Tai Chi for Musicians- November 2008

If you’re a musician (whether professional or amateur), here is something to add to your repertoire. Our “Tai Chi for Musicians” course debuts winter session, with a chance on Sunday, November 16, 7–8pm, to try it out free before- hand. Instruments are welcome. Pianists may use the school piano.

‘Freeing the body to let the music flow’ is the main theme of the course. For a variety of reasons, many musicians play with pain in the neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists . . . anywhere. “When you’re not struggling against physical limitations, you have more space simply to be creative,” says Carolanne Oller, who will be teaching withRuthSchechter,one of BTC Seniors’ tai chi teachers. Demonstrations—with students playing a few bars before and after trying out movements like kwa squats and chi gung Cloud Hands—bring home how dramatically good body alignments can improve both physical comfort and musical expression.

The whole-body awareness that tai chi and chi gung cultivate is almost never taught in music school curricula. It is all too common for a musician to learn the instrument with attention to “proper position”—of the instrument not of the body, locking in long-term habits of misalignment and inefficient, stressful movement.

“Many of us carry a lot of excess ten- sion,” says Ruth, a cellist. “If we can figure out how to open up the places we tend to close down when we play, then we can allow the instrument to sing.”

Violinists, for instance, face the challenge of supporting their arms. “You’ve got this instrument suspended out in thin air like a bridge without guy-wires,” says Carolanne, “and you have to keep it loose enough, yet supported, and move your fingers in a very intricate way without stiffening.”

Full-time musicians often routinely incorporate body work as part of their weekly maintenance. Tai chi allows students to begin working on their own tension patterns, to open constricted areas of the body. The course will offer a systematic way to learn these “open body” principles, building on different concepts—heavy elbows, open armpits—each week so that musicians can integrate them into their regular practice. “Musicians are very tuned into this kind of kinesthetic learning,” says Ruth, and they’re already familiar with the slow process of learning new skills.

The course teachers have complementary fields of expertise in music and body work. They recently co-taught a session (at the Wellesley Composers’ Conference) similar to the planned new course. Carolanne, a longtime energy arts student, practices shiatsu and chi gung tui na body work under the name of Ancient River Healing Arts and for the past three years has been teaching chi gung for musicians in various locations. She learned shiatsu in Taiwan and was certified by the New England Center for Oriental Bodywork Therapy in the early 1990’s; she studied chi gung tui na with Bruce Frantzis. Ruth was a professional cellist, viola da gambist, and Renaissance musician with the Greenwood Consort and with the precursor toBostonBaroque, and she has taught in area colleges. Her own “Start with Music” classes have been instilling love for music in young children and their parents for over 25 years. She was introduced to whole-body work back in college throughthe Alexander Technique, which “changed my sound and my life,” she says. Classes will include individual attention, with ample feedback. For more information, please call the BTC office and check the winter newsletter.