Twelve Metaphors to Help You Understand Taubman Technique on a Body Level
Chi Running
Millions of people around the world are devoted runners, many of them eager for clues as to how to improve their running technique. A while ago my marathon-running student and friend Liz, noting a parallel between its teachings and mine, gave me a copy of Danny Dreyer's Chi Running. I learned from this book that "Chi Running" requires an engaged core, careful attention to the placement of the feet as a means of conserving energy and avoiding injury, and a posture that allows the runner to conserve energy by tipping forward at a particular moment in the gate cycle. To my delight, I did recognize parallels between the teachings of Chi Running and my Taubman-influenced approach for piano--and if it is true that coordinated behaviors share common features across domains, then I was glad for the opportunity to read the book even though I don't run. (Thanks, Liz!)
However affirming the parallels, I couldn't see applying them with students who didn't care about running, let alone Chi Running--and that would be my whole studio right now. But my curiosity was piqued. What might the runners of the world think of Chi Running? I conducted an online search and—surprise of surprises!--learned that the Chi Running approach is mired in controversy! Some bristled at the technique’s lack of originality, claiming that the book played a smoke-and-mirrors game of explaining as original things that were already well known (kind of familiar, huh?). On the other hand, one person wrote of attending a Chi Running workshop with the intention of exposing the approach for the pernicious fraud it was, but leaving the weekend session indomitably enthusiastic in spite of a professed, lingering cloud of skepticism. The parallels between the various reactions and attitudes toward Chi Running and what one sees with Taubman technique are all worth someone's attention, both for cultural studies and comedy bits.
For me, though, it was Matt Fitzgerald's commentary that most caught my eye because it suggested questions about the legitimacy of Taubman technique itself. (In spite of my enthusiasm about this technique and its potential to help people, I braced myself to be influenced by all insinuations of Fitzgerald's viewpoint, investment in this technique be screwed. For, if I insisted on remaining immobilized in a certain position, was I really alive?) Fitzgerald is himself the author of several books about running, including The Cutting Edge Runner and Brain Training for Runners. Fitzgerald points to ubiquitous online forums, hyperabundance of magazine and website articles devoted to helping runners improve their stride quality, and a growth industry of coaching businesses as evidence for burgeoning interest in running technique. But Fitzgerald’s own position, which he supports with very recent biomechanical research, is that there is no such thing as an ideal running form for all runners, and that runners’ conscious attempts to emulate a universal ideal actually worsen stride quality.
Fitzgerald’s commentary on Stephen McGregor’s research with runners would appear to be particularly germane for those of us wondering how we might better our playing. (Not that McGregor’s findings would necessarily apply to pianists, but they do give pause if you’ve ever watched Kissin or Horowitz play!) Fitzgerald observes of that research:
What might surprise you is that McGregor has been unable to identify a single specific running technique that accounts for the greater efficiency of the best runners [emphasis mine]. “It doesn’t appear that there is any particular running approach, or form, that is common,” he says. “If you take 10 different good runners and look at them compared to 10 different poor runners, there is really no single common theme that distinguishes the form of the good runners from that of the poor runners.”
In fact, McGregor admits that on several occasions he has watched athletes run in his lab and decided they had terrible form, only to discover later from the data that they were in fact exceptionally efficient.
Fitzgerald, of course, is talking about runners and not pianists. For that reason, I don’t want to get hung up on dissecting his analysis too much except to point out that he may be motivated to select and interpret data in a particular way (like most of us, when data pertain to things that we deeply care about). But the scientific community currently expends much more effort studying athletes than musicians, and I am curious about what helpful questions its explorations might raise for the teaching and learning of Taubman technique. Assuming that Fitzgerald’s “best runners” correlates well with “talented pianists” (or at least the ones who are well coordinated without expending a lot of attention to technique), here are some questions that especially pertain to pianists who doubt their own talent:
Can a teacher's demand on coordination encourage a habit of placing attention somewhere other than the creation of a musical result--resulting in a net minus? (For example, toward pleasing the teacher, or toward making a coordination look rather than feel right?)
When runners don’t improve as a result of instruction, is that because the information they are being taught lacks in quality? Or because their exposure to it is overly short in duration? Or too infrequent? Or because coaching methods are implicitly geared toward “talent,” failing to take individual learning styles into account? Or because there is something about the relationship with the coach that gets in the way?
In spite of what Fitzgerald's ideas suggest, might there be a "universal ideal" for piano technique--one that has the potential to point virtually every willing player in the right direction for using their own body most efficiently? And what side of themselves would individual students need to optimize in order to benefit from information about that ideal--their logical or their intuitive side?
Do failure mechanisms get in the way of progress more broadly than we might think? (Consider all the ways that the contents of your psyche have influenced your ability to pay attention.) Similarly, what about the role of confidence in the quality of attention necessary to manifest brilliance—why wouldn't we pay more attention to that aspect of the equation as we form notions about why something is or isn't working for a particular individual?
What matters most here—to identify and create some form of profit from “talent,” or to help people who have a powerful desire to play to achieve deeply cherished goals? And how do our own answers to this question affect our teaching approach and results? And where did we get those particular answers, anyway?
Looking up what “end users” are saying about Chi Running on Amazon, I found that the book had been reviewed by 373 readers who collectively gave it a four-and-a-half star rating. People claimed that the technique made it possible to run again after pain in some part of the body had put the kybosh on running for them; that they were running marathons and half-marathons without typical runner's banes of shin splints, calf pain, knee pain, etc., farther, longer, and harder, etc.. Chi Running technique had, for a significant proportion, transformed and even revolutionized a cherished activity, and they are grateful enough to say so in a review.
The meaning behind the metaphor: Sometimes pianists forget that the human body is mystifyingly complex, and all the more so when you consider that it comes with an attached psyche. But the student with a strong desire to play has tremendous ability to probe his own inner workings for the sake of joyful creativity and exhilarating music making, and sometimes the very best thing a teacher can do is encourage a student to focus that ability.
About those runners who feel deficient enough to retrain with Chi Running: maybe everything that comes from an external teacher is just "training wheels," and the biggest block to greatness (besides not practicing well or enough) is the failure to cast those aside.