May 30, 2004 at 2:45 AM

Ow... relearning how to hold the bow is not easy. I was taught the make a circle method, where you make a circle with your thumb and middle finger and pinch the bow right at the stick in between the frog and the leather. This leads to stiff fingers and a non-relaxed bow hand. Of course this was how I had been holding the bow until last week when my teacher noticed that my thumb was not on the leather. So at my last lesson we tried to flatten my hand, and put the stick of the bow, leather at the fleshy part of the middle finger near the palm and put the thumb opposite the middle finger on the leather. I'm never sure that I have it exactly right and everything feels awkward. It is sure hard to tell if my hand is relaxed or not, and the bow feels out of control. No doubt I'm doing something wrong, but at least I'm conscious of what I should be doing. My hand is tired and there is a slight twinge on the nerve at my wrist on the thumb side, so I know I'm doing something wrong. My teacher said to not move my wrist at all and only the elbow joint, so how can my wrist be having some numb nerve twinge? Oh well, I never had carpal tunnel syndrome from my 25 years in front of the computer, sure wouldn't want to start now.

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