Tonus In Shoulder Blade

Hi all! Alan has talked a lot about keeping tonus in hand and fingers to maintain sceletal power in playing. Resently I've been thinking a lot about pianist's back and its support for arms and hands. To me it's more obvious that we must have a proper lower back (pelvis) tonus to have a good basic posture for playing. But how about upper back and especially shoulder blade (or muscles supporting scapulas)? Should we be aware of tonus in that area too? I've read about having a good support from shoulder blade to take out extra muscle work from the muscles of forearm. To me this is a quite difficult thing, because I've struggled from having tension in my upper back and neck. So should we seek for ultimate relaxation in our upper back or some effective tonus? At the moment I believe that we need a tonus and also some muscular activity to keep a good posture in shoulder blade. If it's like that, maybe I need some exercises (push-ups etc.) to build more strength in that area? In Alan's feldenkrais based approach, is there some special ideas to upper back?

You might find the exercise at the end of this post helpful. It's an approach to refining the specific actions that support the arm, without locking it into place,or holding the shoulder raised up.

This is a wonderful question and I have no definitive answer for it. You have hit the nail on the head. Generally the problem is tension in that area. If you just relax the area it doesn't really do the job. There is a kind of activity needed there. I am finding that there is a way of releasing the lower back where the breath deepens spontaneously. The rib cage becomes more active. This opens the possibility of the shoulders releasing (because they are now more supported by a functional rib cage) but not over-relaxing - they become engaged. Keep fooling around with this and let me know what you discover. AFF