The harp is a demanding instrument to play, involving so much more than hands and fingers. We use our whole body, from head to foot, to create our inner balance—a framework of bone and muscle that supports the technique and tone of our playing.

Usually we don’t think about our bodies in terms of a framework. All of us have our routines while sitting behind a harp, often not realizing that the simple act of sitting influences playing and tone. A constant bend of the neck or a strange angle in the wrist may not matter for a few hours, but, over a lifetime of practice, these small habits can build up to injuries that stop a musician from playing.

Nearly three-fourths of professional musicians report suffering from pain or injury at some point in their careers, according to a 2016 article in Johns Hopkins Magazine. This means over one quarter manage to navigate a lifelong career without injury. What is their secret? Prevention. 

Prevention involves being aware of your body, understanding how it interacts with the harp, and finding the best solutions to issues that arise. Stopping an injury before it starts requires awareness of  common problems harpists face, intentional work to avoid those problems, listening to your body, and taking action at the first sign of pain.

Just as our bodies all differ, developing a strategy for injury prevention is individual too. A method that works well for one might not be ideal for another. We will take a look at four of the methods commonly used by musicians throughout the world to help you form your own approach to injury prevention: physiotherapy, Alexander Technique, Body Mapping, and mindfulness.

Physiotherapy

Let’s start with the most common method—one that most people have heard of, or perhaps even experienced after an injury. Physiotherapy encompasses rehabilitation, injury prevention, health, and fitness and uses a holistic health approach. Of all the methods we will examine in this article, it is the only one that is an official health care support service and is completely science-based. In general, practicing physiotherapists have a Bachelor of Science degree from a university and a government-approved accreditation exam. By doing a quick search for physiotherapists, you will find that they often specialize in everything from neurology to orthopedics and occasionally musicians as well.

Physiotherapist Coralie Cousin works with harpist Maëlle Martin. “Good, strong abdominal muscles help the shoulders relax when playing the harp,” she says.

Physiotherapist Coralie Cousin has focused her career on musicians. She works as the official therapist for musicians at the École Normale de Musique de Paris and the National Orchestra d’Île-de-France, as well as running a private practice. One of her areas of focus is with harpists—she even has a pedal harp in her office to help her clients interact with their instrument and find their best posture. During our Zoom call, the harp stood in the background, along with a mat and an exercise ball.

We start with posture. The word conjures up images of straight, stiff backs, perhaps complete with Victorian corsetry. Cousin is quick to clarify that proper harp posture involves holding the body correctly in relationship to the harp with freedom of movement, and not a straight stiff back.

Because each  body is unique, everyone needs a personalized solution to their problems. However, some generalized advice helps. Cousin has some basic advice she can offer every harpist including scheduled practice and harp posture. (See “Finding balance with physiotherapy” below.)

“When you have a twinge, it shows that something isn’t right in your body.”

Cousin’s clients know scheduled practice is much more than simply sitting down and playing from time A to time B. Elite athletes have carefully scheduled programs for training and so should musicians, even those not playing at a professional level. A scheduled practice session should include warm-up exercises, focused breaks, and physical activities. Cousin suggests starting with a warmup. “Playing without warming up, when your muscles are hard and cold, can create an injury,” Cousin explains. She suggests warming up hands, trunk, shoulders, and elbows. Understanding a proper warm up routine is important. Talk with your teacher or seek out expert instructional videos such as those on Harp Column Academy (harpcolumnacademy.com) or on Cousin’s website (physiotherapy-for-musicians.com). More practice tips can be found in “What the teachers say” below. 

A healthy body needs exercise. “Good, strong abdominal muscles help the shoulders relax when playing the harp,” Cousin observes. She recommends swimming as one of the best sports for harpists, especially working with a supporting float so as not to overwork the arms. “Walking is good too,” Cousin says. “The best is to find something relaxing, where you can empty your head.”

With advances in online technology,  many physiotherapists now offer online consultations, which Cousin suggests can work well, adding that it’s best for a harp teacher and student to work together with the physiotherapist on the video conference. “The teacher can help explain the problem, and a good physio can listen to the problem and find the best place to start their work.”  

Alexander Technique

“One of Alexander Technique’s aims is to increase musicians’ freedom by giving them the ability to realize a habit is occurring and monitoring the habit, making it possible to choose a different action.” —Stephen Parker

The Alexander Technique was developed by F. M. Alexander in the 1890s based on the technique he invented to cure his vocal problems. Alexander Technique teacher Stephen Parker describes it as “…teaching us the process of directing ourselves, like conductors organizing the timing and expression of our bodies, to allow the creation of beautiful music.” All of the Alexander Technique teachers we talked to note that Alexander Technique can be used by everybody, and those with a willingness to observe themselves honestly and without judgment will gain its full benefit.

