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JOYFUL MUSIC MAKING

without limitation

ABME Mission Statement

Empowering musicians to make healthy movement choices that promote artistic freedom in their music-making

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ABOUT

Body mapping invites us to replace our faulty body maps with anatomically correct maps to allow for effortless and expressive movement. The body map is one’s self-representation in one’s own brain. If the body map is accurate, movement is good. If the body map is inaccurate or inadequate, movement is inefficient and potentially injury-producing. 

 

Designed to bring awareness to tension habits, this injury prevention information for musicians focuses on the body in movement. In Body Mapping, one learns to gain access to one’s own body map through self-observation and self-inquiry. The student corrects his or her own body map by becoming more aware of how he or she moves by using mirrors, anatomical models, books, and studying anatomical images. One learns to recognize the source of inefficient or harmful movement and how to replace it with movement that is efficient, elegant, direct, and powerful based on the truth about one’s structure, function, and size.


Keynote speakers at our biennial conference have included Dr. Bronwen Ackermann, specialist musicians' physiotherapist, musculoskeletal anatomist, and musicians' health researcher at the University of Sydney ; The WholeHearted Musician’s Dana Fonteneau; performance psychologist Noa Kageyama of The Bulletproof Musician, and Alexander Technique teacher Barbara Conable, the founder of ABME (then Andover Educators). With help from our Scientific Advisory Board we pledge to continue to foster research, and to investigate the relationship between the body in movement and musical performance.

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ABME's Statement of Belonging

MEMBER TESTIMONIALS

“I met Lisa Marsh in 2006 after sustaining a repetitive strain injury at the piano which left me unable to play for a year. Prior to our meeting I had pursued all of the conventional modes of pain relief: icing, rest, anti-inflammatory drugs and physical therapy. Although these methods relieved symptoms temporarily it wasn't until my work with Lisa that I truly began to recover on a deep level. Thanks to her systematic training in movement and awareness I was able to address the issue at its root, leaving me pain-free and able to play at a much higher level than ever before. Without Lisa’s thorough and compassionate approach I would not have the professional performing career that I do today!"

-MATT TABOR

Jazz pianist, composer, & LBME

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