The Origins of the MOTOR Method™ Exercises

I was an undergraduate music student, many years ago, when I hurt one of my fingers. After that, I often had physical pain when I played viola, my main instrument. My neck and left shoulder would ache, and I would feel a deep, stabbing pain in that finger. For a musician, that can be a career-threatening situation.

Over time, it became obvious that the  injury and pain had been caused by how I played; similarly, my recovery from that injury was being delayed by how I played–how I used my body to make music. A conflict revealed itself: what I was doing with my body to make music was at odds with what my body needed to stay healthy. But I needed both: to excel in performance and to stay physically well. 

This knowledge led me onto a years-long path of discovery, to find out how to use my body differently, so I could both excel and heal. To walk that path, I needed to delve deep into topics of injury, rehabilitation, motor skill mastery and human movement science. Over those years, in addition to my musical training, I earned degrees in chiropractic and in rehabilitation science.

As a chiropractor, I could diagnose different types of injury. I could teach patients how to stretch or strengthen muscles, and how to develop their "core stability." But I saw that it wasn't enough. Once a patient's exercise ended, it didn't necessarily keep protecting them. Too many patients were stuck in a cycle of injury, receiving care, practicing exercises, stopping the exercises, experiencing re-injury, returning for care, etc. 

I needed new exercises – ones that not only targeted the injury I had diagnosed, but also could evolve into usable skills – skills that could protect the patient from further injury. Even more, the skills had to be usable while the patient was going about their regular life – sitting at work, playing an instrument, holding the baby, and so on. Unfortunately, I had never found a framework I could use with my own patients to bridge that gap – one that truly united injury recovery with this type of self-protective, use-it-anywhere skill. So eventually, I developed one.

The exercises in this manual introduce the skills I have found to be essential for my patients to make that leap. Many of my patients who have practiced this exercises, and developed these skills, have found that they could then end that cycle of re-injury. In fact, not only did they recover more fully, they also unlocked new physical potential: they gained better balance, greater ease and power in their movement. I hope you will find this work helpful as well.