This ebook, Musical Performance and Letting Go of the Beliefs that Limit You, is published on this website in a PDF format. It is written to give all performing musicians deep insights into the beliefs and bad habits and technique that performers have that can end careers with pain, strain, tension, and injuries. I look at all of the instruments from piano, to guitar to clarinet, to singing etc.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
When a musician gets injured is the body failing the performer, or is the performer failing the body? In other words does the body betray the performer or does the performer attack the body? Recently I described what I do as an Alexander Technique teacher to a networking group. What I said is that it didn’t matter whether a person liked the activity they were doing or hated it, they still hurt their body. People are so goal oriented, that they sacrifice their bodies for the goal, and that is what keeps me in business. Everyone laughed one of those knowing laughs. A knowing laugh is not necessarily, “Aha, I’ll now go and stop sacrificing my body for my art”. It’s usually a laugh that says, “I know, but I’m not going to do anything differently, because I don’t know how or want to”.
The longer I teach Alexander Technique, the more I realize that what I’ve said in the above paragraph is understood, but the consciousness and intention necessary to play an instrument differently is seen as too hard, so simply struggle on. I once showed a woman in a gym how to do abdominal crunches by releasing her lower back before each torso curl. She said her back stopped hurting, and in the next breath said she’d have “to think”, which meant she would just rather do them the old way and hurt. Which meant her goal of hard abs overrode any loving impulse toward herself.
Therein lies the problem of the aspiring performer who really loves what she is doing, and wants to be a great player at any cost. If a performer is unwilling to pay attention to what her body is saying as she puts in hours of practice doing physical damage to her body, then she is not doing a loving thing. To her this is a loving thing, because she is making music that sounds more and more beautiful. But she is damaging her body.
Is this happening independently of her mind, or is she really hurting herself on purpose? I believe she is hurting herself on purpose, unconsciously, even though the tension and bad technique could be blamed on bad teachers, which allows the young performer the innocent victim of well-meaning adults.
“On purpose” is not being used here as an attack, but as a statement of giving the performer back all of her power. This means the performer has made all of the choices to be doing what she is doing the way she is doing it. I’m writing from a belief system based on A Course in Miracles, which says we are all doing exactly what we want to do all of the time, even if we don’t believe this, no matter how old or young you are. At the highest spiritual level our souls or spirits are making all of our decisions. The reason these choices are not loving so much of the time, is that we may have chosen to stop loving ourselves.
