This ebook, An Alexander Technique Approach to Viola da Gamba (Viol) 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 viol 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)
To INTEGRATE changes to your viola da gamba technique and posture is to MAKE THE CHANGES RIGHT. You stop resisting the changes to your posture and technique that you know are valid, and you accept that they are better. In other words, you stop MAKING THE CHANGES WRONG and you let yourself learn easily.
The reason that incorporating changes to your viola da gamba posture and technique can seem to take forever, is you are unconsciously resisting them. On the surface you really see how valid the changes are, but unconsciously they are a threat to who you are on the viol, because of what you’ve always done.
Integrating these changes is much easier than suppressing them. A major reason for suppressing them, is because they challenge what you’ve always believed is good viola da gamba technique and posture. And the stronger your identification with what you’ve always done on the viol, the more resistance to the new, and the slower you integrate.
MAKING SOMETHING WRONG is how viola da gamba players block what is in their best interests. When you integrate something, you aren’t doing something, you are letting go of the massive work it takes to resist what is new and true.
In other words you cease to make the changes wrong, rather than work at making them right. You have to work at making these changes right, if unconsciously you are making the desired changes to your technique and posture wrong. This is the psychological equivalent of non-doing.
In the Alexander Technique non-doing is to do the physically minimum necessary to play the viola da gamba. It means you have created a posture and technique that allows you to play the viol as effortlessly as you can. When you truly non-do, it feels as if playing accurately is effortless.
SO, WHEN YOU INTEGRATE CHANGES INTO YOUR VIOLA DA GAMBA TECHNIQUE AND POSTURE THAT MAKE THE VIOL MUCH EASIER TO PLAY, YOU HAVE TO LET GO OF RESISTING WHAT IS RIGHT. THIS IS A STATE OF BEING; IT IS NOT WORKING TO DO SOMETHING ELSE.
You can’t integrate changes that are loving to your technique and posture on the viola da gamba, as long as you aren’t experiencing how much work you do to maintain a technique and posture that makes playing the viol hard work.
This sounds obvious, but it is amazing how sneakily a viola da gamba player’s ego can make it impossible for the viol player to realize how much hard work the viola da gamba player is putting in to do what he or she always done on the viol. In other words, the viola da gamba player is unconsciously blocking him or herself from being able to sense how hard their inefficient technique or posture is. Or, if the viol player’s technique and posture is good, how much unnecessary muscular effort the viola da gamba player is making.
So, let the loving new changes to your viola da gamba technique and posture be right, and they’ll quickly become an effortless part of your playing.