Hand-Mouth Connection
You produce sound through your instrument, not your mouth, yet what you do with your mouth has a profound impact on how you play. Confusion in your tongue, jaw, lips and throat creates confusion in your hands. Indeed, how you hold your mouth - your oral posture - deeply influences your overall posture.
In this 4-class workshop, you will discover through the Feldenkrais Method not only how to release your mouth, but to connect it to your hands so that you can freely sing through your instrument.
Begin Your journey
Topics will include
- Homology between your mouth and hand
- Coordinating your sphincters
- Mapping you tongue, hyoid, larynx, jaw, lips and palate
- Steering from your tongue
- Quieting unwanted facial expressions from lip curling to eyebrow furrowing
- Loosening vibrato by loosening your tongue
Class 1
Hand to Mouth
There are so many connections between our hands and mouth. We eat hand to mouth; we speak with our hands and mouth; as babies, we explore the world as much with our mouth as with our hands. Indeed, you could say our hand is the mouth of our arm and our mouth is the hand of our face. This means that whatever we do in one greatly influences the other, so by honing the use of our mouth we can hone the use of our hands.
Class 2
Your 25th Vertebrae
Our spine officially has 24 vertebrae, but there’s an extra, secret vertebra that can direct all our movement. This 25th vertebra contains all the twists and turns of our spine, so unlocking this part can unlock our entire posture.
Class 3
Tongue Twister
When it comes to our tongue, we usually think about the tip or the surface. Little do we realize how many layers and hidden tunnels our tongue actually has. Moving from these hidden crevices can open up new directions, dimensions and a fuller sense of self.
Class 4
Baby Moves
Cello playing can be so cerebral, but at its heart is a primal connection to emotion, touch and sound. In this lesson we’ll take a trip down memory lane to rekindle the mouth and hand movements we used to do as babies. Getting back to these primitive movements can have a powerfully soothing and limbic effect on our playing.
Topics will include
- Homology between your mouth and hand
- Coordinating your sphincters
- Mapping you tongue, hyoid, larynx, jaw, lips and palate
- Steering from your tongue
- Quieting unwanted facial expressions from lip curling to eyebrow furrowing
- Loosening vibrato by loosening your tongue
Begin Your journey
