ABSTRACT
Movement practice is a recent phenomenon, heralded by an Israeli gentleman by the name of Ido Portal. It is a methodology for developing your ability to move and control your body in a way that will be beneficial for all pursuits in life, be they athletic, artistic, choreographic, culinary, veterinary etc. I began movement practice in
November of 2020 and just after a couple of months of this work, I noticed a significant change in how I played the piano and how I felt while doing it. The goal of this essay is to explain, through my own experience and based on my field journal during seven months of practice, how specific exercises and the general honing of my nervous system through this methodology at The Bamboo Body Movement School in Barcelona have impacted my ability to play the piano.
Introduction
Here’s a fun thing that you might have never noticed before: stand up, or sit up straight. Now, place your fingers lightly on the long muscles in your neck: firmly enough so you can feel the muscles contracting if you turn your head around, but lightly enough to not have to exert too much force. Now, while keeping your head still, start moving your eyes as forcefully from side to side and up and down, as quickly as possible. And I mean as forcefully as you can, as quickly as you can. So hard, that if you keep your eyes at the extreme position, they start to hurt.
Now, can you notice the movement happening in your neck muscles? That is because the movement of the eyes is deeply connected with the central nervous system, and as such our vision constantly seeks to align our bodies - or rather our bodies seek to align themselves with our vision. That is why skydivers on their first jump are told to keep their eyes on the horizon, because if they start looking down, their head will turn down slightly, which will round their necks, which will round their spine, which will get them making somersaults in the air and lose control. Thus, uncontrolled movement of the eyes, leads to unwanted tension in the body, which leads to sloppy performance in whatever physical activity you are engaged in.
The following day after our first lesson working with eye movements at The Bamboo Body Movement School, I went to practice my repertoire at the piano. I noticed that in many difficult places my eyes started to frantically move from side to side, trying to keep up with my hands in the difficult passages I was working on. Then, when I consciously forced my eyes to focus on just a few places, I noticed that my body relaxed by itself, and I was able to execute the difficult places in the score with much more success.
Eye movement is a thing that no professor of music has ever talked to me about, or that I have ever heard being spoken about. And this is just one of the many epiphanies I encountered during my movement practice that has directly affected my ability to play the piano. Our instruments are not really the things that we use to create music, our bodies are, and as such, I wanted to delve deeper into how movement practice could affect one’s playing of a musical instrument.
This paper will be divided into three main groups.
1. An introduction to Ido Portal’s methodology and an interview with the teacher of my
movement school, Anna, to better explain the methodology and the world around it.
2. An explanation of how the lessons and curriculum at the movement school are
constructed.
3. A monthly tally of the effects of individual exercises as well as long term processes - such
as the QDR hold - on my piano playing.
Ido Portal and his methodology
Portal’s methodology is a mindset that at the end of the day will benefit any endeavor where in your work or performance can be qualitatively evaluated. It is a method whereby through moving your body you teach yourself the pursuit of quality. In a very simplified sense: if you can find the mentality to work towards making the most perfect circle in the air with your arm - a rather pointless pursuit in itself - you will be able to muster that force of will when you are doing something more important to you.
This is achieved with a huge variation of movements and exercises, with rigorous emphasis on the quality of movement and on cultivating an industrious mindset, capable of long-term improvement. Discovering different ways in which you can get to the floor and back up again with as much efficiency and graze as you can. Waving your arm in a way that makes your body seem as fluid as possible. Learning time consuming skills, such as the handstand. The possibilities for improving your capability to move are practically speaking limitless. Thus,Portal’s methodology is pursuing a life-long process of learning.
