Physical pain is something that is often overlooked. I saw this statistic that said: out of 10 musicians, 8 will be affected by a playing disorder, 5 will manage chronic symptoms and flare ups, 2 will recover, and 1 will leave the field. You might think that those stats are quite high, and that it must be a mistake, but from my personal experience with injury and the amount of injuries that I’ve seen through my undergrad, I think the stats are pretty accurate.
Something to keep in mind as I tell this story, I am extremely double jointed. Some say that I would be triple jointed if that was a thing. I got injured In the peak of my practicing days before I entered university. Although now looking back at how I used to practice I realized that I was doing mindless, not mindful practice and that practice is about quality over quantity, as they say hindsight is 20/20.
It was right before a youth orchestra audition I was playing through my rep all stressed and frazzled and I felt a sharp snap go through my violin hand pinky finger. I knew that something was definitely wrong but I went ahead and did the audition.
The snap I felt ended up being me spraining a ligament in my pinky. This was caused by the stress that came from my neck. I had caused nerve damage because I was raising my shoulder and rotating my rotator cuff so much that it closed off the nerve pathways which led to tendonitis. I had severe pain from my neck through my arm, to my fingertips.
I first went to physio therapy. They suggested surgery as an option. They said the results could be great or terrible. I didn’t want to chance surgery so I worked with the physiotherapist. We did exercises and stretches. The solution to my sprained ligament was to tape up my pinky on the middle joint. That is why my pinky is misshapen to this day. I quickly knew it was only a short term fix, as after sessions my pinky felt better due to the ultrasound and heat wave pulses but the good feeling only lasted half a day one full day at the most.
I then tried Alexander technique, body mapping, and then I found a musician injury specialist. This helped the most. Learning that everything is connected we worked on strengthening my upper body and core. It was exhausting to play one song the way the specialist wanted me to. It felt so unnatural, playing seemed like it was too much work and the results weren’t good enough, because I started to feel new strains in different areas.
They all had one thing in common and that was to adjust my body to what the “strongest” position was, to adjust my body to the instrument. Though this did help the pain tremendously, it caused a boat load of problems with tension in my playing.
It wasn’t until undergrad that everything changed for me. My first year lessons were mostly about (and still are about) playing naturally in a relaxed state not forcing anything but yet still keeping engaged. This was a game changer. That was the first time since my injury that I felt like I could truly play again, and not have to worry about pain.
Because of the damage that was done and because throughout all of my injuries I never took time off, I still have flare ups. I think I always will, but they are much shorter now and a lot less severe, they are manageable. I’ve been through so many I now know when to spot the beginning of flare ups and try to prevent them.
They started to teach the idea of “you do not adjust your body, you adjust your surroundings” at Juilliard, and I couldn't agree more. Shoulder rests work. This ideal that virtuosity means you don’t use a shoulder rest or that you are a superior player because you don’t use a shoulder rest needs to stop. I am not built like Oistrakh. I really wish I was for violin playing sake but I am quite literally in every single way built the opposite way. Hence What works for him unfortunately does not work for me, and a lot of people.
In my next blog post I plan on talking about how physical injuries affect you mentally, and the mental battles you face recovering. The fact that recovering physically is only 50% of the work and the other 50% is mentally recovering. It’s another very important realm to talk more about. It’s not as easy as just puttin on pain relief cream.