This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Harp Technique, is published on this website in a PDF format. It is very detailed and practical, and it will give you the physical tools you need to take the limits off of your ability to create the accurate harp technique you want without sacrificing your body.
This ebook is also for sale on all AMAZON websites in a KINDLE format.
Located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A. (MOVEMENT THERAPY)
Two things have come to a head when you can’t do what you’ve always done on the harp. Physically you are either hurting too much or can’t do what you want to do and one or both. The second thing is that emotionally and psychologically you are unwilling or unable to do what you’ve always done, and this is intolerable.
It seems like the physical and the psychological could occur at different times, but they always happen simultaneously.
This is a real crossroads. Because this is the place where a harpist either does something radically new or quits. What has to happen for the harp player to continue?
YOU HAVE TO BE WILLING TO TRULY LISTEN TO YOURSELF. THIS MEANS THAT YOUR BODY AND YOUR EMOTIONS AND THOUGHTS ARE TELLING YOU THAT WHAT YOU’RE DOING ISN’T WORKING. Are you willing to hear this? If you’re not, you will probably quit or relegate your harp playing to the background in your life.
If you are willing to hear the emotional signals and body signals that refuse to go away, then you will have to change your technique or at least parts of it, and you also need to reassess why you play the harp – your approach to practice and performance.
What do I mean by body and emotional signals? When you are not listening to what your body and your mind are telling you about your approach to playing the harp, then negative emotions and physical pain and discomfort intensify to get your attention.
Another way of saying this, is that you’re doing things with your technique and emotional approach to the harp that are not loving. You have suppressed the escalating physical and emotional pain you’re in, because you believed your harp technique and attitude toward practice and performing was “just fine”.
This place in your career can be viewed negatively or positively, and whether you view it negatively or positively, you can use it to make positive changes in your technique.
If you view it negatively, and use it to make positive changes to your technique, you probably will not use it to make loving emotional changes and stop using negative reinforcement to improve your playing. What this means is you will be tough on yourself, as you adopt a harp technique that makes it possible to do what you want.
But what if you use positive reinforcement, playing only as a gift for yourself, to make the technique changes that make all of the great harp literature available to you?
If you are able and willing to do this, then this place you’re in that is a crisis emotionally and technically, can be a turning point. You can finally bring to consciousness how much you have not wanted to learn the harp the way you learned it, but didn’t know that was the problem.
THIS IS WHAT I MEAN BY, “WHAT HAS HAPPENED WHEN YOU CAN’T DO WHAT YOU’VE ALWAYS DONE?” If you’ve been in this place for a long time and have suppressed it, it may be tough to make the changes you will have to make. But you have no choice, because now you are too conscious to keep doing what you’ve done.
In other words, you can’t put the genie of what has finally come to consciousness back in the bottle. If you try to not feel what you’re feeling physically and emotionally, you won’t believe how much more you will hurt physically and emotionally.
IT’S TOO LATE IF YOUR EMOTIONS AND TECHNIQUE ARE INTOLERABLE. YOU MAY AS WELL CHOOSE LOVING SOLUTIONS TO BOTH, OR YOU CAN MUDDLE THROUGH, OR YOU CAN QUIT.
CHOOSE WHAT IS THE TRULY LOVING SOLUTION FOR YOU ON THE HARP EMOTIONALLY, TECHNICALLY, AND POSTURALLY, AND YOU WILL WONDER WHY YOU EVER PUT OFF DOING THIS.