At our school this process has been seen to develop our characters in three ways: adaptation of the nervous system, physical conditioning, and the change of mindset when approaching demanding tasks. Over time the variability of the stimuli, as well as the constant emphasis on quality makes your nervous system more adaptable, and as such you are able to move yourself with better precision and with more intent. In addition to this, physical conditioning comes as a side-effect. If you keep trying to learn to do a cartwheel for example, and you repeat the movement over and over again, your body will start to adapt to the physical strain, thus strengthening your corporal form. Furthermore, if you are able to constantly concentrate on the task at hand, you are teaching yourself discipline, longevity of pursuits, dedication and concentration itself. If not, you are just getting a work-out, which in itself is ok, but mindless repetition of the exercises makes the student miss the main point of the work and is looked down upon.
You can read more about him and his work on his homepage www.idoportal.com
Interview with Anna
I held an interview with our main teacher at The Bamboo Body Movement School, to try to better explain our work in more layman terms. Information about the school can be found on their webpage https://www.thebamboobody.es/
The following is a summary of our conversation.
Kalle: How would you define movement culture?
Anna: Movement culture, movement practice, or movement as a thing?
K: A very good defining question! Let’s start with movement practice.
A: The general approach to movement practice is developing the physical qualities in the body that can serve as a base for any physical discipline, and be used across any of them. So it’s looking for creating a common terminology and the common thread between all areas of human physicality.
K: How would you define movement culture then?
A: Movement culture is a term, coined by Ido Portal. It is based obviously on a very serious approach to movement practice. It involves the worldwide movement community that uses the same terminology for their work. Movement culture is interested in having physicality as the main mode for self-actualization, self-learning, and self-discovery. The culture entails the community, so it talks more about the common language, goals, and understandings of the process.
K: And movement as a general concept?
A: Movement as a general concept, let’s call it movement perspective. It means seeing movement as a part of life in its basic form. Movement is life, lack of movement is death, it’s as easy as that. It is a concept that is so broad that it often scares people because we are very keen on naming things and categorizing things and putting labels on them. You can’t really categorize movement; movement can be anything. If you look from this perspective, anything can become movement practice: breathing, playing music, speaking, sitting etc. It can be very confusing because it’s so big, but then it gives you a very broad template to treat anything from this perspective. How do you look at things? I look at things through the glasses, the prism of movement.
K: So movement perspective can be seen as a greater category, under which all other human endeavor falls. But I remember that in several of our lessons you’ve said that this sort of work is definitely not for everyone. Movement culture is often related to things revolving around the fitness industry. I remember researching this topic online, I saw an article titled “Is Movement Culture the Next Crossfit?” From my own experience, I can say: hell no! Why and how do you mean that it is not for everyone?
A: It is not for everyone, and it IS for everyone at the same time. Every single person, whatever they’re doing in life, can and will benefit from this practice. But it is not for everyone because it is a very hard thing to do. It is a very hard alignment in life. In the West especially, we are very goal-oriented, which in a way is good: you need to have goals in life. But everything that does not lead to the goal can be discarded as not important. Movement practice is a constant process; you will never be content where you are. You need to be aiming and developing yourself all the time. It’s like zen-practice and meditation: every single person will benefit from it, but it’s really hard to live by this work and its rules and to devote yourself to something so much. This is why it is not for everyone because there are certain ethics involved.
K: Could you explain some of the ethics?
A: Taking the practice seriously. When you do whatever task you're doing - it does not matter what it is, strength work, working with rhythm, working with fear - you need to treat it like it is the most important thing in your life. There’s nothing else that exists at that moment.
Showing up every day is another one. Consistency. Repeating over and over again; the same thing that you do with music. You cannot become a good classical musician if you don’t do that.
K: Can you name some specific cases where your students or students of Ido have been able to bring the things you teach into their lives or into their professions?
A: The person I tell about every time this comes up -
K: The Portuguese dentist?
A: Yes, the Portuguese dentist (Felipe Melo)! I do it because it’s such an unseemingly connected profession. He is a student of Ido , and through the concepts he learned through movement practice he developed the body of work in what he does in dentistry, which has made him a reference in Portugal and in Europe among his peers.
