top of page

Body Mapping Study Group

​

What Every Musician Needs to Know About the Body
Presented over 13 sessions

​

Note: This course takes a “deep dive” into the material and combines presentation of Body Mapping information with participant explorations both at and away from instruments and singing.

​

To access the full recordings, please email me directly at aking@willamette.edu or use my Contact page.

​

​

Index and Descriptions of Available Recordings

 

Course Section 1: Putting Music Making on a Secure Somatic Foundation (3-part series)

​

Recording 1: Introduction to Body Mapping: Shifting the Paradigm for Teaching and Performing​​

​

  1. Teaching Movement Directly as Movement

  2. The Importance of "Full Stature"

​

Recording 2: Training the Senses 

​

  1. The Tactile Sense

  2. The Kinesthetic Sense

 

Recording 3: Training Attention

​

  1. The Means to Achieving a “Unified Field of Attention”

  2. Attention to Self

  3. Attention to the Performance Environment

​

Course Sections 2 and 5: Balance and Weight-Delivery in the Human Body and All About Legs (4-part series)

​These topics are integrated in the 4 sessions described below: 

 

Recording 4: The Importance of Balance
 

  1. Accessing the “Core” of the Body

  2. Mapping the regions of the spine, AO joint, muscles of the neck

  3. Mapping the pelvis, hip joint, and sitting bones


​Recording 5: Finding Balance in Sitting
 

  1. Moving in relation to your whole spine

  2. Developing a repertoire of torso movements

  3. Exploring the full range of movement through the lumbar spine

​

Recording 6: Finding Balance in Standing

​

  1. Weight delivery in standing

  2. Mapping “top half over bottom half” (articulation of the body at the femoral joint)

  3. Thinking like a quadruped

  4. Walking with intention and ease


Recording 7: All About Legs
 

  1. Reviewing the 3 joints of the leg

  2. Legs/sit bones relationship while sitting

  3. Legs as first responders to musical impulses

​

Course Section 3: The Structure and Movements of the Arm (3-part series)

 

​Recording 8: Arms Part 1
 

  1. Keeping arm movement in relation to the whole body

  2. The 4 regions of the arm

  3. The sternoclavicular and glenohumeral joints

  4. Sequential movement within the arm: humeral-scapular rhythm

​

Recording 9: Arms Part 2

​

  1. The joints of the elbow and wrist

  2. The role of the finger and micromovement

  3. Torso-arm: sequential movement

  4. The issue of “repetitive strain injuries”


Recording 10: Arms Part 3, Finale: Finding Connections
 

  1. Tensegrity in the human body

  2. Connecting the fingertip to the rest of the body

  3. Exploring the quality of “contact” (Fingers to instrument/object)

​

Course Section 4: The Structure and Movements of Breathing (2-part series)​

 

Recording 11: Breathing Part 1, The Journey of the Air

​

  1. Muscles of facial expression, jaw, tongue, hyoid bone

  2. Pharynx and friends

  3. Trachea and larynx

  4. The lungs

​

​Recording 12: Breathing Part 2, The Movement of Breathing

​

  1. The ribs

  2. The diaphragm

  3. The abdominal wall and pelvic floor

  4. Sequential movement of breathing

  5. Support for breathing

 

Course Finale: Putting It All Together as We Make Music

 

Recording 13: Finding Equilibrium: Becoming Available to Ourselves, the Music, and Our Performance Space in Equal Measure
 

  1. Reviewing the principles of healthy movement​

  2. Knowing how our instruments work

  3. Making the music the catalyst for our movement choices

  4. A few words on “Emotion”

bottom of page