A relaxed bow hold is important, but true relaxation can only come after you have developed the muscles in the right hand. Below is how I ask my students to form their bow holds, and an exercise that they can do while sitting (for example, when they're watching TV and a commercial comes on).

Eventually this will have pictures, when I can get one of my friends to stand over my shoulder with a camera...

Setting up the Bow Hold

1. clip your fingernails!


2. sit on the floor with your legs crossed under you.


3. if you hold your right hand in front of your face loosely with your thumbnail pointing towards you, the top corner of your thumb is what will be touching the stick (wood part) of the bow.


4. OK, hold the bow in your left hand, tip pointing left. Move your left arm so that it crosses your body, bringing the bow out to the right of you. You'll see why in a few steps.


5. with your right hand knuckles up, fingers pointing away from you, bend your thumb slightly and put the thumb corner between the stick and the hair of the bow, so that the tip of the thumb just touches the black plastic/ebony. The thumb should not go inside the U-shaped hole in the black plastic/ebony.


6. drop the 2nd and 3rd (ring) fingers onto the stick so that the 2nd finger is over the thumb. The fingers are pretty straight and are touching the stick in the middle section of the finger. Your hand will look like a shadow puppet animal.


7. let those fingers (the animal's "nose"), curve now, so that they bend down and touch the black part of the bow.


8. to the right of the 2nd and 3rd fingers, you will see that your bow [probably] is not perfectly round, but has distinct faces. Put your pinky next to your other fingers, on the face that is in back of the top face (the "back shelf"). You should have plenty of room to do this, because your bow is all the way to the right, leaving you more space to place the pinky.


9. let your 1st (pointer) finger go wherever it wants for now, and maybe forever!


10. now gently move your left arm left so that your bow hand is resting on your right knee. You'll see that it will make your pinky curve more on the bow.


11. relax everything in your right arm.


12. lift your hand slightly off your knee and feel the balance in your right hand between the thumb and the pinky. Can you balance the bow between them? Both thumb and pinky remain curved.


13. with right hand back down on your knee and right arm/shoulder relaxed, press down with the pinky as if you're typing on a computer keyboard. The tip of the bow will rise. This is a "pinky pushup". Do several of these until your hand needs a rest or you lose the bow.