Tag: classical

Alexander The Great: My Continuing Journey with the Alexander Technique

Nicole Neal3 Comments
Alexander Technique
Alexander Technique (Photo credit: gordonplant)

So I have been continuing my sessions with the marvellous Kate Martin of AT Body Sense here in Melbourne and marvellous changes have been continuing to occur. It has been a few weeks since I last blogged about my journey with Alexander Technique, so I thought it was about time for an update.

Well, where shall I begin?

I have continued on with my daily semi-supine practice (as described in my initial posts), mostly doing this prior to and following my guitar practice and as a result I am becoming really aware of where I am now holding tension in my body due to well-formed, decades old habits. So not only jaw, neck, shoulders, but I’m also now well aware of right leg aductor, biceps femoris and right glute. Yep, for some reason I really like to hold on with my butt!

What does this have to do with my guitar playing?

Well, by me continuing my old habits of “holding on” and squeezing unnecessarily I’m using energy that I needn’t be using. So by relaxing those areas I’m making much more energy available to concentrate on the playing itself. I’m also taking pressure off of my body and my spine, which means I’m able to move so much freely and easily. More of the right muscles are now doing the right jobs.

I used to get massive tension headaches, sore and aches shoulder blades and so on – in fact I’ve reported on that experience in previously on this blog. Well, those days I’m very happy to say, are gone my friends! Seriously, this is the longest time I’ve gone being pain free and I really believe that the Alexander Technique practice has played a significant part in that.

I’m very conscious now of how I use my body when I’m playing – both in a practice sense and a performing sense. And it’s interesting to observe how the body reacts or acts in its habitual ways in the latter. I’ve used a couple of “safe” performance opportunities to really tune into what my body was doing whilst playing.

And I’m not saying everything is perfect yet – by no means. It’s reasonable to assume it will take a little while to change deeply ingrained and unconscious habits, but I’m seriously happy with my progress to date. For example, when I’m coming to “fast” or “tricky” elements in a performance situation I do notice an increase in tension in the right forearm, which then restricts movement a little of the right hand and does have an impact on tone quality (from my point of view anyway). But by the mere act of observing these things we begins to change them….. And so I continue.

PS – I have actually gotten around to recording and uploading the first podcast in a very long time! Yay! Head over HERE to check it out.

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A change to today’s post….

Nicole Neal2 Comments

Hi Folks,

well, today’s first has lead to another first! I have removed today’s guest post from the site. The reason being the guest post sent through to me contained a link to product that I didn’t know anything about and so I made the editorial decision of removing that link prior to posting. The guest poster wasn’t happy about this, so I offered to removed the article.

I only talk about or feature things on the blog that I have tried out for myself and would recommend to my own students, colleagues or other guitarists. As such I didn’t feel that the link was appropriate for the blog.

You, dear readers, are of paramount importance to me, as is the trust that you place in me. One of the key objectives for this blog (actually THE objective for this blog) is to help others – help you – if and where I can, sharing my own lessons learnt and experiences, to shape and follow your own path of learning on the guitar. It is not about selling products, particularly those I have no working knowledge of, or getting quick links and clicks through to other websites for random peeps. Yes, I’m aware that this kind of things happens in the blogging world, but that’s not what Classical Guitar n Stuff is about.

Classical Guitar n Stuff is for you. It’s about learning and developing. It’s about promoting new as well as existing guitar playing talent and exploring the myriad wonders of the classical guitar.

Nicole

PS – to offer you something interesting and useful today instead here’s a fantastic video I found recently of a Pavel Steidl masterclass for you – I’m definitely going to give these exercises a whirl….. I wanna play like Pavel!!