Movement Arts

Tai Chi and music are arts in the sense that they require a high level of skill AND a high degree of creative awareness and response in/to the moment. They demand very precise movements and have very clear goals: piano performance must be accurate, at the adequate tempo, with the right nuance, and a touch of genius. In the case of Tai Chi, every movement is made to have a specific effect on the opponent, if done martially, or upon one’s body, if done for health. When performed at a very high level, Tai Chi has the potential to help a person develop spiritually, just as music does.

In both music and martial arts, one’s body, mind and emotions, creativity, and inspiration are intrinsic aspects required for enjoyment and high performance. However, the pedagogy, the training methods, and the points of view on what to do and how one has to move in order to express this artistry are sometimes radically different.

With Tai Chi and music making, these differences are not in diametrical opposition, but synergistic instead. What music training lacks, can be supplemented and enriched by Tai Chi and its principles of movement.

Piano Pedagogy

In most piano instruction today, the area of pedagogy that is least explored is the kinesthetic understanding of the entire body and how it contributes to the making of sound.

Why the whole body? Why not just fingers and wrists and arms and shoulders? The simple and perhaps unglamorous answer is that all these parts are connected. Leaving some body parts unexplored by one’s conscious awareness or using them only partially is equivalent to a runner running only with their lower body. It is achievable, but the cost of energy and effort is significantly higher.

There is plenty of material going back all the way to François Couperin’s Art of Playing the Harpsichord that speaks (sometimes in great detail) about the proper setup of the hands, the use of the arms and mentions the necessity of having loose and relaxed shoulders, but only with rare exceptions do analysts and practitioners talk in passing or at all about the rest of the body. What about the trunk, beyond the shoulders? The spine? The head? What about the pelvis and the legs? Are they not contributors to playing? Are they not involved beyond the occasional need for playing fortissimo? Is there more to pay attention to beyond sitting up straight, not too high and not too low, with the feet on the floor?

Most studio pedagogy will allow that there is some sort of involvement of these parts, but will also argue that the torso and the lower body are not as important or as necessary as the upper part of the body. After all, the fingers are the ones in contact with the keys and they are responsible for making the sound; therefore, the bulk of the attention and training should be focused on them and the arms.

There is a certain assumption that the rest will take care of itself. But will it?

The evidence points to the contrary.

Research evidence

The ever-expanding field of research in musicians’ injuries has produced extensive data proving that musculoskeletal issues (pain, strain, fatigue) are very frequent in current professionals. Some of the latest estimates cited by an extensive review of current research include a lifetime prevalence range of injury at 46-90% of musicians. In keyboard players, the numbers are 25-77% with the most frequent complaints being wrist, hands, neck, and shoulders. Women are more likely to become injured.

Researchers continue to point out that this is a widespread issue needing attention from both the medical and instructional sides.

At the same time, for the past century, the inquisitiveness and self-research of others have yielded a variety of collections of practices that have attempted, to address these issues, with various degrees of success. Among others, Alexander’s Technique does it through the manipulation of the relationship between the head and the spine; Feldenkrais Method, through the exploration of free movement; Body Mapping, through practical anatomical knowledge of the body; yoga through stretching; Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction through non-judgmental observation of psychological states. These are a few of the disciplines that some of my colleagues have taken up in adult life to address the lack of awareness and integration of the entire body that is at the root of many of these musculoskeletal injuries. Why is this lack so prominent?

In essence, it is because the early set-up of instrumental pedagogy becomes incomplete once the body changes, particularly if the teaching emphasis is mostly focused on the upper body. The longer a student studies,  the greater in scope and difficulty the repertoire is, requiring longer practice hours. At the same time, the body changes and the person grows older, encountering more responsibilities, stress, and time constraints. What used to be easy as a child (flexibility, for instance) becomes hard for the grownup; what used to be hard (reading, music learning, and acquiring repertoire) becomes easier; and what was not raised in the awareness of the youngster (conscious, whole-body involvement in sound production) becomes a blind spot that turns into a significant, possibly devastating problem. Study upon study points out that most musicians will suffer from some type of musculoskeletal condition during their professional life; for some, this will be career-ending. These studies indicate a pedagogical lack that is in dire need of redress.

In the meantime, the (injured) professional musician ends up having to supplement initial instruction with something more.

Tai Chi Pedagogy

The pedagogy of movement in Tai Chi is over 400 years old, but its movement principles come from a collection of Daoist practices gathered under the umbrella term of ‘Qigong,’ which are at least 2 millennia old. In direct translation, qigong means breath/energy exercise. In a larger sense, qigong encompasses practices that have to do with breathing, moving, standing and sitting, most of which were and are done as health exercises or meditation preparation. This fundament was integrated with martial applications in order to make fighters more effective and maintain their health. Tai Chi thus became a method of self-cultivation, a martial art, and a health practice.

