Performance Archives - Page 6 of 9

Feeling right, or having success… Which will you choose?

I have been having a real battle in my tennis lessons lately. My struggle is with my backhand. My teacher has given me very clear instructions on the technique of how to hit a good backhand stroke. When I follow her instructions, I have success.

But do I always follow her instructions?

Nup.

Because, you see, sometimes I decide that I know better. The technique that she has taught me works… but it doesn’t feel right. It feels, well, odd, and new, and… Wrong, frankly. And because it doesn’t feel right, more often than not I decide to go my own way, and do what feels right to me.

And the resulting shot stinks.

But it isn’t just me that has this experience. One of my students recently had a very clear choice between walking in the way that she had decided was most efficient and anatomically correct (but which made her feel like she was sticking her rear end out like a duck), or walking in her usual way and putting up with her lower back aching.

According to FM Alexander, it all comes down to a simple choice.* When I play tennis, I can either go about things in my old usual way and get the same crummy results that I always have, or I can actually listen to my teacher and wholeheartedly follow her instructions. My student can walk in the old achey way, or put her trust in the new way she has decided is best for her purpose.

Even when it feels odd, or wrong.
Even when it feels uncomfortable.
Even when I think I probably look like an idiot.
Even if she feels like a duck.

So last week I challenged you to pick an activity and think about what you would actually need to do to complete the activity. This week my challenge to you is to keep refining your plan in odd moments through the day, but to go one step further. Every so often, maybe once a day, put your plan into action. It may feel great. It may feel odd. It might not feel of anything at all. Just give it a go, and let me know how you get on.

* FM Alexander, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, IRDEAT complete edition, p.299f.
Image by Tina Phillips www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The ‘me’ problem – why people start Alexander Technique

Last week I told you how the beginnings of the Alexander Technique were to be found in threatened passion. FM had a passion for acting and reciting, and when he was threatened with the loss of the career that he loved, he decided to take the bold step of solving his problems for himself.

I was pretty similar to FM, in that the thing that got me started on my Alexander Technique journey was threatened passion.

I was 22, newly married, starting a postgrad degree in a new country, discovering cooking and new groups of recorder enthusiasts to play with, and finding a whole new world of knitting yarns and patterns. I was also a long way from home and everything that had been familiar and supportive, and trying to make the best of the tremendous career opportunities I had been given. Life was both incredibly exciting and astonishingly stressful.

When my arms and wrists started hurting when I used the computer or knitted, at first I ignored it. But when the discomfort increased, I went to the doctor for help. That was the beginning of my journey to doctors, specialists, physiotherapists, osteopaths and goodness knows how many other health practitioners. None of them solved the issue. Sometimes I got some temporary relief, but then I’d do more research on the computer, or play another concert, and it would be back worse than ever.

I stopped playing recorder. It hurt too much. Then I stopped knitting. Same reason. Then I got told to rest my arms completely for six weeks. No computer (while writing a thesis!) and no cooking. Not even tying shoelaces was allowed.

My life was getting smaller and smaller. And somehow I knew that the reason why medical solutions weren’t helping me was because I didn’t have a medical problem. I had a Me problem. There was something about the way I was doing the things I was doing that was causing my problems.

And that was where FM Alexander began. He asked exactly that question of his doctor:

‘Is it not fair, then,’ I asked him, ‘to conclude that it was something I was doing that evening in using my voice that was the cause of the trouble?’ *

FM suspected that there was something about the way he was using his voice that was problematic. I suspected there was something about the way I was using my arms that was problematic. He studied himself in a mirror to work out what he was doing and how to stop it. I found an Alexander Technique teacher and started having lessons.

Is there something about the way that you are going about the activities you love that is causing you problems? What one step can you take today to begin change?

* FM Alexander, The Use of the Self in the Irdeat Complete Edition, p.412.
Image by Steve Ford

The importance of knowing what you’ve got

Do you know where your lungs are?

Seems like a simple question, doesn’t it? So take a moment. Put your hands on where you think your lungs are. I’ll wait for you.

Done?

