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CHAPTER 2: MAPPING THE STRUCTURE

The body map is the internal representa­tion in the brain that governs movement. Body Mapping (designated in this book with capital letters) is not the same thing. Body Mapping is an activity in which, through the training of attention and the refinement of kinesthesia, information ceases to be “external” and becomes “internal” - part of the representation in the brain governing movement.

Supporting and delivering weight

When we stand or sit upright we are sup­ported by the bony structure of our bodies. In holding us upright the structural parts of the body play a dual role: they support the parts above them, from which they receive weight, and they deliver weight to the parts (or the ground) below them. Since supporting and delivering weight is what the structure is designed for, uprightness is not something we need to bring about consciously. It is not something we do, it happens because of the way we are built. The weight-bearing and weight-delivering capacity of the bony structure is what makes mechanical advantage possible.

It is useful to regard both functions-delivering weight and supporting weight-as active or dynamic functions. The head, for example, when in balance, delivers weight precisely and evenly to the top vertebra of the spine, which is designed to receive it. If the head is off balance, it will deliver weight unevenly, to the wrong place, or in the wrong direction, obliging various muscles to work in compensation. If imbalance becomes chronic, the muscular compensation becomes chronic also, restricting freedom of movement and, perhaps, creating other seri­ous problems.

The supporting of weight is dynamic also. Physics tells us that the weight of an object (such as the skull) represents a force toward the center of the earth. To prevent the object falling, the force must be counter­acted by an equal and opposite force. Therefore, the skull exerts a downward force that is exactly matched by the upward force coming from the spine. The upward force is something we can learn to feel. All too often, habits of chronic muscular ten­sion make us unaware of the way our bony structure supports us. When we learn to sit and stand in balance, we can release some of that muscular effort. We can attend to and experience the support supplied from the ground and up through our bony struc­ture as a dynamic upward force, a sort of “buoyancy.” Cultivating this kind of balance makes movement easier and improves piano playing. A different way of putting the point is this: when we learn to rely on the bony structure and the automatic pos­tural adjustments to hold us up (instead of thinking we need to use muscular work), tension can be released and we are free to approach piano playing from a position of mechanical advantage.

This chapter describes the principal weight-bearing and weight-delivering structures in the body. The next chapter, “Mapping the Places of Balance,” examines the interrelation of those structures in bal­ance and movement. The emphasis in this chapter is on structures and in the next chapter on joints.

The skull

The skull is massive and roughly spherical. It sits, balanced, on the top of the spine. Its weight is delivered to the structures below it. Since it is at the top of the body it does not support the weight of any other body part. The ear marks the approximate center, front to back, of the skull. With your thumb at your ear you can rotate your arm to move your index finger, like a compass tracing a circle with your thumb as the center, to ver­ify that the ear is the center, front to back, of the skull.

The jaw is not part of the skull. It attaches to the skull at a joint in front of the ears (the temporo-mandibular joint or “TMJ”). The lower teeth attach to the jaw, which should move freely without disturbing the balance of the skull. The upper teeth do not attach to a second jaw, they attach to the base of the skull itself. Notice how easy it is to chew using the movement of the single jaw and how much tension is created if you imagine yourself with two moving jaws opening and closing like a trap.

Two common mapping errors are, first, thinking that the skull is supported somewhere toward the back instead of in the middle, and second, thinking that the head includes the jaw and the neck begins at the bottom of the jaw. A person who makes this second error develops a “head-neck unit” which hampers playing.