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Hi Pauline,
Using a violin example, one exercise a teacher once had me do was practice playing everything as if everything in the left hand was harmonics (loose and floppy and light), while playing forte with my bow arm. Which would sound awful, but then I would progressively add a tiny bit of finger pressure in the left hand until it was just enough to produce the right kind of sound. This was always way less finger pressure than I would normally use, and so if I could get used to using minimal finger pressure, it’d make everything so much easier in performance.
Violinist Nathan Cole has a video on this: http://www.natesviolin.com/rid-damaging-left-hand-tension-find-mvp/
Let me know if the video helps to clarify how to work on this.
Noa