DRAGOS ILLIE

Mind and Body Mapping:

Understanding Your Hands
and Arms
WORKBOOK
Difficulty: Beginner

tonebase Guitar
Lesson Description
Our understanding of the body and its layout is limited by our perception and the extent of our
knowledge. Even the vocabulary we use and names we give certain body parts can blur how we
understand the human physique. In this lesson, Dragos Ilie explores the arms and their relationship
to general physical movements, broadening our concept of body, motion, and how they apply to
guitar playing.

What You’ll Learn

• The basic anatomy of the arm • How our body map influences our movements
• Correct ranges of motion for each arm joint • Several exercises for enforcing good motor habits

WATCH LESSON DOWNLOAD SCORE

Contents me!
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Cl
03
Introduction

06
The ST Joint/Collar bone

07
The GH Joint/Shoulder blade

08
The Elbow

11
The Wrist

13
The Finger Bones

14 Additional Exercises

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 If you have any corrections, comments, or critiques relating to this
workbook, please send them to ethan@tonebase.co. We strive to
deliver the highest quality enrichment experience. Thank you!

Introduction

Knowledge Test

How much do you know about the structure of your own arm? Use the outline below to
draw in the bones of the arm, as you imagine them, without cheating! Then, compare it to
the real diagram on the following page.

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 If you got all of these correct,
congratulations! It’s much
more likely that you didn’t know
most of these bones were even
there, let alone what they were
called and how they work.

Why is this important? As

guitarists, we use every single
bone in this picture to make
music. Imagine if a swimmer
only used part of their arm to
swim. They’d be horridly
inefficient without the entire
structure of the arm supporting
their stroke.

While guitarists aren’t making movements quite as large as swimmers, there is undoubtedly
an important mechanism in the arm that must be working harmoniously. The first step in
using your arm correctly is understanding its inner workings.

Body Map

A body map is not just a metaphor – it’s a neurological map within our brain, a structure
of information. You can think of it like a cabinet file containing all the information about our
arms. The issue with most people’s body maps is that not all of this information is correct. A
lot of our perception of our arms (and our entire selves) comes from media, drawings,
confusing imagery, words we’ve used in the past to describe body parts, personal
misconceptions, and much more.

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Perhaps most fascinating and relevant is that we move our arms according to this body
map – not to the way our arms are designed to move. This disconnection leads to strain,
awkward movements, and, eventually, injury.

Let’s look at a simple example. Many people don’t include their collar bones or shoulder
blades in their arm map. As a result, most of these people will move as if these bones aren’t
a part of their arm! Their brains are trying to prevent movement there by locking in and
causing tension.

This tension restricts the pathway of nerves, preventing blood flow, tensing up muscles,
causing the fingers to move more slowly, leading to fatigue, pain, and injury.

This lesson is divided into four sections, one for each of the four main joints in our arm.
Each section should present a basic understanding of the arm structure, helping you feel
freer, prevent tension, and play better. Then, we’ll look at some exercises to promote healthy
movement and restore a natural balance to the arms.

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1: The ST Joint

The ST joint, also called the sternoclavicular joint, is the only place where the arm connects
to the rest of the body. This might be surprising, given how far from your arm this joint is!
You’ll find this spot as a bump on your neck. Explore the full range of motion of this joint in
all directions (up/down, forward/backward, in circular motions):

ST joint

The motion of the right arm’s collar bone is generally greatly diminished, since we rest our
forearm on the guitar. Examine your right ST joint with your left hand as you travel from 1st to
6th string on the guitar. Notice how the joint moves? This is how we use our entire arm to
play.

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2: The GH Joint

Before we start with the next joint, let’s first talk about the shoulder blade:

Try to get familiar with the motion, shape, and location of your shoulder blades. Use your
friends, images, and video demonstrations to get a more thorough understanding. Shoulder
blades are integral to the motion of the upper body–they even move when we breathe!
They protect the lungs, help us with extended motions, and are the meeting points of the
second arm joint, the glenohumeral joint (GH).

Most people refer to the GH joint as the shoulder. The issue with this term, however, is
that it doesn’t accurately depict a point of movement. If you asked ten people where or
even what their shoulder is, you would likely get many different answers. Let’s instead talk
about where movement happens.

Locate your own GH joint by raising your arm

over your head and feeling around your armpit.
The bony bump you feel is the GH joint –
essentially the shoulder blade. This bump
should disappear and reappear as you move
the arm up and down.

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Don’t imagine your shoulder as a closed, tight, structure. The joint itself is rather small,
only about the size of a quarter, but the shoulder blade is quite expansive.

Whenever the arm moves, the shoulder blade must follow. This is called humeroscapular
rhythm. We use this movement in both arms while playing guitar.

