We spent a good amount of time in my lesson talking about and experimenting with posture and exercises for lower back pain. When I play piano a lot I find the I carry an inordinate amount of tension in my back and shoulders and it pulls on my spine makes me constantly tense. For the greater part of my lesson Cindy just helped me relax my back and taught me some stretches and exercises that I will start doing this week.
The last portion of my lesson we focused on breath suspension. I've found that I can take good, deep breaths but I end up losing air so fast that I don't make it through even short phrases. What we discovered was that my breath was good but I was dropping the position of the inhale with vocalization and as a consequence I lost a ton of air in my reservoir and wasn't using that suspension energy to release air which expended even more unnecessary energy on my part to create sound. In short I have not been using all the breath I inhale efficiently, and I've lost focus in my sound because there's no focus in my breath. We did exercises where I would take a good breath and just hold it for a second to feel that place of expansion. Then we would take a good breath, hold it, then begin letting out air on a hiss or a silent blow with a focus on still feeling that rib cage expansion (I noticed particularly lateral expansion that I don't know if I've ever been aware of before). Then we took a good breath, and let out bursts of sound on 'beep' down in a scale with focus on keeping that same position of the inhale with good lateral expansion. It was revolutionary! It's going to take some time and practice but I don't think I've ever been really aware of this part of my body before. I have typically had very poor physical sensory awareness. Breath suspension here I come!
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