I asked my acting students in Cardiff recently to show me where their lungs are. I have a class of fourteen teenagers. Thirteen of them put their hands halfway down their torso, just below their ribs. I asked them if they were sure, and they all agreed that they were.

Then I showed them a picture of where the lungs really are. It caused some consternation.

You see, they’d been trying to breathe down into their abdominal cavity. They’d been told by various drama and voice teachers that breathing down there was good, so they assumed that was where their lungs were located. They also assumed that any movement that happened in the chest must be bad, and some even admitted trying to stop it happening. Sadly, all they were doing was stopping the free movement of their body to allow their lungs to fill!

FM Alexander said that we all think and act according to the peculiarities of our psycho-physical make-up.* In other words, what we believe about our bodies and the world at large determines how we move and interact. If we don’t know the basics of what we’ve got bodywise and how it works, then we’re a bit like a runner starting a race off a handicap. We’ll be struggling from the very start.

So if you’re involved in a specialised activity like singing or playing tennis or skiing (or anything else), or if you’re finding a particular activity difficult, please do spend a bit of research time. Find out what muscles and joints you’ve got. Find out where your lungs are. Get some knowledge. Because once you know what you’ve got, you can begin to plan effectively how you’re going to use it.

* FM Alexander Consctructive Conscious Control of the Individual, Irdeat edition, p.293.
Image of the lungs taken from Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy, 10th ed., Lippincott, Williams, and Wilkins, p.30.

Avoiding the ow: know what you’ve got (and how to use it)!

I want to tell you a story about me and my son going for a run together, because it so neatly explains how just a little knowledge about how the body works can make a big difference to your experience of moving.

So. My son and I went out for a run around our local park. The perimeter is about 2km (a little over a mile), so not too taxing even for a nearly nine year old.

About two thirds of the way round, my son said his right shoulder was starting to ache. Now neither he nor I could say we are experienced runners, but even we know that our shoulders shouldn’t be doing most of the work while running!

After checking it was okay with him to do some Alexander Technique work, I ran behind him for a few paces to see what was going on. He was throwing his entire shoulder region all over the place as he ran.

I break my story here to explain some anatomy…

Most people don’t realise that, functionally speaking, they have two shoulder joints: the shoulder girdle, which is formed by the collarbone and shoulderblade; and the glenohumeral joint, which is the ball and socket joint formed by the shoulder blade and the upper arm bone (humerus).

If you’re just moving your arm forwards and backwards, the glenohumeral joint will do the job admirably. You don’t need to waggle the whole shoulder girdle.

Back to the story.

I asked my son to stop, and with a bit of hands-on work I explained to him that he could use his whole shoulder region, but that he had a different shoulder joint that could move his arm back and forth more easily. And when he just move at the ball and socket joint, his arm moved so freely and easily that my son laughed.* And then he started to run.

For the first two paces, the right arm was moving in the new way, and the left arm in the old waggly way. But then he changed his left arm to the new streamlined movement. Not only did he move more gracefully, he moved more easily.

Result: he took off. He flew along. I had to work hard to keep up with him!

Once my son stopped doing the waggly thing with his arm, his shoulder stopped getting sore.** Once he knew which joints did what, his running improved.

What could you improve, if you just knew what muscles and joints you have, and how to use them?

* FM Alexander talks about how children love learning about how their bodies work. He writes: “They are not slow to recognise that they are themselves the most interesting machines, and their natural interest in mechanics finds full scope in the process of their own re-education.” Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, IRDEAT edition, p.381.

** An important caveat here. If you are experiencing pain or discomfort, SEE A DOCTOR. There may be something physiologic or structural going on that the doctor can sort out. The Alexander Technique is fantastic, but it isn’t medicine, and can’t cure medical conditions.

Image by coward_lion from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“I can’t sing!” – the difference between CAN’T and DON’T, and why it matters

I recently had this exchange with a young student.

Student: I can’t sing.
Me: Really? Who told you that?
Student: Well, no one. But I can’t sing.
Me: What evidence do you have for that?
Student: I’ve heard myself.
Me: What, on a recording?
Student: [scornfully] No!
Me: So how have you heard yourself?
Student: As I’m singing.

