How To Achieve “Chill Cat” Cello Posture like Yo-Yo Ma

Hey Cellists….I’d like to talk to you today about one of the world’s most awesomely relaxed cellists…Yo-Yo Ma

Something many of you might not know is that Yo-Yo Ma almost didn’t have a career as the world’s most famous cellist. When he was younger, he had back surgery to correct scoliosis. After the surgery, he was in an upper-body cast for 6 months.

Yo-Yo Ma knows something about how important it is to take care of his back

You can see it in the incredibly relaxed posture of his upper body. I don’t think there is a cellist alive that compares. Let’s call this “Chill Cat” posture. Yo-Yo is a master!

Take a look at him here….

You can notice a few things that I think are really important for cellists who are trying to work on tension issues in their playing and achieve big, effortless sound

One is that in many of these pictures Yo-Yo looks like he reclining in a lazy-boy chair. He is literally lounging!

The other is that his head is up towards the sky and his neck is free to move…

In my teaching studio and in even in the professional world, I see the majority of cellists bending over their cellos, heads down, and faces scrunched up and perturbed.

Occasionally you’ll see Yo-Yo do this too but very rarely and there’s a reason; If you play like this all the time or even most of the time, the tension in your body will be so great, you are basically asking for fatigue and injury.

When you play your neck, arms and body need space to move. Your lungs need to breathe. And importantly, your ears need to be positioned so they can hear the sound of your cello coming back to you from the room.

So what can you do if you suspect you play with your head down and your shoulders up? This can be a challenging habit to break and for every cellist, the solution will be different but here are a few experiments you can try to get your upper body to relax…

1. Raise your music stand. If you need to look down to play your music, your stand is too low
2. Pick a point in front and above you to focus on when you play or practice. You want to choose something just above eye level so your chin is up. An inspiring painting or a building in the distance can make nice focal points. Imagine you are Yo-Yo trying to communicate with the people in the balcony of a concert hall.
3. Experiment with throwing your head all the way back when you are playing. You aren’t necessarily going to stay like that, but see how it feels.
4. Try moving your head back and forth when you play, focussing on keeping your neck limber. If you notice that your cello is really close to your neck and getting in the way, move your endpin slightly to the right to give your neck and head more space
5. Try a posture peg so you aren’t always cranking your head to the right to get away from your C peg
6. Lean back from your cello and see if you can create a feeling of freedom and lounging. (Warning…don’t lean back in your chair and go to sleep. The idea is to create flexibility in your movements, meaning you can lean back and move forward at will)

Give these methods a try and let me know how they worked for you…..

If you would like to learn more about playing the cello with more focus, freedom, and flexibility then head HERE to grab a free training.