«MOVE BETTER, SING & PLAY BETTER»

Singing or playing an instrument requires complex, coordinated, and refined use of more than 600 muscles in your body. Timani helps you to understand your own anatomy and the relationship between your brain, body, and voice or instrument. It’s designed to improve the way you stand, sit, breathe, and move using individually customised exercises that offer the following benefits:

  • Musicality – improve technique, sound, timing and create more natural phrasing
  • Coordination  – understanding the coordination needed to sing or play your instrument effortlessly
  • Health – knowing how you use your body to minimise the risk of performance-related injury or pain caused by misalignment and compensatory muscular patterns
  • Confidence – understanding the relationship between body and mind, which creates positive psychological effects and improves focus in the practice room and on stage
  • Potential – reaching your full potential as a vocalist/musician by acquiring tools that will enable you to express yourself without being compromised by physical limitations.

(© Photo: Oda Hveem)

The seven pillars of Timani

  • Relevant anatomy – you’ll learn basic anatomy and biology that provides an understanding of the complexity of muscular action and movement. You’ll read about key muscles that you want to pay some extra attention to when playing or singing, and exercises to differentiate and coordinate these muscles so they’re prepped for performing music
  • Movement analysis – you’ll get tips on how to observe certain movement patterns and be able to determine if the coordination is sustainable or straining for your body
  • Fascia System – fascia is an important tissue in the body that connects us from top to toe. To gain an effortless technique, some basic understanding of fascia is needed, as it provides elasticity and connection in our movements
  • Healthy natural breathing – you’ll learn about some of the basics of breathing coordination. Accessing healthy breathing is dependent on the functioning of the neck, jaw, shoulders, hips, legs, and feet. The goal is to experience breathing as a whole-body action
  • Push-off – exercises that are aimed at giving you a new relationship to your contact with the floor (feet), the chair (sit bones) and the instrument (fingers, hands and arms). By relating to these surfaces with a slight sense of what we call “push-off,” which is different than just pressing down or simply using weight to play the instrument, we gain more clarity so the brain can coordinate our movements better
  • Brain-body connection – the brain plays an essential role in movement. Knowing some basic neurology is important in order to understand what we’re actually dealing with when it comes to movement coordination and re-training. You’ll learn about the sensory and motor system, each of which participates equally in developing accurate movement skills
  • Awareness – awareness makes us more connected to the musical intention and the physical experience of playing. What we aren’t aware of, we can’t control or change. We need to have the ability to listen to the sound coming from our instrument, be aware of sensations, or simply feel how movement of the body affects our singing, speech or playing. This awareness also helps us become more present when we perform.

Interested ? Contact me. I’m a level 1 Timani Teacher in Switzerland (international certification 2019, Oslo – Norway) active in the cantons Geneva (right & left bank) and Vaud/Waadt (Lausanne & La Côte), but I also work worldwide via Zoom and Skype. I’m 100% fluent in French, English and Dutch (German & Spanish ok).