The Practice at the School
The school’s curriculum is formed on a yearly plan, divided into trimesters. Trimesters have specific goals and each month new forms of movement are introduced, or previous movements are elaborated on to give new stimuli. The lessons themselves last two hours and are divided into two parts: movement practice/improvisation, and strength training. In the former, movement patterns such as capoeira-style rotations, back bridge holds and rotations, arm waves and object manipulation (ie. holding a stick upright on your palm) are worked on.
Most of the exercises are done with a partner, even if you don’t need one to execute them. The idea behind this is that you learn while you’re working on the task itself, as well as when you are observing your partner. Also you get to brainstorm with your partner to find ways to be more efficient in what you are doing.
Many of these movements require a certain amount of physical strength, so in the latter half of the lessons students focus on making themselves stronger through mostly body-weight training, as well as some weight training as well. Throughout both parts of the lesson, emphasis on quality is evangelized and indeed demanded. The following sentence has been said by our teacher, plenty of times: “If I have to tell you something three times over, it means you’re not concentrating, and then I don’t care about you anymore.”
Monthly Progress
Now I will lay out the work we have been doing on a monthly basis, and its effects on my playing, specifically while working on 10 Pieces from Romeo and Juliet op. 75 by Sergei Prokofiev, the first piano sonata by Erwin Schulhoff, and a series of exercises for the piano by Johannes Brahms. I will explain the main theme of our lessons for every month, the exercises they entailed and their execution.
I will concentrate on the effects of the movement practice/improvisation part of the classes because in my experience this work has shown more relevance to playing the piano than the strength work has. Furthermore the effects of the strength training involved in our practice can be summarized with the following sentences: My body is stronger and more resilient, which means I can play the piano for longer without getting tired, and without experiencing any pain in my back, shoulders, or arms. Because of the emphasis on bodyweight exercises and quality of movement, my fingers were never negatively affected by the training, and indeed I noticed no detriment to my piano playing.
November 2020
The work
Balance, precision jumping and floorwork: Improving our sense of balance in static and active movements, improving our depth perception, as well as different ways of getting from your feet to the floor and back up.
The effects
The combined effect of these topics resulted in a more conscious awareness of the distribution of weight in the body. For instance, when doing the balance work, if you really feel that you have all your weight on the balls of your feet, you feel much more stable than if you don’t have a specific spot to place your trust in. In the floorwork, if you keep in mind which part of the foot is carrying your weight, your movements become more fluid. The same applies to sitting in front of the piano. If you really feel that the weight of your upper body sits on the ischium (the ‘sitting bones’), your legs start to relax. And then if you are able to feel that the weight of your relaxed legs sits on the bottoms of your feet, you feel even more comfortable, and your upper body experiences a sense of liberty in movement.
One of the defining factors in precision jumping, as the distance increases, is your ability to direct the force of your jump. When you are just standing one foot away from the object, a simple hop will suffice. When you are five feet away, you really need to call on the explosive tissue in your legs. But, if you only direct your force forward, your momentum will be so strong at the moment you touch the object, that you will not be able to stop yourself from falling over. The direction of the jump, therefore, needs to be up, as well as forward. If you look at feline animals executing long jumps with precision, you will see this in action. The further they need to jump, the more they will wind up their jump by going down before the jump.
Before, when executing long jumps on the piano, my professors have always told me that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Thus in places, as shown on the left here, I have been thinking that the movement needs to be as straight as possible. When I implemented the things I learned from our precision jumping drills, I was able to hit the right notes with much more certainty, than with just lazer-like patterns of movement.
December 2020
The work
The movement of the eyes, spine mobilization, and working with open and closed kinetic chains: Learning to separate the movement of the eyes from the rest of the body, finding ways in which to turn, torque, and rotate our spines in movement, and introduction to the distinction between open and closed kinetic chains of movement.
The effects
The greater control over my eyes had two effects.
1. I was more conscious about where I needed to focus my vision and where it would help me the most. This helped me aim better and compounded the benefits I had gained to making long jumps on the piano with the exercises of the preceding month.
