Getting that feeling again.

Imagine being awakened from an unintended sleep by rolling across the zip lines at the side of the freeway.   Looking up into the open desert you see that your motorcycle is headed towards disaster at 100MPH and there is nothing to do but ride it down. Unconsciousness takes hold, again.  Then, there is a blurry moment of awareness that an 800 pound motorcycle is sitting on your chest and you cannot breathe.   The story continues and gets worse before it gets better, but eventually, you do mostly recover.

This preceding scenario happened to me on May 14, 2007 and the lingering physical effects of this accident have become a strong element effecting most aspects of my life.   I was reminded of all this by a comment a friend made the other day, when I announced I was taking up residence in a physical space for much of my music teaching.

This was a very, very bad day...

She said she had always wanted to learn how to play the piano but was concerned about her radial nerve damage.   Since I forgot to go to medical school, I had to look that one up.  Interestingly I have had the same condition in my right hand ever since the accident.   In my case the condition manifests itself as numbness in my thumb and index finger.   

When I first got home from the hospital, it took a while until I had the strength to even sit at the keyboard for very long.  When I was able to finally sit in a playing position for a meaningful period of time, I found myself  unable to play accurately.   Fortunately, I retained full range of motion but have a sensory feedback problem which is to say that the thumb and finger I mentioned are largely numb, particularly the thumb.

Having been a student of Kenny Werner at one time, I knew he believed that playing the piano from the correct "space" or with the correct "intention" can actually be healing.  With this in mind I set forth on a two-prong plan to re-teach my hand how to play.  I started from the beginning of his exercises and worked my way through them. At the same time, writing and performing an album of songs.  Using Werner's techniques, I was able to retrain my hand and even reverse some of the damage.  (And the album was kind of OK, too.)

Now the question is:  will these techniques work with a student whose case is worse than mine?!

I have some more studying to do and some plans to make, but I am extremely interested to find out.

Stay tuned for the results....