Was I Destined For Dystonia? Part 1

When the one thing you were seemingly good at is ripped out under you and you’re handed the dystonia diagnosis, you inevitably wonder what you did to get there. At least it was for me. Before my work with Jan Kagarice and her team, I was self-flagellating, mentally punishing myself for whatever I did to allow this to happen.

Over time through many sessions, layers of what most likely attributed to my dystonia were revealed. Like many things in life, it wasn’t one thing, but a messy entanglement of widely-spread brass pedagogy, my personality traits, and a series of bad experiences. 

Before I go any further, I want to make a big fat disclaimer that I am not pointing fingers at any one school of pedagogy, or any particular teacher or player. I believe all of my teachers from my very first teacher in middle school all the way up to my doctorate studies were excellent teachers, passing on foundationally strong pedagogy and methods within the bounds of widely accepted way of describing how to play a brass instrument. 

The problem lies with communicating what we think we’re doing. Probably from the very first brass player in the medieval era to today, there were those who were naturally great on their instrument, and others asked what they were doing. All those players could do is describe what they think they’re doing, but it might not necessarily be what’s actually happening. For example, unless you are an expert in human biomechanics, how would you describe to someone how to walk, something that is so natural to you, to someone who has never experienced it? You can only describe what you think you’re doing, but it doesn’t mean it is biomechanically correct. Another way to look at it, you can study the best player and note what their face looks like - all we can really see is the “embouchure” around their mouthpiece. As Jan says, you can think you know what’s going on from looking at the outside, but you don’t really know what’s going on inside. A life truth beyond brass playing for sure.

In this entry, I’ll talk about how I physically played that attributed to my neuropaths becoming distorted. 

The Embouchure

I always strived to keep strong corners. I remember my first teacher in middle school telling me smiley face equals bad, frowny face equals good because I tended to pull back on my corners and smile. So I learned the more you engage your corners, the stronger your embouchure is. And the frown action was the strongest way to enforce the embouchure. Lots of mouthpiece buzzing was also great for the embouchure as it allowed for a centered buzz while activating and engaging those corners. I also thought about manipulating the size of the aperture for different ranges. 

In my case, this was problematic. All of these actions caused my lips, especially my upper lip to clamp down. It in turn would take a fair amount of forced air to get the lips to start vibrating. However, think about double reeds. They are two pieces of reeds with a slight opening. When air is passed through, the laws of physics cause them to vibrate. You can see for yourself by taking two pieces of paper slightly apart and blow gentle air through them. They will start vibrating, flapping against each other. Our lips are no different. If our lips can be in a relaxed position, acting like a hallway for air to pass through, they will automatically vibrate, just like double reeds. It makes sense to me that decades of forcibly shut lips then trying to shove air through to get them to vibrate will overtime break down the mechanism. 

Note the slight opening between the two reeds.

The Tongue

I think in my case, the shut down lips created a ripple effect, with the tongue affected next. Like any good brass student, I strived to place the tip of my tongue where the back of my teeth meets the gum and say “ta”. However, if you go back to the idea of the lips as double reeds, and you’re trying to let air freely pass, what happens when the front half of the tongue is raised so the tip can hit the gumline? The air is shut down, then explodes out, trying to pass through those shut lips. My guess is that this was the cause of my hesitation issue, which was the start of everything. I go to tongue, a poof of air is let out, but the clamped lips take some time to respond. 

In my retraining, there is so much more to the tongue than to go “ta”. Apologies that this might be vague, but it has to do with the tongue helping guide the air (I think of it more as energy than air) through the hallway (the open lips/double reeds) into the cup of the mouthpiece where the sound is waiting to meet that energy and vibrate the air molecules already existing inside the horn. It’s not the perfect analogy, but think about going down a really fun waterslide. You’re riding down the water that is rushing down on top of the big tube that is the water slide. But imagine if all of a sudden, there was an obtrusion inside the slide or the bottom falls out. Ouch! By finding the best position for the energy to pass through your mouth (and the tongue position plays a big role, like the bottom of the waterslide), you’re creating the most efficient way for the energy to travel from your pump (explained below) to excite the air molecules that are already inside your horn. 

To articulate, I’m striving to simply bump the sound with the most natural part of the tongue while it’s acting as a ramp. It ends up being much further back part of the tongue, definitely not the tip. This allows me to either start or play the next note in a string of notes without disrupting the flow of energy. 

I can assure you that I am not doing justice in describing these mechanics. This is my current understanding of what has been working for me in my retraining. 

The Support/Air

So we have the clamped or shut lips, then the tongue causing more blockage. So what’s air support to do? Overact and squeeze like hell to get something through. Before my diagnosis, I always aimed to take a big breath (except in the high range - even before my playing issues, there was no way I could come in cleanly on something like Bolero if I took a big breath). The process of taking a big breath was to drop my diaphragm, and breathe from the belly then through the upper chest. So now your insides are filled to the brim with air like a balloon about to pop, then that air dying to escape as per the laws of physics, is supposed to make a journey through a series of blockages - the throat (involuntarily closed in my case), the tongue acting like a shut gate, then the clamped down upper lip. Just writing this out, I am thinking no wonder my body gave up and sent distorted signals. This way of playing no longer sounds biomechanically sound to me, and I can imagine over years and years of playing in this unsustainable way, the system broke down, and my brain sent nonsense signals. Everything was just screaming mayday. 

So what do I do? I no longer think about the diaphragm nor taking a big breath. At the stage I’m in as I’m writing this, I’m actually not thinking about the breath at all. What I do do is connect with my pump. What’s the pump? The very first action we all do when we’re born - what we did to let out that first cry. A baby just born into this world didn’t do daily Breathing Gym, nor did they study diagrams of the diaphragm. The pump system is something we’re wired to use to be alive. When I first started my sessions with Jan, I spent most of my time placing my hand on my belly, staying completely relaxed, and gently singing da-la-la-la-laaaaa. Just observing the pump action. The key is staying completely relaxed. In my experience so far, If I don’t completely let go, like I’m dozing off on the couch, I’m still holding onto some tension, and I can’t engage my pump properly. 

I also always thought about blowing through the horn, and even taught students to imagine a ribbon or laser going through your embouchure, through the horn, and out the bell. One of the biggest changes in what I realized about how playing brass instruments work is that you don't need to be blowing air through the horn to make a sound. Air molecules already exist inside the horn - it's not an environment of vaccum. How it actually works (it works for me) is the pump inside your body instantly transfers energy into the horn, where then the air molecules already inside are excited and make a sound. With this idea of how it works, you can see how imperative it is that the hallway of the lips stay open and the tongue finds a position of guidance so nothing impedes that instant transfer of energy.

To end, I just want to reiterate that I can only speak for my experience - how I understood and applied methods of playing and what I believe I was doing, which undeniably led me to dystonia. The brief description of my understanding of the new way of playing is just that - my understanding. It may change as I gain more clarity, as I continue to let the sound teach the form and function. I will never stop advocating that if you’re reading this because you’re experiencing issues, no matter how big or small, please reach out to Jan Kagarice at Musician’s Wellness. You can read my dystonia story here, but I suffered for 10+ years, starting with small manageable issues that snowballed into full blown dystonia.