What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body
As a licensed Andover Educator, I teach private and group Body Mapping lessons to my private flute students and all musicians.
What is “What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body?”
It is a book written by Barbara Conable. It is also a course taught by Andover Educators, based the principles of the Alexander Technique. The entire course can be presented in 6 hours on one day, spread out over a semester, or over several short sessions.
What is Body Mapping?
The student carefully corrects his or her own body map by assimilating accurate information provided by kinesthetic experience, the mirror, models, books, pictures, and teachers. One thereby learns to recognize the source of inefficient or harmful movement and how to replace it with movement that is efficient, elegant, direct, and powerful based on the truth about one’s structure, function, and size.
Body Mapping was discovered by William Conable, professor of cello at the Ohio State University School of Music. Conable inferred the body map from the congruence of students’ movement in playing with their reports of their notions of their own structures. He observed that students move according to how they think they’re structured rather than according to how they are actually structured. When the students’ movement in playing becomes based on the students’ direct perception of their actual structure, it becomes efficient, expressive, and appropriate for making music. Conable’s observations are currently being confirmed by discoveries in neurophysiology concerning the locations, functions, and coordination of body maps in movement.
Body Mapping is the conscious correcting and refining of one’s body map to produce efficient, graceful, coordinated, effective movement. Body Mapping, over time, with application, allows any musician to play like a natural.
Barbara Conable, the founder of Andover Educators, is now retired from her career as an internationally renowned teacher of the Alexander Technique. What Every Musician Needs to Know about the Body, her book and her course, are informed by the insights of F. M. Alexander, as well as other Somatic disciplines and current findings in the neuroscience of movement.
Who takes this course or takes private lessons in Body Mapping?
The course was developed by Barbara Conable, the founder of Andover Educators, to help musicians learn how the body moves. Non-musicians can use this information as well in order to move well and avoid injury in their everyday lives.
What happens during a Body Mapping lesson?
I will ask you if there’s a particular topic or issue you want to share. Based on what you want to learn or discuss, I will ask you additional questions to clarify your understanding of your body map. I will help you learn how your body moves based on practical anatomy using books, anatomical models, videos, movement, and verbally guide you as you locate where the different bones and muscles are in your body.
Will Body Mapping interfere with my physical therapy, instrumental technique, etc?
No. I will help you learn how your body moves based on practical anatomy using books, anatomical models, videos, movement, and verbally guide you as you locate where the different bones and muscles are in your body. Andover Educators do not need to touch the student.
Andover Educators do not teach instrumental technique in a strict Body Mapping lesson. I will teach you how particular body parts move and it’s your responsibility to apply this information to your technique, if you choose to do so. For my flute students, I will give you my thoughts on flute playing technique based on my knowledge of the body.
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