MUSIRESET® MOVEMENT

Musireset®Movement  consists of the entire repertoir of practical movement experience and analogous theoretical knowledge which I have acquired in the course of my life until now. All this through:

1. my delight for learning and practising all kinds of sports since earliest childhood e.g. all winter sports, climbing, swimming and diving, flying, canoeing, light athletics, then sport academy and physical education at college, trainer of light athletics (pole vault), yoga and Chi Gong....
2. my failure to realize a career in music,  my repeated attempts up to and indeed through and beyond the “secret” of that lightness and easiness of playing and then finally success after decades of testing and analysis.
3. my henceforth 25 year long  occupation as Rolfer™ und Rolf Movement™ Practitioner .  During my training I became acquainted with Hubert Godard, my rolfing colleague, formerly professional dancer, today internationally one of the most sophisticated experts and researchers on moving. From the outset I had the good fortune to attend most of his courses, later then to organize courses and to work together with him at Masavoi.
4. through my 2 decades experience and success with musicians (through which at the same time I have been able to study even more closely in particular the spectrum of fine motor skills on most instruments).

The ABC of movement for every musician is the learning and the automatization of his repertoire of movement sequenses essential for economical standing and sitting in every situation and for unlimited periods of time, in order that no tension, compression, pain or bodily discomfort arise.

Coming to moving, we come of course to the   “movers”   i.e. the muscles.There are muscles and muscle groups with different attributes and tasks within a complex interaction.
Tonic musculature is primarily responsible for stabilization within the body: the more differentiated and finely tuned in they are with one another, the more stable and indeed more flexible the body will be.Fasic musculature is responsible for activity: the more rationally it works, the  more economical the movement is.Tonic musculature mostly occurs in the deeper layers and therefore has better blood supply, nerve supply and leverage. Under favorable conditions it works with little effort and tires only slowly.

Fasic musculature works faster and is stronger despite having worse leverage, requiring more energy and tiring more quickly.Therefore it makes sense that we use tonic musculature for ‘normal’ stabilization and also for slow, less elaborate and sustained movement.Unfortunately this is rarely the case! ‘Normal’ stabilization theoretically means low-energy, reliable stabilization. But practically the individual meaning varies enormously! For example: I’m walking down the street and see before me a frozen surface, by which time stepping onto it is inevitable. Before I’ve even stepped onto it, a multitude of fasic muscles join the tonic stabilizing muscles, thus giving me the feeling of being more secure. In reality the opposite is the case: I tense up and become inflexible. If I slip, I’ll be unable to react quickly and flexibly and in the case of falling, the likelihood of injury is incomparably high!This example shows the role, psychology and the way we deal with our fears, play and which impact they have on the whole interaction. The same applies to activity: when the fasic musculature works too hard – and that happens almost always – (for example: the power with which the right hand of a violinist usually holds the bow, normally is enough power for a multiple or many bows), and is not properly coordinated between flexors and extensors, the musician loses easiness and quickness and gets tense.   The meaning of psychology is not so obvious here, but nevertheless existent in the background.

The good news is this: through appropriate Musireset® training, we can teach the different muscles to understand their true role taking the whole system into account. The musician’s goal is to reach a state of ‘instable stability’. Even better, perhaps, ‘dynamic stability’ with finely coordinated, soft, concentrated, precise but ‘casual’   nonchalant activity.

Musireset®Movement is a spacious field. Let me single out another concept, also because it seems meaningful to me for musicians. Eccentric versus concentric movement.

Two examples:

1. With concentric breathing, the space above the thorax is not open. Therefore, while inhaling the body becomes shorter, the back becomes more bent, the chest widens. The fix point, for example, of the scalenes, becomes the proximal attachment on the upper ribs, resulting in head and neck being pulled down.During eccentric breathing, the space above the thorax is open. The body becomes longer on the inhale, the back straighter. The fix point of the scalenes in this case is the distal attachment at the cervical vertebrae, resulting in the upper ribs being pulled up.
2. want to push a crate. As soon as I start, before I’ve even begun to push, I automatically brace my abdominal muscles, thus setting off a chain reaction, mainly of the flexors at the front of the body. By doing this I believe I’m creating the conditions I need in order to push i.e. the necessary stabilization i.e. the fix point. I end up, however, in the ‘concentric trap’. Only when I trust to start pushing without activation of the superficial abdominal muscles, will I realize immediately that the ground is absolutely the best fix point. Unfortunately I only have access to it if I abandon (assumed) stabilization – meaning use of the flexors. At the same time, I realize with great amazement, that I’m gaining much more strength for pushing, though using incomparably less muscle work.
   I believe that, in the light of these two examples, it’s not so hard any more to imagine how a flautist, a cellist, a harpist, a bassist - in short - any string player, player of wind instruments, but also any percussionist, pianist and other musicians can fall into the ‘concentric trap’!
   In a ‘functional circle’, defined by the holding and/or stabilizing of  the instrument on the one hand, and the playing of the instrument on the other, thus becoming an embrace,  the mere holding and lifting of the instrument can start a  ‘concentric circle’ through the engagement of the flexors (esp. the lifting muscles) – and all that just in order to achieve (seemingly) more certainty.
   This only happens gradually, and only when a certain critical threshold is exceeded does this become dangerous for the musician, and can lead to technical detraction and later to a great variety of symptoms. The embrace must remain eccentric, centrifugal, i.e. light and expansive into all directions….

In short: Musireset® Movement studies and examines human movement in all of its forms and complex interrelations with just one single clear goal:

                                       Light, economical movement with and on the instrument !