May 2014

Energy Chi in the violin playing: about my teaching method

One of the most important features of the method which I developed is that I don't just teach playing the violin but also I teach to think in the right direction, and the skills which I give to my students can be of practical use in life, which especially concerns working with energy. I have been able to join the Chi energy and the violin together and use that energy to get more efficient technical skills such as a firm staccato. It is important to know that this method helps to gain beautiful and deep sound without using force. It is absolutely natural to use these techniques in martial arts but in music you rely more on intuition and, in my opinion, it is a mistake as all laws of physiology and energy are the same. The Chi energy follows the same rules whether you use a sword or a bow. The difference is only in goals: the sword is for battle and the bow is for playing the violin.
I'm a teacher, but sometimes (and quite often) I feel myself as a doctor. The most important thing in being a doctor is to make a timely and correct diagnosis. I see when and where the student has a problem. Moreover, I look for the cause of this problem which prevents him from executing a particular technical skill or from playing a piece with sufficient expression. After I make a diagnosis I give advices which could help student to overcome the problems he faces in the shortest time. One of the secrets of my method is that I use the laws of psychology. The student more quickly absorbs the information if he receives it associatively. During my lessons I love telling parables. Here is the parable which shows the point of my method: three persons got the task to break a heavy wall using only his hand. One person beat it for an hour, bruised his arm and decided to stop. The second person beat it for seven hours and even broke the wall but after that he lost consciousness. The third one first of all studied the wall for two and half hours, found the thinnest point and the least power that should be used to break the wall, and then broke it without harm to his body. My method is more about the third person. Getting a proper violin technique requires not only time but also the efficiency of lessons. As my professor used to say, "Playing the violin requires more work from brain than from hands". But the most important thing is that in helping the student to get this knowledge, I want him to use it not only in music but in other spheres of his life even if they are completely different, because the even the most perfect knowledge of technique is only the first level - we can reach spiritual perfection from playing the violin or from martial arts. It is a philosophy, a style of life.

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