The Ghosts of Yesteryears…

I’ve been riffing about arms a lot lately, and here we go again.

But really, this is my confession session.

A sheepish and defeated Chancer is owning up to his weaknesses and foibles. But first, something about Pianists - who are like arm and finger maestros.

Most accomplished pianists started playing as children.

That is, they were once short-armed creatures who needed to get close to the piano to reach all 88 keys. Over the years, the distance between piano and Self gets to feel a certain way, and that sense of distance stays continuously the same.

Except now the child is no longer a short-armed creature – she’s married with three kids and complaining about her arms hurting.

You see, now she needs to move further away from the piano, just as I bet you need to move further away from your keyboard!

This distancing formula was a wisdom Chancer happily dispensed out to others, failing to notice he needed the advice himself. Small problems easily go unnoticed, especially if you are a busy person without much reflective time in your life.

I should know better.

It wasn’t until c19 catapulted me into a position of 14-hour days at the computer that Chancer woke up to the fact that he was too close!

I bet you are too. 

Here’s what happens when you get too close.

In a perfect world, you will extend back at the glenohumeral joint but leave the sterno-clavicular joint protracted forward. In plain language: only your elbow will go back, leaving your shoulder blades apart.

But this almost never happens. 

Pianists – thinking they are still 8 years old – sit too close to the piano, then must pull back their elbow for their hands to reach the 88 keys. But as the elbows are pulled back, the shoulder blades are pulled together; because of this, the ribcage/spine bend backwards at T12/L1, and this then results in the upper spine must flexing forward to counterbalance…

Soon everything is in a godawful mess.

Try it. Sit in front of your keyboard, now get really, really close.

For your hands to reach the keyboard – what do your arms do?

They pull back, right? 

In Chancer’s case, this went unnoticed for years because I never got into much trouble. This is also true of a lot of people. And then one day your system presents an invoice for all those torrid years it did it’s best to manage.

Chancer went through a lot of anguish – coming out the other side by discovering something he really ought to have already known. There are levels, and there are levels. 

Isn’t the world a beautiful place?

This kind of analysis would not be possible if I did not spend decades analysing movements from a realistic perspective. I always had a distaste for vague Alexander formulas such as “keep your back back.”

Anatomically, I have no idea what that means. And neither does your student.

Maybe it works if you can communicate your meaning through touch, but that doesn’t work so well in our post c19 Zoom rooms.

To get around that you need to study your design – and that’s what my comprehensive BodyThinking Online course does. It is 66 videos divided into three modules with 5 lessons in each.

It is as much a reference library as it is a course – and once you buy it, you have access for life. Or at least as long as BodyChance continues – and with 100+ trainees it will be a long time before this school ever closes.

These are tools anyone can use – Alexander teacher and student, Voice teacher, Yoga Instructor, Music teachers – anyone who coaches other people in the art of something physical.

And that would be a great offer all by itself, except now I am throwing in the Golden Week Symposium held recently in Japan:

“How to Teach Online (by example)”

A group of Alexscovery teachers with a collective teaching experience of 219 years – includes Cathy Madden, Lucia Walker and Malcolm Balk - give lessons to a group of 50+ people on Zoom (three screens of them) and succeed magnificently. 

If you want a flood of new ideas on how to teach online, this is the course to watch.

And you don’t pay a penny more – it is entirely free. 

Don’t wait, I will stop offering this at some point, and that’s that. Grab it now while the link is still working – more details about my offer on this page:

https://bodychance.mykajabi.com/offers/sJJ8KmoS