The body map is
one's self-representation in one's own brain. If the body map
is accurate, movement is good. If the body map is inaccurate
or inadequate, movement is inefficient and injury-producing.
In Body Mapping, one learns to gain access to one's own body
map through self-observation and self-inquiry.
The student carefully corrects his or her own body map by
assimilating accurate information provided by kinesthetic
experience, the mirror, models, books, pictures, and teachers.
One thereby learns to recognize the source of inefficient
or harmful movement and how to replace it with movement that
is efficient, elegant, direct, and powerful based on the truth
about one's structure, function, and size.
Body Mapping was discovered by William Conable, professor
of cello at the Ohio State University School of Music. Conable
inferred the body map from the congruence of students' movement
in playing with their reports of their notions of their own
structures. He observed that students move according to how
they think they're structured rather than according to how
they are actually structured. When the students' movement
in playing becomes based on the students' direct perception
of their actual structure, it becomes efficient, expressive,
and appropriate for making music. Conable's observations are
currently being confirmed by discoveries in neurophysiology
concerning the locations, functions, and coordination of body
maps in movement.
Body Mapping is the conscious correcting and refining of
one's body map to produce efficient, graceful, coordinated,
effective movement. Body Mapping, over time, with application,
allows any musician to play like a natural. The text and many
pictures in the book What Every Musician Needs to Know
about the Body as well as the many visual aids used in
the course are designed to help each student secure an adequate
and accurate body map and to give each teacher tools for helping
students to good movement in playing.