At its first level, Tai Chi pedagogy begins with the body, continues with the body and ends with the body, but it looks at and uses the body at increasingly deeper layers. First is the skin, then the fascia, then the superficial, middle, and deep muscles, the ligaments and tendons, and the bones. Its first and perhaps most important goal is to make the individual aware and kinesthetically conscious of the ENTIRE body. This awareness is not dependent on imagination or thinking oneself through the body, it is a felt awareness of body sensations and how the body moves. Tai Chi’s practice and pedagogy later moves on to monitoring increasingly subtler states and sensations which eventually cross over into moving meditation.

Parts

One of the cornerstone principles in Tai Chi is the dictum “If one part moves, ALL parts move.” If one part of the body moves, all the others will as well. The degree will depend on a variety of factors but the movement will be there. “If one part moves, all parts move” is not aspirational or philosophical; it is constantly trained so that one’s ability to respond to stimuli is effective and all movement is efficient. After all, in a fight, wouldn’t you want a body that does what you need it to do at the mere thought of making a move?

As one of my teachers said, “You either win at first contact or you should get out of there.”

Standing

However, before one learns to move parts one has to … find them!

The first and foremost exercise in training whole body awareness in Tai Chi is standing.

The student is instructed to stand, balance the body in the middle of the feet, have a slight bend in the knees and elbows, center the head over the pelvis, and then direct their attention to the top of the head. From there, the student should try to kinesthetically perceive the skin of the body, moving downwards level by level until they reach the feet. The beginning of this practice is with the skin but the process moves deeper and deeper until one gets to the bones. (I will leave out many salient details connected to this practice and the multiple benefits it offers for the sake of continuing to focus on its application to piano playing, but know there is much more to be discovered.)

In the practice of standing, the emphasis is on feeling the body. Within the world of Tai Chi and Qigong, the mind is used as a perception organ that has access to whatever it decides to pay attention to. As such, feeling the skin of the face, for instance, is not about visualizing how the skin on the face feels like but instead, it is about registering and cataloging sensations and perceptions. Just as the fingers can detect the quality of a smooth or rugged surface, the mind can detect the shape, size, or placement in space of the body, among many attributes available for exploration.

In the beginning, it is not unusual for the student to find out that they are missing major parts from their feeling-map of the body. However, a constant return to this investigation of the surfaces eventually leads to an accurate representation of the body in the mind of the practitioner; it anchors them strongly into the space they occupy. Furthermore, and perhaps crucially more important, it also anchors the mind into the body and creates a stable link through which thought and physical execution happen at the most efficient level possible.

Application

Before one thinks outside of the ‘box,’ one has to build the ‘box.’

In our (musicians’) case, the ‘box’ is the whole body. It determines everything else we want to do with our music – expression, intensity, connection, success, and quality of performance experience. Therefore, before or, if we were not exposed to this, at the same time as thinking about the music we are working on, we have to pay attention to the body. It is the only translation mechanism we have between our creative expression and the physical world, between our hearts and minds and the hearts and minds of those who receive our music.

The “One part moves, all parts move” principle is the end of that journey, but it all begins with awareness, with feeling the body bit by bit, clarifying where all the parts are in space, and allowing the mind to enter the body.

If you would like to give it a try

Here are some questions to play with. You can do them as you read through, but you can also take them as points of extended exploration. This second method will probably be much more useful and productive to you.  Do your best not to think about the question but to feel the body part.

Here are just a few, to get you started:

Can you feel your hands? The palms? The back of the hands? How wide are they? Can you feel the tips of the fingers? One by one? All at the same time? How long is your thumb? How thick are your fingers? How wide is your wrist?

As you read this, is your head straight or leaning? How big is it? How wide are your cheekbones? What is the shape of your ears? What lies under the jawline? How does the head sit on top of the spine?

How wide are your shoulders? Where does the neck attach to the torso? How long are your arms? How does the inside of the elbows feel? The outside? How does the skin on the outside of the arms feel like? What about on the inside? How do the arms attach to the trunk?

Where are the shoulder blades? How big are they? How do they move? What does the skin on the front of the trunk feel like? On the back? What about the sides? How much space do you occupy with your torso – side to side, forward, and back? How long is your spine? Where does it start? Where does it end?

How wide are your hips? Where do the legs join the trunk? How long are the thighs? How does the skin feel on the upper legs? How big are your knees? How wide are they? How long are the lower legs? How does the skin feel? Where do the legs meet the feet? How long and how wide are your feet? How do the soles of the feet feel? Can you feel your toes? All of them? One by one? The tips too?

How tall are you? Can you feel your length and your width?

And here is perhaps the most critical question, if you happen to be a musician:

Does each answer change when you are sitting at or holding your instrument?

Happy investigations to you!