{"id":42994,"date":"2017-02-17T11:59:18","date_gmt":"2017-02-17T16:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=42994"},"modified":"2017-02-17T12:09:28","modified_gmt":"2017-02-17T17:09:28","slug":"feature-how-do-musicians-heal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2017\/02\/17\/feature-how-do-musicians-heal\/","title":{"rendered":"FEATURE |\u00a0It’s Time to Talk About the Stigma Surrounding Musicians’ Injuries"},"content":{"rendered":"
A look at performers and the practitioners who treat them, as well as the stigma connected to acknowledging injury in professional performance.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

T<\/span>he Performing Arts Medicine Association is an organization of specialists who treat performers from all branches of the arts.\u00a0 Collaborators from many different treatment fields including medicine, osteopathy, occupational therapy, chiropractic, psychology, social science and various fields of performance pedagogy, have been gradually developing a specialized expertise that is ripe to become an accredited specialty, in the same way that sports medicine is now a distinct specialty within medicine.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s well-known that performing artists suffer occupational injuries, and performing arts practitioners face a peculiar challenge before they can treat their patients.\u00a0 They have to persuade them to admit they need treatment.\u00a0 Three points from Dr. John Chong\u2019s opening presentation at the recent PAMA meeting in Toronto gives a clear picture of the situation of classical musicians: in Canada in 2011 musicians\u2019 average earning was $15,880; there is an 84 % lifetime prevalence of injury; the chance of playing while injured is 50 %.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Next time you\u2019re at a performance, bear in mind that the musician you\u2019re watching might actually be in pain and exacerbating the injury that causes it.\u00a0 The combination of physical pain, its threat to future work and financial insecurity, causes musicians to keep their maladies a secret, causing a downward spiral that cannot reverse itself.<\/p>\n

So before PAMA members can even treat performers, they have to change the culture from secrecy to openness.\u00a0 Fake It Until You Can\u2019t Make It, the theme of PAMA\u2019s meeting, was a rallying cry to performers to seek help before they reach a point of no return.\u00a0 Several performers including two eminent classical musicians, violinist Stephen Sitarski, concertmaster of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, and Bryan Epperson, the Principal Cellist of the Canadian Opera Company who were on the brink before they sought treatment gave powerful personal testimonies.\u00a0 What their accounts made clear is that musicians face many of the same vocational risks as many other workers but with one critical difference\u2014they are also always subjected to the scrutiny of live public performance.\u00a0 It\u2019s the combination of bad working conditions plus <\/em>the lifelong demand of artistic mastery and all that it entails, that can eventually crush a musician.<\/p>\n

\"Stephen
Stephen Sitarsk (Photo: Bo Huang)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For example, many people are forced to endure debilitating commutes to work.\u00a0 But once they arrive, they don\u2019t have to give a virtuosic performance.\u00a0 For 21 years Stephan Sitarski\u2019s travel demands were almost inhumane.\u00a0 Working steadily for what he called the \u201c401 Philharmonic\u201d, he traversed the Windsor to Oshawa corridor, playing with orchestras in Windsor, London, Kitchener, Hamilton, Toronto, and Oshawa.\u00a0 The negative health impact of excessive commuting is well studied \u2014 it includes raised blood sugar and cholesterol, lower fitness, larger waist circumference, hypertension, poorer sleep quality, higher anxiety and reduced happiness.\u00a0 While this isn\u2019t good for any commuter, it puts the musician\u2019s task in a special light\u2014imagine a long, unpredictable, frustrating, congested and risky commute with the sound of 18-wheelers throbbing in your ears, followed by performing a piece that is supposed to be joyful or delicate or serene.<\/p>\n

When Sitarski spoke last Saturday, it was the 17th day in a row that he couldn\u2019t be at his home in Kitchener.\u00a0 Dorothy\u2019s observation at the end of the Wizard of Oz is true:\u00a0 There\u2019s No Place Like Home.\u00a0 Human beings need to return to their secure base on a regular basis to feel well.\u00a0 Frequent separation from family and friends, poor food options, not being able to exercise, and the strain of orienting to unfamiliar surroundings catches up with you, no matter how many coping skills you develop.<\/p>\n