2. As I became more deliberate with the movement of my eyes, they stopped moving around frantically. Unnecessary tension was greatly reduced, because moving your eyes without anything else happening in your body takes a lot of concentrated effort. As such, unconscious and unnecessary movement of the eyes can disrupt movement patterns, and result in faulty playing.
The passage shown here was greatly benefitted by the aforementioned. Before paying attention to the movement of my eyes, they went back-and-forth between the right and the left hand. I noticed this and then in an attempt to see how great of an effect this was having, I tried to alternate between looking at my hands as quickly as possible, without actually playing anything. This eye movement alone caused my shoulders and wrists to tense up. Then I decided which hand I would keep my vision fixed on, and I played through the passage a couple of times, forcing my eyes to follow the right hand in this case. The passage started working immediately and furthermore, when I allowed my eyes to fret about again, the passage became sloppy.
Working with the open and closed kinetic chains resulted in a higher sense of independence in my upper limbs. Prior to this, in places where I have to cross my hands such as the two passages shown here, I did the crossing with a very inefficient use of the muscles commanding the arms. I basically took my left hand and crossed it over the other one, with barely any change in the structure of the shoulder and shoulder blades. In an attempt to fix this, I utilized movement patterns we had learned in our lessons, and initiated the movement in the shoulder blades, instead of in the hand, thus using the entire arm - from the point where the shoulder blades connect to the spine, to the fingertips. Using all the joints in the arm this way helped me in maintaining stability in the highly un-ergonomic positions required in the execution of these bars, by allowing me to support the weight of the arm better, thus freeing the hand and the fingers to play more clearly.
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The mechanical strain put on the vertebrae in my spine by hours spent every day at the piano was amply countered by the mobilization work. Learning to differentiate the movement of my hip from my spine also resulted in less fidgeting on my piano stool. Also going from doing bridge holds with my hands on the wall, then with my hands on the floor but with my feet on a box, then with my feet on a step board, and finally doing bridge holds completely on the floor resulted in a more spacious and nimble feeling in the back and torso. At this point I noticed that the muscles in my back were no longer fatigued by playing the piano.
January 2021
The work
Standing, medial and lateral initiation of movement, spinal rotations: Refining and composing your posture, making waves with the arms, continuing on the spine-related work from the month before and adding more arching movement.
The Effects
Playing the piano, or any instrument for that matter, requires and develops a considerable amount of differentiation between your arms. I found that I was able to progress with the practice concerning medial and lateral initiation faster than expected, as I did with the kinetic chain work from the month before. Having to move your arms and hands independently while playing the piano is a necessity, and after years of practice you don’t really think about it. I found that this practice, which isolated this very integral part of my profession, felt like learning to walk again but in a more efficient way.
While playing, you sometimes have to rapidly keep changing between moving your arms in parallel and contrary movement. The work with the arm waves, combined with what we learned about controlling the different joints in our arms in January, streamlined the execution of these changes in direction, as in the exercises shown here.
The refinement of our postures, together with the continuation of the spinal work, helped in removing unnecessary tension while forming and maintaining the proper playing position. If I concentrated before playing on finding the very stable and secure feeling I felt in our exercises with our postures, I felt a greater sense of control over the keyboard. If we don’t actively think about our postures, we humans tend to slouch when doing things like playing the piano, writing things on the computer etc. This moves your head closer to what you are working with. At the piano this has the effect that distances between the keys seem greater than they are, which creates a mental necessity for more movement than is actually needed. Sitting upright with good posture makes it possible to view the whole keyboard while minimizing head and eye movement, which (as we learned in December)reduces unsolicited tension in the body.
February 2021
The work
Expansion of the medial-lateral initiation, bridge work, dynamic arching: expanding the range of movement in medial-lateral initiation to cover the whole body, increased intensity in bridge holds, adding dynamic elements to arching movements.
The effects
The things we worked on in February concerning the initiation of movement and spinal mobilization were mostly continuations on the things from January. Thus the effects from the month before were compounded and solidified.