Exercise to Try: Imagine a red dot on your humerus (close to the elbow). Picture a train,
where the humerus is at the front and the shoulder blade is the caboose. Now move both
arms, leading from the humerus, and explore the motion of the shoulder blade that results.
You might have established patterns of motion from years of bad habits–be patient as you
develop this newfound freedom.

lead from humerus

3: The Elbow

The elbow is the meeting place of three bones: the

humerus, radius (forearm bone on the thumb side),
and ulna (forearm bone on the pinky side). There are
two movements that happen at the elbow: hinging
(the closing motion of the arm,) and rotation.

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The bump at the end of our elbow
is actually the ending of the ulna.
(Keep in mind that there is no such
thing as an elbow cap, as there is for
the knees.) The image to the right
shows the bones of the forearm, the
second source of rotation in the arm
(after the GH joint).

Many people try to rotate their

forearm from the wrist, resulting in a
very tight forearm. This is a very
crucial movement to utilize correctly
while playing!

Exercises to try: Place your forearm on a flat surface, such as a guitar or table. Rotate the
forearm with the pinky-side bone (ulna) remaining fixed to the surface. The radius should
simply cross over the ulna, like turning the pages of a book.

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On the guitar, make sure that the left-hand’s rotation is not limited to the wrist, but instead
comes from the forearm. This way, the wrist is relaxed and free to move however it needs to.
This is especially critical to point out in younger students.

Notice the line that extends from our pinky to our ulna when our arm is straightened
(see image left). This line is also visible when we perform a “karate chop” motion, and
extends all the way to our scapula (see image right top). As you can see from the red line in
the image on the left, the line extending from the thumb isn’t as long as the blue line
extending from the pinky. If we perceive of this red line when we move, as many people
wrongly do, this interferes with our humeroscapular rhythm, causes unnecessary ulnar
deviation (see image right bottom), and can impede the pathway of tendons and nerves.

Exercises to try: Trace a line from the pinky, past the elbow, all the way up to the scapula.

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 Another exercise to try with the guitar is to
practice bringing the arm to a playing position
and engaging the entire arm – from the
scapula to the pinky. Pretend your pinky is 12
inches long! You should feel relief in the upper
back, too.

4: The Wrist

Many guitarists incorrectly map the wrist’s location; take the simple example of the
wristwatch. Do watches really go around our wrist?

If our wrist was as far from our fingers as the place we wear watches, we wouldn’t be able to
rotate them, a pivotal movement in playing guitar!

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The two bumps on the side of our upper forearm are the ulna and radius, not the wrist. The

wrist is actually a lot higher than we usually think.

The wrist is made of 8 smaller bones that allow for many complex movements: circular, up-

down, and sideways. The wrist itself is an arched structure, not a flat surface. Under the arch

is where the medial nerve and tendons travel. When one imagines the wrist as flat and

higher up the arm, the arm straightens and tenses (near the infamous carpal tunnel,

pictured below).

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5: The Finger Bones

The most interesting finger is the thumb, which can appear like a two-jointed finger at first
glance. The thumb actually has three joints. If we map the fingers from the palm, it can
appear as if there are only two. Another problem is that the third crease at the base of each
finger doesn’t correspond with the location of the knuckles. This palm-centric mapping
doesn’t allow for full mobility of the fingers while playing guitar.

Be sure to map the knuckle joint properly, and explore how the base joints move with
each finger.

To address a full body map of the arm, take time to explore your own arm’s structure, and
ask questions: How do I perceive my shoulder blade? How do I move when I approach the
guitar? What initiates movement? How does my forearm rotate?

Start with these questions, and see where the exploration takes you. The following exercises
can help restore a sense of balance to your movements.

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Additional Exercises

Exercise 1: Raise your shoulders up to your ears, holding them there for several seconds.
Feel how tense the muscles have become. Then, slightly relax the shoulders, so the muscles
are a bit less tense. Move incrementally, again and again, going down until you feel no work
being done by your back muscles. Your arms end up in a slightly higher position than
normal.

Exercise 2: Bring your arms back, squeezing your shoulder blades together, and then simply
bring them back. Repeat this several times. Notice how the arms want to glide back to a
neutral position.

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Exercise 3: Bring the arm up and back over your shoulder, massaging the area under the
armpit. Then extend the arm up, externally rotate it, and simply let it go at a straight angle.
This exercise brings the shoulder blade out, to the side, and then back in balance.

Additional Resources:

“How to Learn the Alexander Technique” - Barbara Conable

“Move Well Avoid Injury” Video Series.

tonebase would like to thank the Association for Body Mapping

Education and Holly Fischer (the artist) for permission to use the
anatomical images in this workbook

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