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For violinists and violists · by Samuel Wexler

Yoga for Violinists

I want you to fall back in love with your violin

and for that love to permeate into every aspect of your life.

Not a warm-up routine. A complete transformation of your relationship with your violin, your body, and your practice.

Find your path

Or try Day/Set 1 first, my gift to you 5 practices, about 50 minutes altogether. Free for now.

Samuel Wexler holding his violin at dusk in Atlixco, the Popocatépetl volcano behind him

It's hard to love playing your violin when you're in pain.

  • It's hard to love playing when your inner critic is shouting at you the whole time.
  • It's hard to enjoy practicing when your mind is scattered all over the place.

Dealing with constant discomfort isn't even the worst part: left unaddressed, it can escalate into pain and full-blown injury, and slowly wear down your love of playing.

Prehab is far better than rehab.

My goal is to help you remove the obstacles of physical pain and discomfort, the hypercritical inner voice, and mental distraction, so that you can play united within yourself, from the heart.

Choose how much support you want.

Every path is built on the same foundation: the 21 sets, plus the Toolbox. The more support you choose, the more personal guidance and feedback you get, and the further we can go beyond the course together.

Start where it fits: if you want more support later, what you paid counts toward the next step up.

On your own

The 21-Day Course

$497 USD founding, first 20 studentsIt's a special price for the first students, the early adopters. I believe I've built something fine, robust and valuable, and I'm committed to making this course the best it can be, with continual improvements. For that I need solid feedback, and testimonials, so that more people can experience the benefits. The founding price is my thank-you to the first 20 students who help make that happen.

Five practices in every set, at your own pace, with the feel-better guarantee.

For self-motivated learners who want the whole method on their own schedule.

What's included

  • 21 Day/Sets of practices, five modules in each, on video
  • The Toolbox: extra asana classes, breath practices, stretches and warm-ups for any moment
  • Two bonus mini-courses, coming in early 2027: Harmonious Vibrato, and Lila: Playful Violin
  • The Workshop Library, always open
  • Lifetime access
  • The feel-better guarantee

See the course

With a small group

Y4V Live

$2,000 USD foundingIt's a special price for the first cohort, the early adopters: $2,000 USD instead of $3,000. I'm committed to making Y4V Live the best it can be, and for that I need solid feedback and testimonials. You rate the same four dimensions at the start and the end, tell me what's working along the way, and if it helps you, share a few words about it. The founding price is my thank-you for helping make that happen.

The whole course over ten weeks with a small group: two calls with me every week and feedback on videos of your playing, then six months of monthly group calls. Starts the week of January 11, 2027.

For anyone who wants feedback in real time, company along the way, and someone to ask.

What's included

  • Everything in the 21-Day Course, with the Toolbox and both bonus mini-courses
  • A weekly asana class with me (yoga poses), with alignment feedback and Q&A
  • A weekly violin integration call
  • Feedback on short videos of your asana and your playing
  • One 45-minute private call
  • A private group space between calls
  • Six months of monthly alumni calls after the ten weeks

See Y4V Live

One-on-one

The Harmonious Violinist

$10,000 USD founding, first 3 clientsIt's a special price for my first 3 one-on-one clients: $10,000 USD instead of $15,000. Your work becomes a documented case study, with your say over what's shown, and you give me structured feedback along the way. The founding price is my thank-you for helping me make this work better for everyone after you.

Six months one-on-one: two private sessions a week, 60 minutes each, one focused on yoga postures and one on violin integration. Then 18 months of support.

For serious amateurs and professionals who want the most personal attention I can give.

What's included

  • 48 private sessions over six months
  • A filmed assessment of how you stand, move and play, with a written profile
  • A personalized practice protocol you keep refining
  • Feedback on videos of your asana and your playing between sessions
  • Time to go beyond the course: material that never fit into the 21 sets
  • A seat in any running Y4V Live cohort
  • The full 21-Day Course, with the Toolbox and both bonus mini-courses
  • Monthly check-ins for the next six months, then one every three months for a year

See one-on-one

Not ready to choose? Try the full first set before you buy.

I believe even just the first day has the potential to spark a meaningful shift in your relationship with your violin, and I want to give that to you, free of charge.

Try Day/Set 1, my gift to you

Deep roots

Yehudi Menuhin, one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century, studied yoga with B.K.S. Iyengar, one of the most influential yoga teachers of his era. Menuhin called him

“my best violin teacher.”

They met in India in 1952, and Menuhin brought Iyengar to Europe to teach. He saw yoga as part of his quest “to understand consciously the mechanics of violin playing.” More than seventy years later, this course brings that same meeting of yoga and violin into your daily practice.