A central theme in Alexander Technique is looking at how our habits affect our daily lives and, in our case, harp playing. In order to understand Alexander Technique, we need a common understanding of what defines a habit. We develop a habit to serve a purpose, and some habits serve us very well. A student with excellent practice habits is more likely to become a professional harpist. If that same student has a habit of tightening her neck when playing loudly, she is not utilizing the full sound of her harp. Often habits are subconsciously automated—we neither realize we do them, nor that other options are available. 

 “One of Alexander Technique’s aims is to increase musicians’ freedom by giving them the ability to realize a habit is occurring and monitoring the habit, making it possible to choose a different action,” says Parker. He works with professional musicians throughout Scandinavia and teaches Alexander Technique at the Norwegian Academy of Music. We met in my Oslo office on a cold, gray day.  His calm manner and friendliness put me at ease, and he spoke thoughtfully, careful to express complex ideas in a manner everyone can understand. 

Parker explains that, once you are aware of what you are doing, you can learn to inhibit this habitual behavior and when you stop doing the wrong things, the right thing happens by itself. For example, while sitting down at the harp, a harpist’s neck might move forward and their shoulders round slightly. As noted, this causes the entire balance of the back and hips to adjust accordingly. If the forward placement of the neck happens every time the harpist sits, it is an unconscious habit that inhibits free movement and hampers the tone the harpist produces. With Alexander Technique the harpist learns to be aware of where the neck and shoulders are placed in order to have a healthier balance on the sitting bones.  

“If we can increase your freedom to choose, then you can develop a whole array of ways of sitting or relating [to your instrument]…rather than [having] one general response,” Parker explains. “Once you increase that array of choice, you increase your freedom…so we are not trying to get rid of habits. We follow the track of becoming aware of our habits, allowing us to consciously choose that habit, or to choose other strategies.”

“Tone improves when we can relax and vibrate in harmony with our harp.”
—Imogen Barford

Imogen Barford, head of harp at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, is a certified Alexander Technique teacher. At her conservatory, they use Alexander Technique and Body Mapping with music students. She works with students to help them identify specific body sensations while they are playing and then to learn which sensations inhibit their movement and the color of their tone.  

All of the experts and harp teachers interviewed for this article agree that your body can change the tone of the music you produce. Specifically, they say that how a musician holds tension in their body can affect their sound. Some experts say it’s important to relax, while others prefer to emphasize resilience. Whatever the terminology, the concept remains: when the body releases unnecessary tension, the tone improves. 

Barford discusses tone in depth, at one point laughing to say, “Explaining this is like trying to paint the taste of ice cream.” She pauses to think for a moment and continues, “For example, a harpist wants to play louder, so they make more and more effort, like tightening muscles and holding their breath. With that effort, the sound goes out the window. With Alexander Technique we try to do less and less and less, the louder we want to be.” Barford works with students to identify the feelings and the sensations in their bodies when they try to play loudly. She then helps them experience playing loudly with less effort. “The sound you get when you play loudly with less effort is amazing, you can hear the difference, and that makes students hungry for more,” she explains. “Tone improves when we can relax and vibrate in harmony with our harp. If we are tight, the tone is tight. The musician is the real instrument that must be tuned.” 

As Cousin points out, music is about movement. You can see this if you watch any video of a harpist playing on mute. Musicians move in pursuit of mastering our craft. Many music conservatories and teachers already teach their students about movement using modalities like Alexander Technique and Body Mapping.

Alexander Technique and Body Mapping are interconnected, and teachers of Alexander Technique use Body Mapping in their teachings. However, Body Mapping is not a technique, it is a method to learn about the body’s movement, and this learning can be used in any movement technique the student wishes to pursue. To explain it more clearly, if Alexander Technique is a harp trolley, Body Mapping is a wheel. This wheel can be used for other purposes, but it is still a part of the trolley.

Body Mapping

Body Mapping helps students understand how their own body is designed to move and how to use their body knowledge to find the best movements for playing their instruments. Alexander Technique teachers Barbara and William Conable developed Body Mapping in the late 1990s as a way to train musical educators in the teaching of  movement. The Conables formed the method around the insights of F. M. Alexander while incorporating current neuroscience of movement and other somatic disciplines. Today there is international licensing through the non-profit organization, The Association for Body Mapping Education.

