A Concert Pianist Hands
'it's my profession and I just can't play and be out of pain, the thing is my whole body is in pain"
Try this Hang your head forward and make claws with your hands.
You will feel the shoulders roll forward but also the shoulders lift to the ears You will also feel it in your tummy, it will bulge You will also feel it in your throat and your jaw.
This was not the posture the pianist had but this is the posture the body tried to create. So she tried and tried with all her might to pull herself out of that position all of this while she played. All so exhausting, no wonder she felt so much pain, all that effort while concentrating on playing well.
I ask...."It's not only about the hands is it?" Major issues First, accident....birth, a huuuuuuuuuuuuuge labour. Top of head of foetus, head butted mums cervix for days.
Result, jaw acted up to grit the gums, buckled the palate, and unhinged the sphenoid. The whole head and its a unformed babies skull has set up a total new pattern. A pattern that is wrong.
Second, later in life, a car accident, but hit from the back and also hit from the front... The jaw locked the head, the shoulders tried to pull everything down but it can't do this quickly enough, its all too late, car accidents are fast.
That poor heavy head then locked down even harder, it rolled forward but then a third knock to the head, a simple hit like on a cupboard door.
Quickly duck, but the eyes close, the head pulls down hard.
So the shoulders are locked rolling forward. Eyes down cast hard, jaw gritted, but it also locks the hands into a claw.
You can't play a piano well like that.
1. So to get the body totally out of this, the body must recognise that it is in over kill of lock down. In lock down the body as a team is a very poor team because not many structures are actually working well....so find what is NOT working, there will be fail after fail after fail. Now that brain gets a message of 'virtually nothing is working correctly'. It will overwhelm it will default.
2. The total head, all 22 cranial bones, including jaw and hyoid must be able to move correctly. When they don't they influence they reciprocate with so many other structures lower down.
3. Get the head properly supported onto that spine. Its analogous to a tent, there are many many supportive guy ropes away from the head, all supportive structures must have even forces of contraction.
4. But from the now corrected shoulder are the hands. In each hand is 28 bones, muscles to move the hands are in the palms and the forearms. If the head is not correct, or the shoulders it will influence the hand. But this also works in reciprocation. One hand will effect the head, the shoulder and influence the other hand.
So, yes the posterior carpel bones had compressed, but thats not all, but so had every other bone...yett the scaphoid/ radius compression was not allowing the wrist to flex and extend well.
So the lateral elbow had compensated and locked, compressed impinging onto the rotators of that forearm and upsetting the radial, medial and ulna nerve.
Loss of rotation, compressed blood supply, so a bit of tennis and a bit of golfers elbow. Loss of movement, loss of power, pins and needles in the last three fingers.
Loss of finger extension, loss of finger abduction, the palms turning off the fingers, compressed wrist exasperated the ulna, medial and radial nerves.
So get the hands to work, but get them to work as part of a larger team, up to the shoulders and include that head.
But it became, "we might as well get as much of that body to come one and help the whole team."
Posture improved, breathing improved, a body that was more integrated and so much more calm.
Then the role of the client was to maintain total body movements, retrain that body to do the things it should be able to do but better, and it will get better and better and better at what it does, it just takes time adn practice....correct the whole body and get it to play well together. If everything is working correctly, then everything is so much easier.
