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The Spine: Our Very Own Superhighway

Selma Gokcen

I only learned about the importance of the spinal column to cello playing as I was introduced more deeply into the Alexander Technique. Of course I knew the superficial facts about the spine and especially how vital it is to the health of the nervous system. But its particular relevance to cellists was not brought home until I began training in the work of teaching the Technique.

Here are a few interesting facts about the spine to start off 1:

  • The spinal cord is surrounded by rings of bone called vertebrae.
  • Both are covered by a protective membrane.
  • Together, the vertebrae and the membrane make up the spinal column, or backbone.
  • The backbone, which protects the spinal cord, starts at the base of the skull and ends just above the hips.
  • The spinal cord is about 18 inches long. It extends from the base of the brain, down the middle of the back, to just below the last rib in the waist area.
  • The main job of the spinal cord is to be the communication system between the brain and the body by carrying messages that allow people to move and feel sensation.
  • Spinal nerve cells, called neurons, carry messages to and from the spinal cord, via spinal nerves.
  • Messages carried by the spinal nerves leave the spinal cord through openings in the vertebrae.
  • Spinal nerve roots branch off the spinal cord in pairs, one going to each side of the body.
  • Every nerve has a special job for movement and feeling. They tell the muscles in the arms, hands, fingers, legs, toes, chest and other parts of the body how and when to move. They also carry messages back to the brain about sensations, such as pain, temperature and touch.

What the above facts do not tell us is what happens in day-to- day life to us as cellists when, unknowingly, we compress our spine in practicing and playing our instrument. How and why does this happen?

The S-curves of the spine (there are four, some say five if you count the coccyx), as well as its discs, are springy, to allow us to absorb the force of gravity as we move about in space, and they also function as shock absorbers as we walk along the ground. But this spring in the spine only occurs if the weight of the head is balancing properly on top of the spine, which allows a natural lengthening of the spine to occur. The head and neck are key to this process, and yet this head to spine relationship is so rarely noticed, let alone taught, in the cello studio.

Sadly, cellists tend to either pull the head forward and down, or back and down, onto the spine, restricting the vital impulses of the spine and cutting the energy flow to the arms and fingers. This pulling out of balance of the head is accompanied by a collapse of the spine; the entire body loses its tuning, its axis, its means of functioning.

On another level the fine energies of the spine are life-giving. They are what enable the rhythmic vitality, the tonal resonance, the vital communicative power of the player, the flow of musical expression. If all the gestures a cellist makes—right and left hand—arise from a lengthening spine, they awaken a different sound at the instrument, a deeper, authentic power. This has been my experience of the Alexander Technique, as I watch my students transform and blossom into fluent and expressive players. Those who ‘have a back and a spine’; can be distinguished from those who don’t. And it’s not what you get in a gym. It is a result of very fine, subtle work in undoing those habits of compression and tightening which may have been acquired unknowingly, sometimes many years ago.

When my students, well into the Alexander work, ask me why such important information is not better known and not widely taught, I don’t know what to say. Perhaps we are just beginning to recognize something that we are losing  in the new world of the 21st century.

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1 http://www.spinalinjury101.org/details/anatomy

 

 

Subjects: Playing Healthy

Tags: Alexander Technique, cellobello, CelloBlog, healthy playing, Selma Gokcen, Spine

AUTHOR

Selma Gokcen

Selma Gokcen, born in America of Turkish parentage, has received critical acclaim for her imaginative programming.   Along with Bernard Greenhouse and Jonathan Kramer, she presented a programme at London’s South Bank Centre, in New York and at the Kennedy Center entitled Pablo Casals: Artist of Conscience, celebrating the life and music of the legendary cellist.

Ms. Gokcen has performed with L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Presidential Symphony in Ankara, the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the North Carolina Symphony, and the Aspen Philharmonia, among others. Her recital appearances have taken her to such cities as Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Palm Beach, Charleston, S.C., and to Belgium, Italy and Turkey. In South America, she has toured under the auspices of the U.S. State Department. She has concertized in Australia and New Zealand, and given master classes in Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

In addition to solo appearances, she is an accomplished chamber musician and has participated in the Chamber Music West Festival in San Francisco, the Southeastern Music Festival, the Hindemith Festival in Oregon, and the Accademia Chigiana in Siena.

Ms. Gokcen holds the Doctorate of Musical Arts, as well as a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the Juilliard School, where her teachers included Leonard Rose, Channing Robbins, William Lincer and Robert Mann. She was awarded a First Prize from the Geneva Conservatory of Music as a pupil of Guy Fallot, and also studied privately with Pierre Fournier. In 1999 she was chosen by one of Spain’s greatest composers, Xavier Montsalvatge, to record his complete works for cello. She has also recorded Songs and Dances in Switzerland for the Gallo label.

In 1988, Ms. Gokcen became interested in the Alexander Technique, prompted by a lifelong fascination with the roots of habits and the difficulties of modifying them.  Students often entered her cello studio seeking changes but unable to resolve their problems.

Eventually her reading brought her to the Alexander Technique, a discipline described by its founder as "learning to do consciously what nature intended".  She came to London in 1994 and enrolled in a teacher training program at the Centre for the Alexander Technique.

Ms Gokcen was qualified as a fully-fledged teacher by the Society for Teachers of the Alexander Technique in 1998.  In September 2000 she was appointed to the faculty of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she is also a professor of cello. She works with string, wind and brass players, singers and composers. She also incorporates her Alexander Technique teaching as part of her cello studio.

The Alexander Technique embraces what is today called holistic thinking--an indivisibility of the mind-body connection and the awakening of awareness of what  Alexander called the "use of the whole self", which affects our functioning in all our activities, especially  the highly complex skill of music-making.  It is particularly useful in addressing breathing, coordination, and muscle tensions. Most importantly, the quality of attention developed through the practice of the Technique can transform a musician's relationship with their instrument and their audience.

Selma Gokcen is also the co-founder and Co-Chair of the London Cello Society.

www.welltemperedmusician.com
www.londoncellos.org

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