In Body Mapping, a body map is literally a neural map that holds an individual’s concept of the location, function, and size of their body’s bony and soft tissues structures. Body Mapping helps a person to access and, if necessary, change that map to bring it into alignment with the reality of their design. Charting an internal understanding of their joints, muscle movement, and body functions allows a person to move well and avoid injury. 

“The main idea of Body Mapping is to understand the design of the body and understand when you are moving with the body’s design, instead of against it.” —Jane Shellshear

Body Mapping educator and pianist Jane Shellshear meets me from her home computer in the Blue Mountains of Australia. She is joined by Happy, a terrier rescue mix who gives the camera a quick doggie grin, becoming the star of yet another Zoom call. Shellshear has extensive experience in music and movement education. She is a member of the Association for Body Mapping Education, the Australian Society of Teachers of Alexander Technique and the Australian Society for Performing Arts Healthcare. She also holds a Bachelor in Music and Licentiate in music from Trinity College London. She has been using Body Mapping with her students for seven years.

Body Mapping is a way to present information to musicians so they can use it at a personal level to inform their body movements. Its students learn how their body moves while playing their instrument. “For example, many people don’t realize that the movement of turning the wrist actually happens at the elbow. If you initiate the movement of turning your hand over at the wrist, the movement is awkward and stiff. But allowing the movement to be initiated at the elbow results in freer wrist movement, with improved facility,” Shellshear says. The resulting enhanced efficiency can help prevent potential problems like carpal tunnel syndrome or tendinitis.

“The main idea of Body Mapping is to understand the design of the body and understand when you are moving with the body’s design, instead of against it,” Shellshear says. “As musicians we do a number of complex, fast, and repetitive movements. Knowing how we create these movements can help prevent injury.” When students are more aware of their body’s design, they can learn to play music with their body, instead of against it, becoming more likely to listen to the warnings their body gives them. “When you have a twinge, it shows that something isn’t right in your body. When people become more sensitive about this kind of sensation, they will listen.”

Listening to a twinge also means being open to finding the movement or tight muscles that cause the twinge and changing the habitual movement at the twinge’s root. Shellshear explains that, while some people can change quickly, altering habitual ways of moving is often a long-term project. With professional performers, she has sometimes recommended that musicians find a Band-Aid short term solution, such as massage, in order to continue working, while they engage on the journey of replacing unhelpful movements with good ones. 

 Mindfulness

All of the modalities we have touched on have common threads, one of which is mindfulness. There are many definitions about what mindfulness is—and isn’t. Even Zen masters continue to develop new levels of understanding. 

“[Mindfulness is] digging deeply into the present moment with awareness of what is happening on all levels.” —Kristen Queen

Dr. Kristen Queen, Interim Director of the School of Music at Texas Christian University’s College of Fine Arts, incorporates mindfulness teachings as part of her Yoga for Musicians course. “[Mindfulness is] digging deeply into the present moment with awareness of what is happening on all levels. This includes your body and mind; it helps you understand your thought patterns as well as movement.” The challenging part? Holding this awareness without judging yourself.

Queen finds mindfulness to be a key element of her students’ development. As musicians we commonly spend a substantial portion of our practice time assessing what is good or bad or right or wrong with our playing. Mindfulness asks us to focus on the moment and to let go of the judgment hardwired into us. By using this perspective, we can switch to observing ourselves externally, without judgment and expectations, and combat performance anxiety. “Anything that brings you into the present moment, will help,” Barford suggests. “Nerves happen when you worry about what is going to happen. When you focus on the moment you don’t have the brain left for worrying. As a rule of thumb, I remind people that nerves are not the enemy.” She points out that we need to understand that there are two types of practice: practice practicing and practice performing.”

In the practice room, mindfulness enhances our work. Queen gives an example: “I know I want to work on this sonata, but do I have an expectation on how that will go? Have I decided it will go well, or have I decided it will be difficult? By deciding on the agenda, I already have expectations and self-judgment.” Rather than focusing only on the goal, we can decide instead to be fully present on the journey and observe what routes bring about success. “Many of us say things to ourselves that we would never say to someone else. These negative things are framed by our past and future worries,”
Queen says. 

Queen also notes that mindfulness helps in any time of stress. It is easy to learn and practice. There are several useful mindfulness apps that have varying levels of free features, including Calm, Headspace, and Insight Timer. 

The next time you sit behind your harp, pay attention. Observe what your habits are, and then decide if there is something that needs to change. By being aware of your body, you can work to prevent injury, improve your tone, and enjoy years of pain-free harp playing.

Finding balance with physiotherapy

Good mobile posture and finding balance with your harp are important parts of injury prevention, agree all of the experts we spoke with. Here are some helpful tips from physiotherapist Coralie Cousin.

