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.

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.

There's a big difference between concentrating really hard on something and being perfectly aware of something. In America, we're used to working hard to concentrate on something, but I prefer not to work at concentrating when I'm playing. On the other hand, I want to be so perfectly focused that I know exactly what my body is doing at all times and am not distracted by things like: what other people think of my playing, whether I'm going to make that shift, etc.

I just made up a new exercise to get myself into that totally calm, focused, relaxed state. It worked so well it was scary, so I tried it on 6 of my students. It's a winner. One student played a passage, then followed my directions and did the exercise, played the passage again, and looked at me, dumbfounded: "why does that work?" "I don't know," I said, "but it's cool, isn't it?"

The purpose of The Magic Forehead is to practice focusing your mind in a relaxed way and to get used to forming a mental picture of what your body is doing, even when you're not looking at it with your eyes.

I'd suggest getting someone to read this out loud to you so you can do it with your eyes closed (or record yourself saying the steps and then play the recording).

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: