Dear Fellow Musicians,

I want to share something I wish I had heard earlier in my career.

For most of my life, the violin was my constant companion. By my early forties, I was a principal violinist in a major symphony orchestra, playing demanding repertoire week after week. From the outside, everything looked stable. Inside my body, it was not.

The pain began quietly—an ache at the base of my neck and in my right shoulder. At first, it appeared only after long rehearsals. Then it started showing up earlier: during warm-ups, during practice, sometimes as soon as I picked up the violin. Like many of you, I did what musicians are trained to do—I pushed through. I tried massage, physical therapy, ice, medication. Each helped temporarily. None changed the underlying pattern.

What frightened me most wasn’t the pain itself, but the loss of trust. My bow arm fatigued quickly. My left hand gripped without my intending it to. Onstage, I became preoccupied with my body instead of the music. Playing began to feel fragile, as though one wrong move might end my career.

A colleague suggested the Alexander Technique. I was skeptical. I didn’t believe posture was the issue—I had studied with great teachers and had played professionally for decades. Still, I was running out of options.

My first Alexander lesson was unlike anything I expected. There were no exercises to practice, no stretches, no corrections. Instead, my teacher asked me to notice what I was doing before I even lifted the violin. I became aware of how my neck tightened slightly as I prepared to play, how my shoulders braced, how effort crept in before sound.

What surprised me most was how familiar those habits felt—and how invisible they had been.

Over time, the work shifted my attention away from fixing pain and toward noticing choices. I began to experience moments of ease—playing felt less compressed, more spacious. The pain didn’t vanish overnight, but it stopped escalating. Rehearsals became manageable again. Then comfortable. Then, once in a while, joyful.

One day during a long Mahler rehearsal, I realized I hadn’t thought about my shoulder for an entire movement. My breathing felt fuller. The violin no longer felt “held up” by effort, but supported by my whole self. My sound felt freer and more resonant.

Months later, the chronic pain that had once dominated my playing receded and eventually disappeared. More importantly, my confidence returned. I no longer equated intensity with strain. I learned how to pause before playing, how to allow coordination rather than impose control. And when old habits reappeared—as they still do—I had a way to notice them early and choose differently.

I’m not writing this to say the Alexander Technique is a cure-all. I’m writing because many of us accept pain as part of the profession, and it doesn’t have to be. If you’re struggling, especially if you feel you’re working harder just to maintain what you once did with ease, there may be another way.

The Alexander Technique didn’t teach me how to play the violin.

It taught me how to stop interfering with my ability to play.

With respect and solidarity,
Judy Warren