At this point I took a little time to explain that this doesn’t really count, as you can’t hear yourself the way an audience hears you. All you can hear of yourself is a combination of internal resonance and whatever bounces back off the walls of wherever you are singing. Back to the dialogue.

Me: So have you heard yourself sing?
Student: No.
Me: So how do you know that you can’t?
Student: I guess I don’t.
Me: Do you sing at all?
Student: As little as possible.
Me: In that case, all we can say is that you don’t sing. Until you sing, we have no evidence that you can’t.

It sounds like I’m splitting hairs. But I’m not. It is a very common thing for me to have students say “I can’t” do something, when what they mean is that they tried it once and weren’t very good. So they decide not to try it ever again.

But this isn’t sufficient evidence to decide. It’s a bit like me picking up a tennis racquet for the first time and expecting to be able to play like Roger Federer. It’s possible, but the likelihood of it happening is vanishingly small. If I want to decide if I’m any good at tennis, I will need to spend some time learning the game and practising.

FM Alexander said that the centre and backbone of his work was that the conscious mind (the reasoning mind) must be quickened (made alive).* And one of the ways that we can do that is to be careful not to confuse ourselves with our language. If we say ‘can’t’ when we really mean ‘don’t’ or ‘haven’t tried’, we cut ourselves off from the possibility of experimenting and discovering whole new areas of skill and delight in our lives.

Where have you said “I can’t” where you really should be saying “I don’t yet” or “I haven’t tried”, and what would happen if you changed the way you spoke and thought?

* FM Alexander, Man’s Supreme Inheritance in the IRDEAT Complete Edition, p.39.
Image by graur codrin from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Does Working Harder Really Work?

According to the BBC, Greece is being asked by its Eurozone creditors to increase the working week to six days. Musicians routinely play a kind of workaholic one-upmanship about how many hours they practice each day. Children seem to be given increasingly large amounts of homework to do.

The world seems to believe that the way to achieve more is to work harder. By which they mean: work for longer. But does this really work? If you increase the number of hours you spend at a task, will you really be more effective?

Of course, it depends on what you are actually doing in all those extra hours. FM Alexander was once confronted by a pupil who insisted that, even if the activity was wrong, it was better to exert oneself and try hard than not to try at all. Alexander countered by suggesting that ‘trying hard’ in the wrong direction was still going in the wrong direction. He said that

It is not the degree of “willing” or “trying,” but the way in which the energy is directed, that is going to make the “willing” or “trying” effective.*

In other words, it really doesn’t matter how fast you are driving if you are on the wrong road. It doesn’t matter how many times a musician plays a semi quaver passage if they’re getting it wrong every time. It doesn’t matter how many hours you spend at your desk if you don’t have a clear idea of what work you should be doing.

This is the strategy I’m using in my recorder practice sessions, and I think it could be useful in other places too.

Decide what it is you want to achieve.
Decide on the easiest way to achieve it.
Do what you’ve decided is best.
Stop.

Once you’ve become proficient at setting goals and achieving them, you can increase the number of tasks and the number of hours worked. But in the beginning, go for quality instead of quantity. And don’t forget to let me know how you get on!

* FM Alexander, The Use of the Self, IRDEAT edition, p.440.
Image by ddpavumba from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Tennis lessons – why being rubbish at something is all-important

When I decided to take my Youngster out to buy him something as a reward for a really good school report, I didn’t expect him to choose a tennis racquet. But he did.

And then I didn’t expect his enthusiasm for it to last beyond a couple of days.

But it did.

So a trip to a charity shop later, we have two racquets, and have been out to our local park every day to hit a tennis ball around. Every day. For at least an hour.

I was terrible at tennis at school – couldn’t even get the ball and racquet to connect – so was a bit apprehensive about playing, especially when the Youngster demonstrated that he was able to hit the ball very effectively from the off.

But the outcome of nearly two weeks of going to the park has led me to a surprising discovery. Tennis is fun, even if you’re terrible at it. Why is this a surprise? Well, it all comes down to rules.

