CERTIFICATION CONTENT
The Timani certification course is a part-time, yet comprehensive course. We care about each participant and the development and understanding of the material, so you will get both group classes and individual follow up. You will learn many tools for your own benefit to play/sing better and to help your students if you teach. The course contains:
3-year part-time Timani Certification Course - Online Live
The time schedule will be adjusted to accommodate course members from Asia, USA and Europe.
Course content:
Timani introduction course (live online and/or filmed)
Around 90 hours of group teaching each year
Anatomy lessons and exams
Instruction and practice of Timani exercises
Case studies/lecture/workshop practice
Group work with co-students
6-8 individual Timani lessons per year for your personal implementation of the material
20 online course modules per year
The course runs online, plu 5-6 days in person course in the 2nd and 3rd year
Teaching practice with feedback
Instrument specific analysis and exercises
Special topics including fascia, the nervous system, focal dystonia, how to read scientific papers, musicians’ health, pathologies.
Here you can read about some of the background of the method, and some of the things that we will cover during the group sessions throughout the course:
In-depth anatomy relevant to musicians
You will learn step-by-step anatomy and go in-depth on key muscles for playing and singing, both the names of the muscles as well as their function and how they apply to music-making. You also learn about which muscles normally compensate for the same movement and how to break the habits of these compensations.
The model used in Timani describes exactly what muscles the musician needs for breathing, stability, and free movement. The theory is based on the three-part structure developed by Bergmark (1989), where there is a clear scientific understanding of local stabilizers (muscles that provide protection in the joint while moving), global stabilizers (muscles that are meant for low load activity over longer periods of time, such as playing an instrument for hours every day), and global mobilizers (muscles meant for high loads over a short amount of time, which should relax and provide weight while playing an instrument). New research on the classification of muscles is also taken into consideration and applied to musicians in Timani.
Movement training and movement analysis Taught by Timani Institute Teachers.
Here you learn to recognize body movement in your own body as well as how to observe and help others. You learn to see if the muscles are performing their primary job or signs that compensatory patterns have occurred. Traditional language such as ”stiff bow arm”, ”too high breathing”, ”relax while playing”, ”sit straight”, etc., are analyzed, anatomically explained, and re-trained in the body through simple but efficient exercises.
General knowledge of the connective tissue and the development of fascial integrity taught by Miriam Hlavaty
The specific component of the connective tissue that you learn about in Timani is the so-called fascia. The new definition of this word defines the living tissue with many functions. One quality of the fascia can be described as firm but elastic tendinous structures of the body that wrap around each muscle, bone, and organ. The fascia creates a continuum throughout the body, and if we removed everything but the fascia, we would see a 3D model of the whole body with its organs, bones, blood vessels, cells, and nerves. The fascia consists of the tendons and the connective tissue of the body that hold us together, keep our shape, and create a communication system for all movements in the body. The elasticity and connections of the fascia tissue has been shown through recent research to be highly important for healthy movement. In Timani we specifically work on the fascia in order to use its unique qualities, for example when using rapid and repetitive movements for playing and singing. This instantly reduces the effort of muscle use, and prevents us from cramping up and becoming tense and stiff. We also work on the connections that run, for example, from the fingers to the shoulders, or from the feet to the diaphragm, as described by, among others, Tom Myers in Anatomy Trains.
Developmental exercises for accessing deep muscles and training the brain-body connection
We will go into a term that is named push-off. This term points to the neurophysiological reflexes that we are born with, which create the natural learning process of locomotion (crawling and ultimately walking) when we are infants. These reflexes were first described and systematized by the child neurologist Vojta in the 1960s. Similar principles were discovered by neuro-physiotherapist Roswita Brunkow in the 1970s and systematized by her successors. These principles are also found in many body awareness practices, as well as the Görtz method where the connection to playing an instrument is taught. This natural push-off from the ground creates our constant situation of defying gravity without holding ourselves in a tense way. There are chains of muscles that constantly cooperate in synergy to raise us up from the ground throughout the day. This is a natural but complex interplay that we often ”lose” or “forget” as we grow up in a non-natural environment that includes a culture of sitting. When we once again start using these muscular chains by “pushing away” from the ground, the natural way of connecting to our instrument and taking advantage of the gravitational forces is gained in both standing and sitting positions.
Method and Rhetoric - You learn the structure and principles of a Timani session, including how to give a lesson, a lecture and a workshop
How we communicate the message to somebody else requires that we are able to speak about anatomy and movement in a natural way. Also, we need to tune in to the person we speak to, and see what motivations they have to learn new material. We will in this course use simple techniques to learn to listen more carefully to our students, and to give lectures that motivate and inspire. When we speak about something, we learn it in a different way, so this provides an additional way to process the information.
The body-mind connection – exercises and knowledge of the brain’s fear response and how to observe and allow physical sensation
The Mind-Body connection is often well-known to musicians. Most musicians have experienced the physical reactions that can occur in situations when we are nervous: dry mouth, cold fingers, shaking bow, shallow breathing, and a loss of optimal fine motor skills. This is the so-called fight/flight/freeze response. When this occurs, it is mostly the global mobilizers (see section 1) that tense up unnecessarily while the global stabilizers needed for fine motor control shut down.[1] By practicing with the right muscles consciously over time, the nervous system can be affected positively. This can make the consequences of all the excessive adrenaline and cortisol (stress hormones) less apparent, and therefore create more psychological safety through how the body is used.
Focus and attention – Conscious awareness of the body and mind can help increase focus, both in the practice room and on stage. In Timani we also work on the parts of the nervous system that convey the internal and external sensory stimuli. This can be the listening experience (sense of hearing) or being aware of the fingers touching the keys of the piano (sense of touch); or it can be to create awareness of where one is experiencing the musical expression inside of the body (interoception). All the ways of learning are taken into consideration (visual, auditory, tactile, kinaesthetic, intellectual).