Playing an instrument might be good for your soul, but is it good for your body?
The contorted postures that musicians end up in can leave them with musculoskeletal problems. The Alexander technique is a method of releasing muscular tension. It can make us more aware of balance, posture and co-ordination. It is particularly helpful for musicians, many of whom are unknowingly far too tense when they play.
This month the first student trained in Ireland, Brian McNamara, will graduate from Saoirse Alexander Technique Teacher Training Centre, in Co Galway. McNamara's employer, Dublin Institute of Technology, sponsored him to do the three-year course, to bring the technique to DIT's Conservatory of Music and Drama, where he teaches violin.
Freedom of expression is central to playing music, but as McNamara says: "If you're tense, you won't feel free to express." He helped one guitarist who had been sitting awkwardly. "You could see from the posture that the whole shoulders were so far forward that their weight would be pulling down and causing tension in the back and the neck," he says. "I would take his arm and feel there was too much tension in it."
McNamara taught him to notice where the tension was, telling him to imagine his shoulder relaxing. "You're getting length into the arm by releasing its muscles rather than by forcing them."
For pianists, he says, the key is to bend from the hip rather than bend their backs as they play, which puts far less pressure on the spine.
Among the musicians that Richard Brennan, director of the Galway course, has worked with is the accordionist Mairtin O'Connor, whose poor posture left him with a prolapsed disc in his neck. He was on the verge of giving up the instrument because of the pain shooting down his arm. Brennan noticed that O'Connor would look at the ground while he played, with his spine bent and his head over his knees, putting enormous strain on his neck muscles. It is a common posture for box players, as it is for guitarists: it lets them see their hands while they are learning. "Now everyone notices he's playing in a very different posture," says Brennan.
Another client was the singer and mandolin player Sean Tyrrell. Stage nerves were already making him tense, but he was also using a microphone that was too high, which forced him to sing upwards, his head pulled back onto his spine. He too had pain shooting into his fingers, which made it difficult for him to play. The Alexander technique also solved his muscular problems.
For more information, send an SAE to Richard Brennan, Kirkullen Lodge, Tooreeny, Moycullen, Co Galway or email rickbrennan@eircom.net