Pianodao Wellbeing – Page 4

The Lunar Tao

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

Regular readers may have noticed that I often quote from the contemporary Daoist (Taoist) author Deng Ming-Dao, and as we rapidly approach the Chinese New Year it gives me pleasure to recommend his recent book “The Lunar Tao”, published by Harper-Collins in 2013.

According to the publishers:

“The lunar calendar is a main pillar of Chinese culture, encompassing many stories and festivals. Deng Ming-Dao looks to the lunar calendar and highlights where these festivals and stories coincide with Taoism, giving readers a renewed and original way into this ancient philosophy…
Each day of the lunar year is represented with a reading meditation, original translations, illustrations and illuminating facts about festivals and traditions, providing readers with the context that gives Taoism such depth and resonance.”

The Pianist’s Emotions

Pianodao Wellbeing • Mind, Body, Soul

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

Louise Eales has more than 30 years of clinical experience as an advanced mental health practitioner, with specialisms in child and adolescent psychiatry, and neurodiversity. She is also a fully qualified practising acupuncturist. I am grateful for her professional insights, range of specialist advice, and collaboration in the writing of this important article.

Emotions are an essential aspect of our basic humanity. But when they are out of balance they can become problematic, with the potential to leave us feeling shipwrecked and adrift.

This is true for everyone, but for piano players there can sometimes be some additional challenges, and the back-and-forth swing from over-excitement to terrible disappointment can become our daily emotional landscape.

Breathing at the Piano

Pianodao Wellbeing • Mind, Body, Soul

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

Are you sure that you breathe when playing the piano?

It might seem like an odd question. Of course we continue to breathe while playing! But to what extent are we aware of our breath, and how it affects our technique, musicality, and comfort at the piano?

These questions are surely among the most important for all piano players and teachers to consider.

Sit up and Shut down

Pianodao Wellbeing • Mind, Body, Soul

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

Here is a simple qigong practice that provides an easy hack for diminishing the effects of anxiety in our lives. It can help before performing, taking an exam, or simply enable us get through the basics of daily life.

Anxiety. It seems to be the curse of the modern age, inflicting and blighting so many of our lives. As pianists we often talk about “performance anxiety”, but the truth is that our anxiety about performing is often one element of a bigger picture, and shouldn’t lightly be isolated…

Opening the Chest

Pianodao Wellbeing • Mind, Body, Soul

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

Opening the Chest is the second movement from the 18 Taiji Qigong Shibashi form, and extends the Open and Commence movement previously shared here.

This stretch can be used to expand your routine, and offers further support to help those who have benefited from the first exercise.

Before practising “Opening the Chest”, be sure to spend time practising Open and Commence first, as this next exercise assumes that you are familiar and comfortable with that movement.

Open and Commence

Pianodao Wellbeing • Mind, Body, Soul

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

The Open and Commence movement from the 18 Taiji Qigong Shibashi provides a wonderful way to mindfully reconnect with the sensations in the wrist area, developing supple flexibility.

The 18 Taiji Qigong Shibashi is a modern qigong set created in 1982 in Shanghai, China by Masters He Weiqi and Lin Hou Sheng. The routine is widely used as a warm up by T’ai Chi groups, as it uses many of the stances common to the Yang form, as well as integrating several more traditional breathing and stretching exercises from qigong.

The opening movement of the 18 Taiji Qigong Shibashi is in fact the same as the opening movement from the Yang form of T’ai Chi itself, so will be familiar to those who have trained in T’ai Chi.

This qigong exercise is extremely simple. Using the instructions below you should easily be able to learn the movement involved. However, the powerful benefits that are possible come less from the movement itself, and more from the mental focus and breathing aspects.

Earth Posture

Pianodao Wellbeing • Mind, Body, Soul

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

Earth Posture is a very simple Qigong stance which combines many of the most basic benefits of qigong practice, and offers a great entry point to qigong.

In this exercise you will focus on posture, alignment, balance, breathing, and release of tension. These are all crucially important for qigong practice, and of course for piano playing.

Earth Posture also offers a fabulous way to quiet the mind prior to mediation, or as a meditation in itself.

Good posture (at least as assessed by external observation) seems elusive for many pianists. Qigong practice in general addresses posture through an internal awareness of alignment and balance.

At the same time, Earth Posture facilitates good circulation, thus promoting improved general health.

These benefits are, of course, not instantaneous. I would advise practising Earth Posture daily for a few weeks to experience the maximum benefit. Even many experienced Qigong and T’ai Chi practitioners return to Earth Posture as a prelude to their practice.

The full instructions are written below, but you may find it more helpful to use this recording:

András Schiff & Natural Breathing

Pianodao Wellbeing • Mind, Body, Soul

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

András Schiff, surely one of the most respected concert pianists of our time, made the following extraordinary observation in a recent interview with Pianist Magazine (No.76, Feb-March 2014):

“For me, it is breathing that is vital. You must breathe naturally, like a singer. Pianists and string players often tend to forget the necessity of breathing and they can become very tense; then they get back pains and wrist pains and so on. Usually it can be sorted out through the breathing.”

Breathing is a subject that I have rarely seen discussed in connection with piano technique, and even less so in the context of pianists’ injuries, their causes, cures and corrections. Schiff is hitting on a point that it would seem is indeed too often overlooked.

In this article I will consider the links between natural breathing and Qigong practice, as well as offering a simple breathing exercise that anyone can try…