An unexpected effect from the dynamic arching practice concerned the concept of bravery. For example, in the pulo do gato, if you do not trust yourself enough in your ability to suspend and maintain yourself in the air for long enough to finish the movement, you will not be able to do it. It does not matter if you actually possess the range of motion and coordination skills required - if you are afraid of letting go of the floor, you will fail. I have noticed the same in my experience in downhill skiing: If you get scared by your velocity and try to put on the brakes too much, at some point the edge of your ski will uncontrollably grab the snow, and you will fall over.
You cannot hesitate when you go in front of people to perform. Period. If while playing, notions like “ohmygodohmygodohmygod that horribly difficult passage is about to come up” appear in your head, you can be damn sure that you won’t pull off a Carnegie-Hall-worthy performance. Thanks to the dynamic arching practice, I was able to identify moments like this in the repertoire I was preparing. In order to get rid of this uncertainty, I knew I just had to go for it, like with the pulo do gato. Even if it does not work on the first try, I still have to go for it! The way I did this was simple: by performing my repertoire to my colleagues at the Liceu Conservatory.
My programme was challenging in its technical aspects, but also timewise - all together the programme consisted of ~50 minutes of music, all to be performed from memory. During the first run-throughs I made, I noticed many of these moments of uncertainty. However, every time I performed the whole programme, I noticed that one by one these moments started to diminish. This turned out to be a vital mode of preparation of the program: It pointed out places I still needed to work on, but it also made me notice that there were many passages that I could actually perform in front of people, and not just alone when practicing. I just needed to go for it and not “put on the brakes.” This let my body execute the things that I had spent months preparing.
March 2021
The work
QDR (queda de rins), locomotion, improvisation: Learning to do the static QDR hold and QDR rotational push-up, dynamic movements in isolation and in sequences, isolation of movement in different points of the body.
The effects
Creating a large and robust sound with the piano is a combination of arm weight, wrist flexibility, and weight management in the hand. You have to be able to use the weight of your torso through your arm, you have to keep your wrist free and open so you don’t block the transferring of weight, and you have to balance the weight between your fingers depending on which tones you want to be heard the most. QDR in any of its variations is a movement that is very demanding for your wrists, but as such it strengthens them and makes them more mobile over time. Being able to find balance in that position requires the ability to push your weight onto the floor through your elbow while being on top of it.
After getting more proficient in the QDR, I noticed that I could place more weight on the keyboard with more control. This resulted in the sound becoming fuller and louder, while still maintaining a good quality in the sonority, like in the passage shown here.
It also helped me in avoiding what we in professional terms call “breaking the sound,” ie. making the music hurt the ears of the listeners by just being loud.
Locomotion work in itself did not benefit a specific type of technique in my experience. Instead, it helped in handling the transition from one type of playing to another. Having to maintain quality in the dynamic movements, while changing the movements themselves all the time forces you to think ahead and to prepare. In the passage shown here, the right hand must constantly change between two types of sound, accompanying sound on the lower chords and melodic sound on the higher chords. You have to be able to build this change into your arms in a reliable way so you don’t have to constantly think about it, and the locomotion work helped me in approaching it.
The improvisational work had a contrary effect to the benefits from the QDR work: it helped me with controlling softer dynamics. Contrary to common belief, playing softly on the piano demands a lot of pressure being put on the keyboard. The speed at which you press the key is critical. You can think of it as a garbage compactor at a waste management center (a prestigious comparison, I know). You can see how that enormous machine is moving its press with tonnes of force behind it, but doing so very slowly. Managing a soft tone on a piano feels like this.
I tried to see the effects of our partner work with the passage shown on the right here as well as with the example on the next page. I placed my fingers on the keys and imagined that my partner's finger was on the bottom side of my wrist. Then I imagined that my partner started pulling their finger towards the floor, and I had to follow it first with my wrist, then with my hand. This resulted in a very clear, yet delicate sound.
April 2021
The work
QDR, locomotion, interacting with the partner: Continuing with developing the QDR, continuing with the locomotion exercises, interacting with the body of your partner.
