All tagged performance anxiety
I think it’s high time we de-mystified the body. Is it complex? Yes. Is it rocket science? No. If we can handle post-tonal theory, we can definitely handle a little anatomy, biomechanics, and neuroscience! And the pay-off, I believe, is improved technical fluidity, greater expressive power, and more confidence and connection on stage.
My take is that our playing would get better faster AND we’d be happier, if we got into our windows of tolerance first, and then practiced. In other words, rather than thinking of being in our window as the reward for having accomplished something, we can think of being in our window — feeling alert, grounded, focused, energized, calm — as a pre-condition for accomplishing something.
The ability to sense our internal experience in an embodied way -- as opposed to thinking about our experience in a conceptual way -- is an important first step in learning to regulate our nervous systems for optimal learning and confident performing. We can't regulate what we can't feel.
More than that, though, if we can learn to sense (and therefore respond to) the subtle signals our bodies are sending us all the time we are less likely to get hijacked by overwhelm.