Add to this the fraught political environments of many orchestras, constant fiscal crisis; lack of sufficient rehearsal time and artistic conflict between a musician who interprets a piece one way while practicing and a conductor who wants it done differently, and changed on the spot, and you get a sense of the unremitting strain that Sitarski experienced.\u00a0 Chronic stress is much more than a deeply unpleasant feeling; it is a whole-body threat to the psychoneuroimmunology system that eventually wreaks destruction.\u00a0 This all cumulated for Sitarski with crushingly severe clinical depression, though what caused him to seek medical help was the unrelenting pain in his neck.\u00a0 The two had to be treated concurrently because the physical pain was not going to be relieved without addressing the psychic pain.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusicians are sensitive people who have a strong connection to raw emotions that they want to express, \u201d stated Sitarski.\u00a0 \u201c We\u2019re not snowflakes, but what makes us sensitive to music makes us vulnerable to the often brutal demands we face.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Bryan
Bryan Epperson (Photo: RCM)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bryan Epperson\u2019s stratospheric career has taken him all over the world, as well as to Santa Fe every summer, where he is principal cellist of the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra.\u00a0 Air travel has a different set of hazards from highway driving, equally devastating.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody hates you when you travel with a $2.5 M cello that takes up the seat beside you on an airplane.\u00a0 I used to order a scotch for myself and a double for my instrument \u2014 and they would bring it\u00a0because it came with the seat.”<\/p>\n

This anecdote is especially resonant for me\u00a0because I was once asked to give up my bulk head aisle seat on a plane for a passenger with special needs, only to discover later that I had agreed to reduced leg room so that a cello could sit where I was supposed to be.\u00a0 That caused mild chagrin, and it might have been Epperson himself who gave me a nasty look when I smilingly told the musician that I was the person who was displaced.\u00a0 He clearly resented my bringing this to his attention, and in truth, if I\u2019d known I was incurring discomfort for an inanimate object, I would have said no.\u00a0 So it\u2019s not only the passengers who hate the cellist, but the cellist feels pretty negatively towards the passengers.\u00a0 Travelling in a state of hostility is guaranteed to generate stress.<\/p>\n

Epperson described his harrowing transformation from a passionate lover of the cello to an obsessed workaholic with the workload of four musicians.\u00a0 This reduced his sleep to four hours a night, increased his alcohol consumption, wrecked his first marriage, and terminated his once deeply meaningful religious practice.<\/p>\n

At the highest levels of virtuosity, Epperson explained, string players work in the margin of \u00a0\u201cmilliseconds and millimeters\u201d. \u00a0Sustaining such perfection has to take its toll, as it has for a colleague of his in one of the world\u2019s elite chamber music groups who told him that he wakes up each morning feeling as if he has a loaded gun pointed at his forehead. Epperson \u201cfiguratively hit the wall\u201d around 2004, when he experienced his first panic attack. \u201cAnyone who has ever had one knows he would rather be dead than have another one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Epperson\u2019s description of his recovery is as uplifting as the story of his deterioration is discouraging.\u00a0 He now has a manageable workload, gives master classes instead of private teaching, exercises daily, gets proper sleep, has regular meals, abstains from alcohol, and most hearteningly, has redefined his relationship with his cello.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery morning I play cello for myself,\u201d he told us, \u201cwhich is like doing Tai Chi for me.\u00a0 My intellect, heart, body and soul come together while I do scales and arpeggios starting in the upper positions, where most cellists are weakest.\u00a0 I finish practicing happy and in love with music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Surely that is a description of a musician who has healed. \u00a0Music itself, combined with timely clinical intervention, is the musician\u2019s cure.\u00a0 PAMA, in partnership with the musicians who are courageous enough to speak openly about their struggles, is ready to provide the timely intervention.<\/p>\n

For more FEATURES, click HERE<\/u><\/a><\/span>.<\/h3>\n

#LUDWIGVAN<\/i><\/b><\/h3>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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