pianomap : Excerpts from the book: "What Every Pianist Needs to Know about the Body"

By Thomas Mark

Posture vs. Balance

Conventional wisdom has it that we should "sit up straight" at the piano, we should not "slump" and we should not be "tense" or "rigid." Instead, we should be "relaxed," "balanced," "poised." But what do people mean by these recommendations? What must we do to "sit up straight?" The question is of vital importance because the answers most people take for granted are wrong and harmful. Our society is the victim of a host of misconceptions about posture. I shall call them Posture Myths. "Chest out, shoulders back, suck in your gut, flatten your butt . . ." These military-sounding admonitions pop into people's minds when they think of "good posture." They certainly are "posture" in one sense offered by my dictionary: "an affected or unnatural attitude, or a contortion of the body." But they are not good. They are not the source of free, easy movement but of tension, back pain and misery. The Posture Myths-some people call them a "cultural virus"-should not only be discarded, they should be vigorously opposed. But what do we put in their place?

Many people expect standing or sitting to require continual work. For people who believe the Posture Myths, standing or sitting upright will indeed be an effort, for they must constantly hold muscles tense as they attempt to maintain the prescribed posture. If standing and sitting are uncomfortable, the same people may imagine that muscles are weak and in need of strengthening or that they have bad backs. But often there is nothing wrong except the way of sitting and standing. The solution does not lie in strengthening. It lies in developing an accurate body map and replacing "posture" with balance.

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