Instant Fix #2: How to STOP NECK PAIN

I often get adult flute players tell me that they get neck pain when they play the flute.

Do you?

What about arm, hand or back pain? If so, listen up, because this will help you too...

There are 5 major causes of neck pain when playing. And they are simpler to understand (and fix) than you might think.

You may have heard teachers say "You just need to relax more when you play". Which might be true... But relax what? And how?!

I have some answers for you. Practical things that you can implement right away. (And feel LESS PAIN right away!)

Watch the 5 minute video here called Instant Fix #2: How to Stop Neck Pain and learn those 5 causes.

In this video, I'm going to show you the five causes of neck pain when you play the flute. And of course, how to get rid of it. My name is Jane. I live in Sydney, Australia. I'm a flute teacher, my business, The Flute Teacher's School shows you a different way to get better at the flute. What I love doing in my business is showing someone the exact fix that they need for their exact problem, which basically leads to instant improvement. Now that is a win-win situation because it's so satisfying for me to instantly improve someone's playing and it's satisfying for them. Hopefully you, where you have your playing instantly improve, stick around to the end of this video. And I'll show you how to get into a free mini-course called How to Quickly Improve your Tone on the Flute, which does just that. How to instantly clear up your sound on the flute.

Okay, How to stop neck pain when you are playing. Cause number one, if you are playing and your head juts forward, your chin juts forward when you play, your neck's not really going to be in very good alignment. And this is gonna cause tension, which causes you pain when you play. This is really common, really, really common for like nearly every player to some degree has this problem. And it's because when you learn to play the flute, you have this thing in front of you and you think, okay, I need to play it. And you put your head forward like this. As you get better, you learn to stand up straight and you bring the flute to you, but still there's a little tiny part of you reaching forward for the flute. That creates tension. So above all else, bring the flute entirely to you when you play and keep yourself, your head, everything tall, that is going to remove neck pain, but it's not the only cause there are four more things.

Number two, tight shoulders cause pain. And this is another thing that's really common and most flute players to some degree, have some tension in their shoulders. If you can relax your shoulders when you play, it's going to reduce neck pain because that tension in your shoulders transfers up into your neck when you play. By the way, you won't be able to see, you probably won't be able to see the shoulder tension, unless it's really bad for you. Even if you look fine, you might have the tiniest little bit of tension creeping in there that you just can't see. So even if you think you don't have this just experiment and see if you can really relax your shoulders more when you play. Here's a clue, use your arm muscles to hold up the flute and isolate those shoulders to not be tight.

Number three cause of having neck pain is not using a music stand when you play. If you have music down too low, like on a table and you are looking down to play, you are instantly tightening up things that shouldn't be tight because you are off balance. So you really want music up at eye level. If you don't have a music stand, you can put it on a bookshelf. But just as long as it's sort of at face level, it's going to drastically reduce the tension in parts of your body, which is going to remove neck pain.

Number four cause of neck pain. When you're playing is your right arm too high like this. Now here's a connection, a right arm that is too high means your right shoulder is too tight. And this comes back to your shoulders. Basically your shoulders should not be tight. And if it's your right arm, that's causing it, then relax your right arm.

And number five cause of neck pain is that your head is not straight when you play. Pretty much when we play the flute, you want everything to be as aligned as possible for an instrument that sticks out to the side. So really, you can't be entirely straight when you play the flute because it's an asymmetrical instrument, but you want everything to be as untwisted and as comfortable and as straight and as tension free as possible.

So if your head is, for example, tilted or even like this, you can see if you do something like that on repeat, you're going to get neck pain on either side. Conversely, if it's the other way and your head is tilted. If you do something on repeat like this for a couple of hours, it's kind of understandable you're going to get neck pain. So just keep your head up straight.

There you go. They were the five causes of neck pain when playing the flute and now how to get your hot little hands and fingers on How to Quickly Improve your Tone on the Flute. There's a link to sign up for that mini course in the description of this video, I will hopefully see you there.