Ulnar nerve exercises

Flossing The Ulnar Nerve

Unfortunately, this has become a thing for me. 😦

So that’s a pull down/head down, pull down/head up. Owl mask, side to side. I’ll do these M/W/F and see if it helps.

ETA: So far, it did help. I woke up this morning with my arms and hands feeling great, although now that I’m at the table again, I can feel the pain and numbness returning — not a surprise. But it is nice to see that the problem is what I thought it was, and there is something that can be done about it. Ultimately though, what’s needed is a desk, and for me to get off my ass from time to time.

Relax.

I think every problem you have can be solved by that simple word. At any instrument, but also probably in life in general, where possible. I’m finding that to be the case at the piano, and at the flute, and I already bumped against it at the harp although I haven’t been at the harp for months now.

And do you know what caused it? Tension and ulnar nerve troubles from working from home at my dining room table rather than at proper office furniture. Work started to hurt, and so did the piano. I’m still feeling pain on the outer margins of my hands when I wake up, which I’m not happy about. Now that it’s warmer out, hopefully I can take my daily walk in the middle of the day as I usually do to get up and away from the table.

But finally — finally! — relaxing is doing a lot as well. I’ve never been fast or nimble at any instrument, mostly due to the fact that I have been for most of my life incapable of relaxing. A few childhood issues resulted in programmed hypervigilance that has not helped me in life, let’s just put it that way. And now, it’s finally starting to damage me and not just my playing.

So now, the first thing I’m doing when I pick up my flute or sit at the piano is to tell myself, “RELAX.” I also say it to myself when I begin new phrases, because it’s very easy to tense up as you go without even realizing that you’re doing it. You started relaxed sure, but by the time you’re done, your body is like a suspension bridge cable and you aren’t even aware of it until you put the thing down or stop playing.

Relax. Relax. Relax. Relax. Nothing is more important.

Relax.

In other news, I’m working on chromatic scales while focusing as much as possible on relaxation, and it’s very nice. I’m going slow at first — not as painfully slow as I do with the piano since I don’t have to blow into that one, but slow helps. And it’s helping me make the bottom hand adjustment that I’ve needed to make for this flute, swapping from my Copley to the Ormiston. There are top hand differences, but the G# key is placed such that I have no choice but to adjust my hand.

The bottom hand is much harder, though. It’s really easy to get sloppy on that one since you don’t need the C#/C keys much. However, in order to use them, I’m finding that I need a larger spread between B2 and B3. And the hole sizes are such that what would have been an acceptable “wobble” in finger placement on either — especially the noticeably larger B2 hole — doesn’t cut it with this thing. And it’s looking like only the slow chromatic scales are going to sort that out.

So basically the tl;dr on this is “relax and go slow.” Wow. Look at me making these insightful discoveries. In other news, there was a Thursday last week.

Last update: I really like to have a Cnat that is one finger off from the second octave D. It’s just convenient. And while I used to use (xxx oxo) on the Copley, it looks like (xox xxo) is really nice on the Ormiston. So essentially, I moved the open hole from T3 to B2. So that’s nice.