Music making is a whole body activity always, yet many musicians think only about their hands and their faces, ignoring the support from the spine and core of the body. Understanding the concept of “the part within the whole” is vital.

Understanding body maps, whole body movement, and awareness can work together to help decrease performance anxiety. Instead of actively repressing, ignoring, or hiding from the nervous symptoms, musicians can either bring their awareness back to their own bodies or extend their awareness to include more sensory input depending on the specific situation.

Body maps are our own internal representations that we have in our brain about how our bodies work. We have maps for our body’s size, function, and structure. When our body maps are accurate, movement is good. When our body maps are not accurate, then movement suffers. As we become aware of inaccurate body maps, we can correct them and movement improves as a result.

For example, many people do not realize that their whole arm structure includes a hand, wrist, forearm, elbow, upper arm, scapula, and clavicle. Many people have an initial arm map that is inaccurate because stops around the “shoulder” area and doesn’t include the scapula and clavicle. If you don’t understand how big your arm structure is or how it attaches to the rest of your skeleton, you may have some pain, discomfort, or limitation in your arm movement.

Once the anatomical truth is understood, the arm map can be corrected and refined. After the necessary time is taken to retrain movement, the movement will be better, which will lead to improved performance.

Perhaps, the most important concept, though, is that of awareness. Musicians can learn to be aware of what’s going on internally, while also being aware of what is happening in the external environment.

For many musicians, their awareness extends only the distance from their faces to their music stand. Musicians who cultivate their own awareness are then able to notice what’s happening during performance and can then make a choice to respond or not. It’s about choices and understanding that the musician, not the instrument, makes the choices. There is a specific movement or series of movements for each sound a musician makes, so it becomes a process of selecting the right movement tool for the job.

For musicians who are already dealing with injury, I know from personal experience that it is very easy to focus exclusively on the site of the injury and lose all awareness of the rest of the body. Regaining the whole body perspective is so important for retraining on the instrument. In many cases, poor movement choices can be uncovered that may or may not have contributed to the injury in the first place. These can be replaced by movements work with our anatomical design. Sometimes, the situation may require manual therapy in the form of NKT.