Inner Knees and Shoulder

When you lean the harp back towards you, the first point of contact should be your inner knees, which helps hold the harp, keeping its full weight off your right shoulder. Remember that a 20-year-old shoulder might not feel the weight, but a 60-year-old shoulder could have chronic pain after years of having too much weight on it. If you want to play long-term, treat your body right.

When playing in the upper register, move the harp slightly away from the body with your knees. This allows more space for your right hand to play and helps your neck not to cramp up from looking too closely to the right side.

Keep in mind that pain in the thumb could be triggered by something else in the shoulder.
Often the body will compensate for one weakness by causing a problem elsewhere.

Neck

This is one of the common problem areas for harpists. We tend to always look to the right at the strings and forward to the music we are reading.

Keep the head and neck in balance with the body so that the shoulders can move freely without the head jutting forward.

Breathing

There is no good or bad way to breathe, however there are some valuable tips that help with playing and posture.

In her book, The Musician, A High-Level Athlete, Cousin devotes a full chapter to breathing. Here are a few tips: keep relaxed and even breathing, especially during the difficult passages. Sing the music, which will help you learn how to breathe with the melody as you play.

When playing in the upper registers, breathe into the lower lungs to help keep the back and shoulders relaxed and in position.

Pelvis

Probably you are sitting to read this article. Without shifting, notice where your pelvic bones are sitting. The next time you sit down at the harp, move your upper body around and feel how the pelvic bones move. For good harp posture, your weight should be evenly distributed over the pelvis – the bones should be stable and muscles active but not tense. 

Watch out! If you lean slightly more to one side and stay in this position it upsets the balance of the pelvis. Everything is connected; staying in one position too long can cause problems.


What the teachers say

How three university harp teachers work to prevent student injuries.

How do you address injury prevention? 

Nicole Brady

“When I have new students, which is usually at the beginning of their freshman year of college, I have a three-step approach. First, we explore their body’s physical relationship to playing, based on a set of new technique exercises. Second, I make sure they know how to practice. One hour of practice is 45 minutes with the harp and 15 minutes of a break—keep in mind, using technology is not a break. Third, I encourage them to be physically active, increasing their core strength.” —Nicole Brady

How do you help students prevent injury?

Awareness is the best way to avoid injury. For example, if I have students with tight and painful elbows, I have to help them understand how to release their tension. [In the beginning] sometimes they just can’t, as they don’t know where their muscles are located. To influence and work on our body, we need to understand how it functions.” —Isabelle Perrin

What are some common injury issues you see?

Jaymee Haefner

“Most common issues [I see] are related to overuse in the students’ first year when they are suddenly behind the harp the whole day. Most of them are ill-equipped to know the warning signs of injury, and, because they want to achieve, they push through the pain. With good technique, you can practice a long time. However, if you are doing something poorly, that could be an injury waiting to happen.” — Jaymee Haefner

How does body tension affect a harpist’s tone?

“Anytime you have tension in your body while playing, the sound will be restricted or constricted. One essential element is closing your fingers and then releasing. If you don’t close completely, you hold your fingers in a position of tension, whereas if you close all the way and then release, your fingers can be quite relaxed. It’s a very basic skill that can make such a difference in the sound of how you play.” —Nicole Brady

Isabelle Perrin

“Our sound is influenced by our entire body, and not only the fingers. Our balance, posture, and energy flow play a major role in the quality of our tone. As we start to be aware of our ‘bad posture’ habits, we can find the causes of the tension and learn to use our energy in the best, most effective way. Putting this properly together causes an amazing change to one’s sound.”
—Isabelle Perrin

What additional tools can harpists use to prevent injuries?

Mental health affects people’s technique and their ability to protect themselves from injury. As a teacher, it’s important for me to know where the student is—emotions affect the whole body. It’s important to recognize where you are in the emotional spectrum and give yourself grace as you approach technique and allow your body to feel the relaxation needed for great technique.“ —Nicole Brady

“Stay in physical shape. The harp requires our whole body. When some of our circulation isn’t working efficiently, some areas won’t get enough blood, and this will impact your fingers. Cardio workouts are especially helpful. When you work out hard your body learns to handle stress more efficiently and to work through it—this can make performing easier.” — Jaymee Haefner

“The main thing is to go from unconscious patterns to awareness. This is when we can start to solve our problems. For example, after an injury where we lose strength or flexibility, the body will automatically compensate by adding extra work from other areas, thus creating new tensions. If we are aware of the process, we can stop it before it happens.—Isabelle Perrin