Lesson Two
Work with this lesson enough to get a sense of your arms being weightless.
So here we go. Stand the same way as you did for lesson one. Remember the puppet? Remember the tail? Now hold your arms straight out in front of you at shoulder level and width. Now I don't want to freak you out but the puppeteer has drilled holes through both shoulders back to front and threaded a string through those holes and attached the string to the top of your wrists. When he pulls on the string from the back it pulls your arms toward you by the wrists. Your hands just dangle from the wrists. The puppeteer stops pulling when your wrists are about as far from your shoulder as your hand will spread. Go ahead -- you can measure your right arm with your left hand -- everything is fluid but it will give you an approximate idea of your space. While you're working with space make your arms flap a bit -- like a chicken. Actually I know nothing about how a chicken flaps her wings but do a flying imitation with your hands dangling and moving your elbows up and down.
Try it again. Arms straight out in front at shoulder height and width, let the puppeteer pull the strings until your wrists are about a hands width from your shoulders and fly a bit. Do it with a pulse. Is this the "Funky Chicken"? Now stop when your arms are about midway in their flight between the highest and the lowest point and keeping the same flex in your elbows turn your arms over. If you are facing a wall your arms are now directed toward the corners. Your hands are facing up and they fall wherever they fall. Now flip your arms back to the starting point. Now flop them out -- flip them back -- flop them out -- flip them back. Now this isn't a big deal. You are just flip flopping your arms back and forth.
Are you ready for the magic bit? Flip to the "chicken in flight" then with JUST THE LEFT ARM do the flop. Your right arm has stayed in chicken and your left arm is flopped toward the corner. What are you ready to do? If there were a violin around it would be able to find a nice little home cradled in the space created by your left arm. And the right arm is all set to take up the bow. Of course there is no bow. We'll get to that later.
Alisa Demonstrates the Flip
And the Flop
And the Flip Flop
Shake out your arms. Are they feeling a little tired? That's because you've been holding them up. Next comes the essence of the no hold -- balance.
Which reminds me of a story. Kato Havas, my violin teacher, was giving a workshop in Angwin, CA at a Seventh Day Adventist College. Now Seventh Day Adventist's are vegetarians so there is no meat served in the cafeteria but they call things by meat names. After a frustrating lunch of "Chicken Cacciatore" we met for the afternoon session of the workshop and a man stood and said, "this is the damnedest place I have EVER been. In the cafeteria lunch was Chicken Cacciatore with no chicken and now we have a Violin Workshop with no violin ." I don't know -- but it cracked us all up at the time.
Arms all better now? We need to find balance. With the proper balances you won't feel you are HOLDING your arms up -- or anything else that may find its way into your arms at some point.
Remember the puppeteer? Remember the string from the crown of your head that lets you dangle from the ceiling? Now do the chicken wing thing and imagine the puppeteer is drilling little holes into that little pointy base of your shoulder blades. Don't you love this guy? Now he is threading a string through those holes and dangling a plumb bob from the string. The idea is that a weight is letting your shoulder blades sink low into your back. Let your shoulders drop and your shoulder blades sink down into your back. This weight is the counterbalance to the arms just as the heavy guy on a see saw, holds the lighter guy up in the air. If I were in the same room with you I would lightly touch the tops of your shoulders to remind them to drop (most of us carry a lot of tension there) and then I would lightly stroke your shoulder blades from top to bottom to remind them to fall into your back. Imagine this motion whenever you need to get back in balance. Another good way of getting your shoulders to drop is to scrunch them up as far as they will go then suddenly let them drop. Do it several times. It gives your body the sense of letting go that sometimes it forgets. Also remember at this point to dangle from that string that goes from the ceiling to the crown of your head. Shoulder tension can make your neck retract into your shoulders. If you think of dangling from the ceiling or your head floating toward the ceiling that won't happen. During the day you can do these exercises several different times to release tension. We want to build a new habit. Shoulder release rather than shoulder hold.
Now shake out your arms. Even as your arms are at your side let your shoulders drop and your shoulder blades sink into your back. Now follow all of the instructions for the flip flops remembering that the weight falling into your back is a counterbalance to your arms out in front of you. This is a real balance. It's not just all in my head or your head -- it's real. You should feel it right away but it is something that you will continue to get "aha's" about for years if you choose to continue with The New Approach.
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Work with this lesson enough to get a sense of your arms being weightless. Continue to play with Lesson One as well. By the time you actually take the violin out of it's case you'll rock.
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In Lesson Three we'll take that fiddle out of it's case and fly it into its new little nest.
;-) Google can't quite work out the visuals here. They think they are so smart! I love when that happens. Proves that at least for the time being we can conceptualize better than computers.
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