Are you a musician experiencing injury or difficulty right now? Have you struggled with recurrence following a previous injury? Are you a teacher wanting to build safer and more sustainable practices for your students? Would you like to bring some creativity and fun into your teaching or practice?

Musicians’ Injury: Rethinking Practice and Pedagogy

My presentation illuminates some ground-breaking research pertaining to injury and examine some of the flaws in our traditional approaches to practice and pedagogy. I share video examples and curriculum ideas from my work with young musicians and professionals using Feldenkrais-derived strategies to demonstrate how to maximize learning while developing neurologically sustainable playing habits. Whether you are a student, teacher, or performer, you can make small changes to your learning, teaching, and practice to include experimentation, awareness, variation, and adaptability.

Please join me and my colleagues working as Feldenkrais Practitioners in the Performing Arts for this one-of-a-kind event:

October 25-30, 2021

Never Stop: The Artistry of Self-Care and Creativity
for Lifelong Embodied Performance

You can register to attend any and all parts of this event live October 25-30 for FREE. Registration will allow you to view presentations and interviews for 48 hours after they are aired.

If you are interested in owning unlimited access to all of the presentations and interviews in this amazing event, you can also purchase an All-Access Pass. I will be offering a 4-session Feldenkrais for Music Educators course through Future Life Now free to All-Access Pass holders.

---

Feldenkrais and Injury Lesson

In my summit presentation I provide short examples of work with students and performers using my adaptations of the Feldenkrais Method. I include work with beginners, work in public school classroom settings, work with advanced students, and a zoom lesson with a professional dealing with injury. As promised, here is the expanded version of the zoom Feldenkrais lesson with a professional trombone player from the end of my presentation!

Bibliography

Click this link to access a downloadable PDF of the bibliography for my summit presentation.

Additional Resources for Musicians and Teachers

My own publications, including the book chapters I’ll reference in my presentation can be found on my Research and Publications page. You may also be interested in the Ten Minute Techniques I have created for music educators looking for new ideas for introducing and trouble-shooting technical issues in string playing.

Here are some additional resources which I have found invaluable in learning more about musicians’ injury prevention and healing:

https://www.isme.org/our-work/special-interest-groups-and-forum/musicians-health-and-wellness

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eckart-Altenmueller

https://www.facebook.com/CYENSToneProject/?ref=page_internal

https://www.music.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=239&Itemid=3288

https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/research/

https://www.the-exhale.com

https://feldenkraisresourcesformusicians.co.uk/links/

https://soundcloud.com/user-633088243/john-beyond-pain-and-posture-the-feldenkrais-method-for-musicians?utm_source=clipboard&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=widget&utm_content=https%253A%252F%252Fsoundcloud.com%252Fuser-633088243%252Fjohn-beyond-pain-and-posture-the-feldenkrais-method-for-musicians

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00598/full

Keep the Discussion Going!

Please feel free to contact me with questions and more discussion related to the summit, your experience as a student, teacher, or performer, and anything Feldenkrais or music-related!