Sitting On The Bench

HELLO, I have been a pianist for many years now,and after solving major back and neck pain i struggle with the actuall sitting,is it true that you need to lean a bit forward towards the keyboard? if so,i do that but then i feel pressure at the area which connects that hups and the butt,and after a while it starting to hurt,if i seat backwards the bench i feel that the stoch us making an effort to hold the entire upper body/ Is there a way to feel completely pain free? and if there is,waht seems to be the problem with the way i seat? -i do try to seat on the middle of the sitting bones but i cant seat pain free yet,and do know that my height and distance are ok... Thanks

How high do you sit? Many back pain problems stem from sitting too high. Ludwig Deppe recommends the elbows not being level with the keyboard but below it. Try this out and get back to me. AFF

Been going up&down my whole life but prefer sitting low. A year ago I got really tired of this problem and took the approach "whatever works best". And I found that the key issue is maximum stability and support. So I now use an ordinary chair, sometimes with a pillow behind my back. With this solution I can rest my back now and then keep strait and vigilant when i need it. A bit like Volodos. Now I have tremendous stability and I don't care any more how it looks. I have a long back and thats always a problem in piano playing. Of course the recommendation from Alan is the best thing but don't forget that you need a strong and healthy back. I guess Feldenkraus does wonders just look how Alan is sitting (the low-low version) and what tremendous stability he has. But I guess most people would need extensive exercising before reaching that point.

Actually, Eric, sitting low helps the back strong and healthy! Hadar, your pain could also stem from an inefficient use of the hands, causing your back to tense up as it tries to compensate for structural anomalies in the hand itself.

Hi Thank's a lotfor that remarque. Didn't think of that. So I'll try to go back and do it again-but this time maybe 15m to start with and than increase peu en peu. What I did wrong was to sit for hours-something my back wasn't strong enough to tolerate.