The effects
(The effects of the QDR practice are the same as the month before, only more concrete and more accessible in practice)
Problem solving turned out to be a major component in the partnered locomotion work. After a couple of lessons you started to get a sense of which movements go really well together, which ones require some strategic placement of limbs to be executed, and which ones simply are not possible to put together. The better you got at it, the less talking and thinking between you and your partner was required, and towards the end you could just say the names of the movements and go!
This carried over to my piano practice in a way that helped me solve some technical difficulties I was having, by really examining what I was doing, what was helping me, and what was hindering me. In movement practice your quality is evaluated mostly by (surprise surprise) the quality of your movement. In piano playing however sound is always paramount. I noticed that in some places where I was experiencing difficulty, such as the one shown on the right here, I was trying to solve the situation only through mechanical/technical means. By trying to find a better angle for my hands, seeing if I have any tension in my shoulders etc. When I shifted focus towards how such places needed to sound, instead of how they should feel, my body started to correct itself in their execution.
The reactionary work with your partner had a real cool-down effect! At first your movements are very exaggerated. After a few lessons you start to calm down and your isolation of the required movement becomes more rapid and efficient, resulting in performing the task with higher velocities. While playing the piano, we often have many lines of music to handle at the same time ie. bass line, accompaniment, melody, and sometimes a second melody. Bringing out the lines that you find to be the most important is a challenging endeavour, and often I find myself overworking these shifts of importance, when a simple quarter-of-a-second pause would fix the whole thing.
In the part shown here, each tone serves as an independent voice, instead of composing a single chord for instance. As such you have to be able to show where each tone goes, and where a new voice begins; in the reactionary work you have to be able to show where each movement goes and where a new one begins.
May 2021
The work
QDR, locomotion improvisation, partnering, off-balance: Continuing with developing the QDR, continuing with the locomotion exercises, reacting to your partner’s exertion of force, being in an off-balance position with your partner.
The effects
(The effects of the QDR and locomotion practice are the same as the months before, only more concrete and more accessible in practice)
The combined effect of the partnering with the off-balance work shows you the importance of support and trust. If you could not provide enough support for a heavier partner, their movement in the off-balance work would be limited. If you could not trust in your partner’s ability to show their intentions, you would not be able to offer the support they needed. Indeed there were instances where heavier students would not completely trust their lighter partner’s ability to maintain support, even if they were able to do so. Once prompted by our teacher to confine more in their partners, the heavier students started to shift more and more of their weight onto their partners, in some cases managing to have their whole body weight on the person supporting them.
This relationship of support and trust (one physical, one mental) is present when playing the piano as well. Often in the most difficult places of your repertoire, you need to find ways to feel more connected with the piano, thus getting support from the instrument. This might mean listening more intently to one line that you are playing, physically leaning more on either hand while playing, learning to play some part with your eyes closed etc. Once you find a way to support yourself and you practice that support into your body, you start to trust in your ability to perform in front of an audience. However, if in the moment you lose that trust, you will lose the support as well.
This passage shown here is one such place in the repertoire I am playing at the moment. Here, both hands are playing an octave, in forte (loudly), and in contrary motion (the left hand changing directions, the right hand going to the right). Often while playing these bars, I felt very suspended, or ‘in the air’, which made me miss notes. When I decided to look for more support in the right hand, as it has shorter movements in space than the left, I started to feel more grounded. Then after some days of practicing this newly found support, I started to be able to trust in my ability to maintain support in this difficult passage. The first few times I performed it to my colleagues, it did not go too well, but it got better every time, and my confidence in my ability to support myself grew stronger. Now I feel very secure with this piece.
Conclusion
During the seven months that I have been introduced to movement practice, I have seen the most rapid progress in my ability to play the piano yet. The work ethos that comes along with a serious approach to movement practice, as well as the development of your nervous system makes learning new pieces faster, makes their execution more stable, and helps ameliorate the negative side effects of hours of sitting at the piano.