does this rather than the student doing it herself. How do I go about accomplishing maintaining a relaxed wrist during playing? My wrist only rises slightly. almost unnoticeable. There was the exercise where your hand follows across the keys and you sort of "jab" at a C Maj scale...but that wasn't really work for me (as it strained my tendinitis a little) . Any advice would be much appreciated. I love watching concert pianists who keep there wrists still but not stiff. I KNOW I'M GETTING CLOSE THOUGH. thanks for your help. - kas

If you read my article on Thomas Mark's book at pianotechnique.net, you'll see that he says the wrist is the keystone of the hand/arm's arch, not the metacarpal-phalangeal joint. In my review I kind of pan his point of view but I have to rewrite this, because I watched a bunch of pianists on YouTube and all of them without exception use the metacarpal-phalangeal as the keystone when playing not so loud, but for real So, if you want to "relax your wrist" in playing, you must restore the right work of other parts of your hand. Quite likely your wrist is still trying to tense in order to help a lazy lumbrical-interosseous action - you probably haven't developed enough capacity to flex your whole finger. It could be that, or there could be somewhere else that is not working enough thus forcing the wrist into an inappropriate tense-support role. In other words, the solution to your tense wrist is not in your wrist. Check out the rest of your playing mechanism and see what you can change the evokes an improvement in the wrist without you ever directly working with it. A very Feldenkrais way of working! Best wishes, AFF