From the beginning, it has made no sense to me to practice exclusively standing up (as a teacher I had briefly insisted): people in orchestras, string quartets, jam sessions all generally sit. It is star soloists who stand. So it made sense to me, at the very least, to do enough practice sitting down, using different chairs, that when I went to fiddle class (which I will be back to soon), I at least was not surprised by the changed dynamics of sitting. (Especially: how to negotiate the bow and the right leg.)

I was also curious about the Indian and Iranian traditions of violin playing--these cultures adopted the violin in the early 1800s. I knew they play sitting crosslegged, with the scroll braced against the foot or ankle. Now I've found some beginning instructional videos (https://www.youtube.com/channe.....U3Q/videos) that give more precision about the posture. This appeals to me because my most comfortable sitting position is crosslegged--I tend to pull my legs up in any chair that allows this. I wonder if anyone here has tried that?

I also notice that folks playing in this position tend to be a little slumped, at least by cross-legged meditator standards. If the violin were just a little longer, they could sit up straighter... Combining this with the strings and tuning advocated by Kala Ramnath (discard E string; move G, D, and A strings one place over and tune G up to A; add violin C string in place of G and tune to D; result = DADA), it is possible that, for those whose body will cooperate, this may be the best possible position for the viola!

More practically: I'm not changing my tuning any time soon, but I have experimented with the posture some, and am thinking of experimenting more. I figure the more I change up my position, the more I dilute the input from doing this in one exact position. I see some probable loss of facility in that, but offset by some probable gain in flexibility/adaptability. In other words: orienting how I play around the violin, not around an exact posture.

I also see that, the less you keep repeating the same stressful position (by changing it up), the less your repetitive stress risk.

Have others tried this playing position? What do you think?