When I take a new student, especially an adult, but also a young student who has been learning the violin in school, I start them out with Six Steps to Perfect Posture. This exercise is guaranteed to make a new student look at me askance, but if he's willing to practice this, I know that he'll succeed in my studio. A very young student probably won't need this, especially if it's the very first lesson. In that case, a simple "zip, step, sniff, bouncy knees" will suffice. Kids are so loose and flexible before they get older and filled with angst. :-)

The purpose of the Six Steps is to use your breath to put your body in a comfortable position. Some steps will feel very uncomfortable when you are just starting.

The "Hairball" exercise is a good one to pair with the Six Steps to Perfect Posture warmup. I often need to do it in the summer, when the humidity is making me feel crappy. If you're finding it difficult to inflate your chest enough in the Six Steps, or if you're tired, try this exercise. Both the Six Steps and the Hairball help you to hyperoxygenate a bit, which will wake you up. The Hairball will trick your body into taking a deeper breath into your chest.

The "Scoop and Deposit" exercise will loosen up your back and align you so that your upper body doesn't have to do as much work. This is a great exercise for growing kids and for adults who have piles of tension in the back and shoulders.

This exercise is also great for dancers. When I was teaching tango this summer I was talking to another instructor and heard a different version of this exercise that doesn't include any bouncing. I think the bouncing is key, though. Please give it a try.

Sometimes I call this "Scoop and Deposit" because you scoop your stomach in, up, and "deposit" it onto your chest.

Tonight a student said to me, "I was so mad at my husband, I couldn't even play the violin! But your peeing exercise finally worked it out." I'd sort of forgotten about it, since I hadn't done it in a while.

This exercise was inspired by the amazing Argentine tango dancer Luciana Valle, who vastly improved my tango technique by saying "pee, pee, pee..." as we all danced. :-)

What this does is relax your lower back, putting your spine into better alignment. A lot of dancers learn to "tuck" their butts. That's not the motion I want, because the act of tucking doesn't invite relaxation. This exercise is great to do when you feel physically tense or emotionally stressed-out, which basically amounts to the same thing most of the time.

"Set Yourself Up for Sucess" is the same as when I say "Shelf, Neck and Knees". It's how I get ready to play.

First, a note on tossing the violin up onto your shelf: Put your left thumb on the nose of the violin, and the rest of your left hand on the front of the violin. Get as much of the violin into your hand as you can. This position will make it easier to quickly toss the violin up, and will leave your hand in a good place once the violin is up.

1. Take an easy breath through your mouth, using it to "float" your chest. Kind of like in the Six Steps exercise, but just open your mouth and let the air rush in. This is the "float your shelf" step. You may breathe in and out, but leave your shelf right where it is.
2. Toss your violin up onto your shelf, but do not put your chin in the chinrest. This is the "float your violin on your shelf" step.
3. Now pretend that your head is floating 10 feet above you, like you are looking down on yourself playing the violin. This is the "float your head" step.
4. Keeping your floating shelf, let your chin settle into the chinrest.
5. Relax your mouth.
6. Relax your eyebrows.
7. Check that your knees are still soft.

Now that you have an air-filled shelf (you are breathing, right?), take a few moments to "settle in", so you feel like you and the violin are comfortably connected.

Emma requests a post on how to set up the left hand. This is how to set up a beginner hand, with your hand in contact with the violin neck at all times.

Prerequisites: Set Yourself Up for Success

The first thing you need to do is to find your touch point. Do this by turning your left palm towards you and locating the crease just above your base knuckle. Your touch point is on that crease, slightly to the inside of the hand. Mimi Zweig calls this the "magic X".

1. Set yourself up for success.
2. Since you tossed your violin onto the shelf, your hand is now on the body of the violin. Smoothly and quickly slide your hand, with the touch point touching the neck, away from you until you clunk against one of the pegs.
3. Swing your left elbow a bit to make sure your left armpit is relaxed.

If your left armpit is not relaxed, it's probably because you're lifting your left arm using the front of your shoulder. You need to counterbalance. Look for a post on that soon.

You should still have your beautiful shelf and relaxed neck and knees. Repeat the whole thing until it feels like a little dance...the shelf inflates, the violin floats, the head floats, the chin settles in, the hand slides away from you on the touch point, the elbow feels swingy. Beautiful floating shelf! Bouncy knees! Wheeee!

OK, once you have the motion feeling good, and you have the touch point on the neck so that the neck of the violin is kind of nestled on top of your base knuckle joint, how do you know exactly where along the neck your hand should be when in first position?

During the past 2 weeks I've been talking to a lot of my students about counterbalancing. When you're holding the violin, you have a violin and an arm sticking out in front of you, so in order to be in balance, you have to sit back a bit and feel like you have weight in back of you to counterbalance the violin and arm sticking out in front.