Rules, rules, rules

The rules we make about an activity materially affect the way we will approach it, and will determine how much fun we have. Like a lot of people, as a young person I took on board the view that being good at an activity was all-important, and that if I couldn’t be good at it immediately, I should give it up.* FM Alexander comments that students will have had this attitude instilled into them by teachers from their earliest days, and that

He will have been told that, if he is conscientious, he will always try to be right, not wrong, so that this desire to “be right” will have become an obsession in which, as in so many other matters, his conscience must be satisfied.**

I gave up a lot of stuff, and didn’t even try a whole load of things, because of this belief that I needed to be perfect immediately. But no one can expect to be immediately proficient at something new. This is too high a standard for success. More importantly, it is just a belief, or a rule, about what is correct and allowable. And beliefs and rules are changeable.

I am still a terrible tennis player. Put bluntly, I stink. But I’m still having fun, and that’s what counts.

What activity would you try if you would just allow yourself to be joyfully, gleefully bad at it?

* Incidentally, all teachers need to remember this point. Your students’ sense of self belief is a delicate thing. Criticise too much at an early stage at your peril.

** FM Alexander, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual in the Irdeat Complete Edition, p.295.

Image by Suat Eman, freedigitalphotos.net

Your amazing brain: 3 Alexander Technique tips to use it well

This is a post about the power of your brain, and how it can get you in – and out – of trouble.

I have played recorder since I was six, but it wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I started getting RSI-like wrist pain. I did all the usual obvious routes: doctor, physio, specialist, osteopath… Nothing really helped. In fact, it got so bad that I stopped playing.

Even after I started experiencing improvement in my arms after studying the Alexander Technique, it took years for me to pluck up courage to start playing recorder again. And when I did, I got some help from an experienced and very wise teacher friend, Jill Tappin.

Jill quickly became fascinated with the way I was using my hands. We discovered together that I had a very odd idea about the way my fingers moved. I believed that they should bend where the crease line is at the bottom of my fingers, here:

Of course, that isn’t right at all. They flex much lower, at the knuckle. That’s where the joint is:

But even though it wasn’t anatomically possible to flex my fingers higher up, I had managed to create a set of complex and exhausting muscular contractions that had the net effect of moving my finger where I believed it was correct.

My brain power overrode my anatomy.

And this is what most students do (though not often with fingers!). FM Alexander says that a student’s “misdirected activities are the result of incorrect conception and of imperfect sensory appreciation.” * That is to say, they have beliefs about the way their head should move, the way their back should curve, where their legs should start – even if these have no basis in anatomic fact. And then they use the power of their amazing brains to make their beliefs a reality, often at the expense of their wellbeing.

The moral of this story? Don’t assume you know how your body works! If you are having a problem in a specific area, discomfort in your hips when walking for example, you’ve probably tried all sorts of things to fix it. But what assumptions have you missed?

Learn the anatomy. Check online or in a book, and find out how that part of the body is built
Don’t go by surfaces. I got fooled by my skin into thinking I moved where I didn’t. Try to develop a kind of x-ray vision, and think under the skin.
Experiment. Test out your new ideas of how things work. You can do this by yourself, or you can get an Alexander Technique teacher to help you. If there isn’t a teacher nearby, a bunch of us now do Skype consultations and can give advice via webcam.

* FM Alexander, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual in the Irdeat Complete Edition, p.293.
Photos by Jennifer Mackerras

Losing “I can’t” – the importance of mental attitude in performance

When I teach Alexander Technique, I typically encourage students to come in with a activity they’d like to work on. It could be anything from sitting, to running, to juggling, or to using the pedal on a sewing machine. When I ask them why they want to look at their activity in class, they typically use one of the phrases:

I’m having trouble with x.[insert activity here]
I can’t play this passage.
It could have been better.
I’m okay up to this point, but then it all goes wrong.
I don’t breathe properly.
I always run out of air before the end.
I can’t hit that note.
I’m not doing as well as I’d like.

And when my students say their variation on these phrases, a line or two by FM Alexander runs through my mind: “when…we are seeking to give a patient conscious control, the consideration of mental attitude must precede the performance of the act prescribed … He often finds an enormous difficulty in altering some trifling habit of thought that stands between him and the benefit he clearly expects.” *

FM is pointing us towards an important truth. So often, the way we think about a problem is not only a part of the problem, but actually stands between us and the change of attitude and perspective necessary to find a solution. Or, to quote Stephen Covey, the way we see the problem is the problem.”

So next time you find yourself saying a variant on the above statements, try to find a new and more positive way of articulating the same thing:

I want to achieve x, but haven’t yet worked out how to do it.
I don’t yet play this passage the way I envisage it.
It hasn’t reached my highest standard, but there was improvement.
I haven’t managed to continue my thinking into this part [of the piece/action] yet.
I’m not sure how the breathing mechanism works.
There’s a reason why I run out of air, but I haven’t worked it out yet.
I don’t know why that note doesn’t come out right yet.
My current standard of performance hasn’t yet achieved the high standard I’ve set myself.

Can you see how these are more open? They either acknowledge the progress already made, or provide openings that will help us to question why things aren’t working out yet.

And the key word is YET. Alter those trifling habits of thought, follow the process of questioning and exploring, and good things will happen.

Let me know how you are going to restate your difficulties in the comments. Or if you’re adept at doing this already, let me know what benefits you’ve experienced. The more evidence that it works, the more people will want to give it a go!

*FM Alexander, Man’s Supreme Inheritance in the Irdeat edition, p.52.
Photo by Gordon Plant.

Avoid ‘choking’ with a practice revolution

Why do some people ‘choke’ – have the experience while performing of being under such stress that they miss a note, a run or a passage that they ought not to have missed? And what does the Alexander Technique have to offer the performer to get around this variety of performance stress?

In his second book, FM Alexander quoted a student who said “I am always coming up against things that I know I can do, and yet when it comes to the point, I can’t do them.” And dismissing it as an attack of ‘nerves’ doesn’t really do the problem justice, because it doesn’t help us discover the root cause of the stress, and therefore an effective solution.

Uncomfortably for teachers and students, Alexander firmly lays the blame at the way we learn. He says that we “practise on the wrong lines, so that our successful experiences are few and our unsuccessful experiences many.” *

Reading this passage put me in mind of a recent blog post that mirrored my own experience as a musician and performer.

Piano teacher Dan Severino wrote a blog post about his experience of evaluating his success in trying to teach students how to practice. He asked some of his students to practice just as if they were at home, so he could give them tips and pointers on how to improve.

They didn’t use any of his tips or practice drills. Severino says: “To my surprise most students practiced the same way. They would play one piece and then go on to the next piece until they played all their pieces. A couple of the students would play through the piece a couple times; but always the same way — from beginning to end.”

That could be a description of me as a kid. When I was a young recorder player, I didn’t know how to practice. I would play a piece either until the end or until I got to a tricky bit and made a mistake. I would possibly repeat the tricky bit a few times – rarely more slowly, rarely improving – and then just play the whole piece again.

It was bad practice. It didn’t help me to build up confidence from successful experiences. It taught me instead where the scary bits were in the pieces I played, so that I would spend all my performance time dreading their approach. Small wonder I failed to get them right!

So how can we avoid ‘choking’? Well, according to Alexander, one key element is practice. By changing the way we practice, we can build up for ourselves a succession of small successes that give us confidence. But to do that, we can’t just play the piece through and feel like we’re done. Here are some ideas I’ve been trying recently:

Each time you practice, work on one thing. Slurs. Breathing. Lifting the instrument to your mouth. One phrase from the music. Pick one thing, and try to make that one thing a little bit better.
Play it slowly. Yes, I know it’s irritating. But do it anyway.
Practice isn’t performance. Practice isn’t even about playing music. I’m playing with the idea that music is what is created when a performer is able to bring together successfully all the different single things they’ve worked on in their practice.
When you practice, it’s allowed to sound terrible. That’s because you’re not performing, you’re practicing, and they are completely different activities.

How many more different ideas or tips do you have that have helped you change the way you practice? Has it helped you feel more confident on stage? Tell me about it in the comments!

* FM Alexnder, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual in the Irdeat edition, p.340.
Photo by healingdream from FreeDigitalPhotos.net