Over the years of teaching violin, to learners from children to adult.  The most challenging thing for them, in their first few lessons, seems to be learning how to hold the violin.

This particular challange can be disencaouraging to some, and sometimes forces the learners to give up completely for a simple reason that's associated with the physical discomfort.

I always stress the importance of posture to my pupils, when the violin and the bow are held and angled corretly, a great connection between the body and the instrument is formed.  It is hard to describe the exact feeling, for me it's very freeing to find such a perfect balance.  It could speed up the learning progress, takes mediocure player to a higher level, basically the player should be able to go straight into music without any hinderance.  

My suggestion to the learners in their early stage would be bringing lots of awareness to their bodies, as it is quite enlightening to discover just how habitual our body movements are.  Some of these habitual movements are unhealthy, for instance the movement of slouching higher the risk of back pain and back related injuries.  In the case of holding the violin, it's important to pay attention to the body parts that have direct contacts with the violin.   Some of the common mistakes of violin holding are raising the shoulders in order to secure the violin, the left hand wrist is raised and touched the back of the finger board, the failure of not able to correctly angle the bow on to the strings, and the inability to use more powerful joint to run the bow up and down the strings.  

1. Violin is not a very ergomonical instrument compared to piano for example.  With a violin tucked under one's chin, it's natural for many people to raise the shoulder so the violin won't fall off.  The raised shoulder could in turn lead to tense arm muscles and hinder the finger movement.  The shoulder problem can be solved by adjusting the shoulder rest, it's worth experimenting with the shoulder rest until you find the right height, and comfortable enough for extensive practice.  

2. The hand position on the finger board, which is left hand for the right-handed players.  The ideal position would be finding the right balance to steady the hand, which can be done with the support of the thumb.  Again this should be experimented due to the different size of hands.  Once steadied, the hand should stand up with a gap between the palm and the back of the finger board.  Just imgaine holding an invisible ping pong ball while holding the violin.

3. The ideal way to angle the bow is the angle that allows the bow movement so the bow can move freely (from the frog to the tip).

4. Bow holding can be quite tricky, but is extremely important, as it's quite often considered less important because the finger board hand seems to do all the hard work.  It is only true to a certain extent, the bow hand is just as important, it controls the volume, the dynamics, and the tonality.  Although there are different schools/systems in the world that teach differently on bow holding, but all of their goals are the same, is to produce the most beautiful sound one could possibly make.  As the entire arm is needed for the bow control, it's important that one makes sure all the muscles and the joints are relaxed.  Moreover in order to produce a nice tone, or to have an absolute control of dynamics, come from mostly the wrist joint.  One should watch how the wrist moves while running the bow.  This wrist movement is almost like the slow motion of trying to shake the water off the hand, but in an angle with the palm consistently facing outward(or facing right if holding the bow with right hand).  One thing to watch out is to minimise the movements on other joints as well like the elbow and the shoulder joints.

My aim of violin teaching, is to help learners explore the physical side of music playing.  I would give a very thorough explaination to adult learners before starting with the violin, with children, I tend to take them through some game-like scenarios, so they feel like winning a game, while unconciously gaining techniques that is going to benefit them along their violin study.  And don't forget it's not all about hard work, it is also fun and rewarding.

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Andy