Yoga for violinists, not yoga stretches for violinists.

It's tempting to make a course of what most people think of as yoga: stretches for violinists. The deeper I've gotten into my yoga trainings, however, the more I've realized what a robust system yoga is, beyond just the poses, and how much of it is directly helpful to violinists.

The stretches in and of themselves are of course valuable, but they only become yoga when practiced with a certain mindset and internal focus.

Taking care of our bodies is a key aspect of Yoga for Violinists. It absolutely includes stretches and warm-ups, but also goes way beyond just those: a fundamental transformation of how we relate to ourselves, the violin, and music-making.

Any yoga will help your playing: the whole body is connected. This course brings what helps violinists most, as early in the process as possible, including elements you'd usually meet only in advanced trainings.

21 sets, five practices in each

The course is 21 Day/Sets of practices. Each set is designed for one day of the 21-Day Course, and you can spread it over as many days as you like. Every set brings the same five practices together:

  1. Samuel Wexler seated cross-legged with his eyes closed, between two plants
    Meditation+
  2. Two people resting in a yoga pose on their mats, by tall windows full of trees
    Asana
  3. Samuel kneeling on a yoga mat, arms reaching forward, showing the alignment of a pose
    Workshop
  4. Samuel standing tall with his violin on his shoulder, beside a mirror
    Violin yoga
  5. Samuel talking to the camera, a wall of instruments behind him
    Insight
  1. Meditation+Meditation, plus breathwork and other yogic techniques most yoga classes never touch: a sharper mind for practice, a stronger connection between mind and body, and a clean start.
  2. AsanaA sequence of yoga poses that tune your body, the first instrument.
  3. WorkshopOne pose, alignment principle or biomechanical movement, broken down in detail, so you can feel it, not just "stand up straight and pull your shoulders back."
  4. Violin yogaOne clear exercise with the violin in your hands, so the practice comes with you into your playing.
  5. InsightThe idea of the set: a talk that changes how you see practice, drawn from yoga and from years at the violin.

Yoga means union.

Union runs through the whole course, in seven layers:

  1. Your body and your violin
  2. The vibrations of the violin and your body
  3. You and your full desire to play and practice
  4. Your attention, with listening and feeling as you play
  5. You and the larger musical work you're a part of
  6. You and other musicians
  7. You and the people who hear your music
Samuel Wexler seated in lotus pose, playing violin in front of a mandala

My story

I used to be extremely rigid.

Playing violin felt constantly uncomfortable.

One of my violin teachers kept smacking me on the shoulder with his bow to remind me to relax it. My neck and shoulders always felt stiff, squeezing the violin, and many technical passages made me anxious.

Then I started practicing yoga, and found that what I was learning on the mat could come into the practice room and address all of it. Today, technical excerpts that once felt totally impossible feel comfortable to play.

In the works since 2013

I'm Samuel Wexler, a classically trained violinist, a multi-instrumentalist and a 500-hour certified yoga teacher. I was first inspired to make this course during my first yoga teacher training, in 2013, and I've been writing down notes ever since.

In 2023 I went to India for my advanced 300-hour training, to deepen my practice and to prepare for making this course. It distills all of it.

Why do I want you to fall back in love with your violin?

There are many levels:

  1. I want the moments you spend with your violin to be as healthy and fulfilling as possible.
  2. The violin called to you, and the world needs violinists who love playing with all of their hearts.
  3. Anything done without love is empty, so I want to help you love every second you spend with your violin.
The whole answer

On the surface level, I want you to feel more contentment in your life, to be able to enjoy the blessing of having the violin in your life.

Your life is a short collection of moments spent doing different things. So I want the moments that you spend with your violin to be as healthy and fulfilling as possible.

On a deeper level

If you're a violinist of whatever level, it's because the violin called to you in a certain way. Something about the sound really compelled you, really moved something inside of you, and made you want to be able to draw that sound out for yourself.

We wanted the violin to be our instrument, but we could also say that we wanted to be the instrument of the violin.

String instruments seem to touch the hearts of almost everyone who hears them, and I don't think that we should take that for granted.

In a world with so much stress and darkness, I feel like we really need a family of violinists and string players who love playing with all of their hearts, who are ready to give voice to the violin and touch the hearts of others who need it.

If there wasn't something unexplainably powerful about the sound of the violin family, then why would you have chosen to devote so much of your life to drawing out the sound with your own two hands?

Deeper still

I believe that anything done without love is empty. Even the simplest thing done with love is healing for all of us. So I want to help you love every second you spend with your violin.

That every moment brings you a deeper connection and understanding of both the violin and yourself.

Start where it fits you.

Find your path Try Day/Set 1, my gift to you