If you're playing the violin, you can still play fairly well if you don't do this. If you're playing the viola, though, you absolutely have to counterbalance. It's the difference between a violist who looks like she's playing an instrument that's too big for her and a violist who looks like her viola is dancing with her body. Give it a try:

"Sniff and Toss" is the short way to get into great posture, once you've gotten used to the idea of counterbalancing. I'm writing a post about it because I do it all the time now with my students, and now I do it with new students because it's easy to do, to say, and to remember.

Procedure:

1. Big sniff through your nose, sending it all into that point in your chest where you would wear a gold medal. Your chest will inflate. Your shoulders will stay loose and relaxed and down where they were.


2. Huff out through your mouth as you swing your arms toward the ground. Your elbows are heavy and swing toward the floor. Your elbows stay close to your body. Let your hands (and violin) swing up using the momentum. You will feel your shoulder blades tilt down in back. Leave them down there so that your arms are suspended in front of you using the muscles in your back.


3. When you tossed, the violin probably came flying at your head and you turned it around quickly and parked it on your shelf. If not, I hope you are OK and not hurt...


4. Let your head drop into the chinrest.


5. Check in with your loose knees.

I have been thinking about the Sandwich a bunch in the last 2 years in my own playing, but it hasn't been time to introduce it to my students. Suddenly, this week, it's time! It's so exciting! Especially for one viola student I have who is now bursting out of her skin with how cool it is to be able to play the viola and feel like it's easy. Woohooo!

I gave a couple of students the "center of the universe" exercise last week. I haven't written about that exercise yet. But I see that it is good preparation for the Sandwich #1.

Purpose of the Sandwich: further shoulder relaxation. It also somehow magically fixes a lot of things and I don't really understand why. The other thing I don't understand is why in the world it makes me and my students feel so amazing when we're playing. It is seriously a huge rush and is making me wonder, should it be legal?! :-)

The Sandwich #1

1. Sniff and Toss


2. violin floats on top of your shelf.


3. feel like your head is floating 10 feet above you, so that you're looking down on yourself playing. Keep that feeling and let your chin down into the chinrest.


4. With your head still feeling like it's floating, imagine that the rest of you is looking up at the violin, playing from underneath it. Letting your knees relax forward will help you get this feeling.


5. It will feel like your violin is in the middle of a sandwich, with your head floating and looking down, and the rest of you playing up from underneath the violin.

There's another type of sandwich that happens when you play. This one is probably mostly happening for you if you're already counterbalancing, but it's helpful to visualize it specifically.

Procedure:

1. Sniff and Toss


2. Feel how your shoulder blades are down in back, supporting your arms, so that your hands are just floating up in front of you. Your left hand is floating there in the air. As long as you're counterbalancing in back, that left arm/hand will be able to float up there with no more work on your part.


3. Drop a finger onto the fingerboard. Notice that the fingerboard just happens to be sandwiched between your floating arm and your dropping finger. It isn't holding up your finger, nor is it being held up by your hand and arm. It's just there in the middle.


4. Feel that balance between your floating arm and your fingers dropping. As you drop a finger, it is balanced by your floating arm -- too much force and it will disturb your fingerboard. You want to drop each finger just enough that it still remains in balance with your floating arm. The fingerboard just happens to be in the middle of this balancing act. This is the Fingerboard Sandwich.

"dangly elbows" is another, shorter way to think about counterbalancing. Once you've felt what counterbalancing is like, this is a nice shortcut to getting that feeling again without all of the counterbalancing steps.

1. Sniff and Toss
2. Your shelf (chest) is now floating. Check in with your shoulder blades and elbows and let them feel like they're loose and dangling from your shelf.
3. As you play, keep thinking about your shoulder blades and elbows dangling.

How this relates to string crossings:

When crossing from the A to E string (or G to D, or D to A), your elbow drops a little and that changes the angle of your bow from the current string to the next string. Thinking about the elbow dropping works for many students. For some students, though, it results in the elbow moving without the shoulder blade moving at all. If you want your string crossing in this direction to be easier, and the shoulder isn't naturally following the elbow, instead think of this:

1. (assuming you're already dangling shoulder blades and elbows from your shelf)
2. to cross to the next string, feel your right shoulder blade relax and drop just a tiny bit. It will take the rest of the right arm, including the elbow, with it.

This method helps when you are (usually subconsciously) holding with your right shoulder to try to control the bow. If it feels like "cheating" when you're bowing because you're not doing enough work, it's probably perfect. :-)

The Sofa Butt is useful for anyone who is a perennial sloucher. The ultimate goal is to have a chest/torso that is lifted and supported by the abs, and to have a relaxed back. This gives you plenty of mobility in the shoulder blades for high position work and is necessary for effortless fluidity in the bow arm. Here's how to do it:

First, feel what the Sofa Butt is:

1. stand comfortably with feet apart


2. pretend there is a sofa right behind your knees and you're about to let your butt go backwards to sit on it.


3. feel your lower back relax just as you begin to do it? It doesn't take much motion at all. That's the Sofa Butt.

Once you've felt the Sofa Butt, combine it with an elevated torso. Here are two ways: