To bring together a community of musicians, equip them with awareness, prevention and recovery tools for better physical and mental health so they may pursue education and performance to the fullest with less pain and more joy as they equip and inspire the next generation of musicians and the lives they touch through their music.

You can buy a lot of instruments but you only get one you and Musician Health Resource (MHR) believes you deserve to do what you love musically without physical limitations brought about from pain, mental stresses and improper practice habits. Studies show that over 80% of professional musicians have reported pain that directly inhibited performance ability and the rate of Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSI's) in musicians is just as high as in athletes. The best tools for finding your success in a long and healthy career are awareness, prevention and recovery. MHR supports these pillars by spreading awareness through our:

Podcasts

- Once a week we're releasing interviews with experts in the fields of music, medicine, physical therapy and mental health. Perfect for listening to as you commute to your gig Subscribe Here

Online Store

- Every top athlete knows the importance of cross training and proper muscular recovery and yet top musicians overlook it all the time. Find recovery and strength-training tools here (store link) so that you can live a life of less pain and more music.

Workshops

- Musician Health Resource can help you become a better educator or fulfill your NASM (Nationally Association of Schools of Music) Accreditation by providing lectures, workshops and master classes that allows students to hear, engage in and implement better physical and mental practices to their regular music routine.

The Blog

- Right here, on this very website, you'll find easy reads and links to relevant discoveries in the fields of music, medicine and mental health as well as summaries and show notes from our podcast guests and how to find help and resources in your area.

Social Media

- Musician Health Resource is on all the social media platforms for when you want bite-sized information including quotes, statistics, inspiration and quick tips from fellow musicians and podcast guests. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube and Pinterest.

Karen Hall started Musician Health Resource after suffering the pain of three separate repetitive strain injuries in her professional cello career (all before age 30!). On a vacation stop at the Olympic Museum in Switzerland, Karen saw the schedule breakdown and surprisingly limited amount of time top athletes spent on their gold-medal-winning disciplines compared to cross-training and became convinced that musicians were doing something wrong.

She switched her mindset from "practice, practice, practice" to "practice smarter, cross train, rest" and the results followed. Her pursuit of knowledge in the field of strength training and physical conditioning opened up her awareness of the brain-body connection and the importance of good mental health and habits. Knowing the difficulty of finding resources while she was injured, Karen embarked on a mission to find experts and information and promote awareness within the music community for herself and the colleagues she knew were suffering from mental and physical pain. Karen still maintains a busy cello performance and education career centered in Los Angeles (which you can find information about on her personal website karenhall.me ) In her free time she can be found doing yoga or improv comedy, hiking, traveling and reading books on neurobiology.