Overcoming Performance Anxiety
Perhaps the most frequent request I get from my students at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam is how to deal with performance anxiety. They don’t play as well on stage as in the practice room, and they want to know what to do about it. Usually they’re looking for a quick fix - an exercise to do right before or while performing. And indeed such tricks do exist, but that’s a bit like asking what to do right before a performance to play more in tune. The honest answer is that it’s too late to change something so fundamental as intonation at the last minute; the work needs to be done on a daily basis, and the same goes for performance anxiety.
So how do we overcome performance anxiety in a meaningful, lasting way? It’s starts with understanding where our nerves come from in the first place.
Some nerves come from love. We love music, we love ourselves, we love our audience, so we want to make the most of a special occasion. These kinds of “butterflies” more often than not improve our performance by heightening our focus and creating a magic spark.
Other nerves come from fear. We fear we are not good enough and that somehow we will be punished for it. Some of us harness this fear constructively, but most of us suffer under its pressure. We lose focus - our mind races or goes blank. We emotionally freak out or go numb. Even when we succeed, we don’t enjoy it - we just feel relieved.
So how can we address this type of fear?
Outpacing our Fear by honing our skills
Perhaps the most common approach is to prepare so well that we can reliably meet our standard even when we’re nervous. The consequences of failure remain high, but the odds of it diminish, so the pressure does too. It’s like being told our life depends on completing an easy task. Most of us would still be nervous, yet succeed nonetheless.
Feldenkrais makes performing easier by improving our technique. Simply put, it makes us more accurate, comfortable and expressive so we can afford to lose some progress to nerves and still finish ahead of where we started in the race against our fear.
But Feldenkrais also makes us physically more resilient to nerves. Whatever our symptoms - shaky arms, shallow breathing, sweaty fingers - Feldenkrais gives us the flexibility and strength to withstand any kind of freak out.
For example, when it comes to shaky arms, the more we can support our arms with our entire self, the less vulnerable our arms become to nerves. It’s like trying to shake an entire tree versus just a branch. So even though we might still feel nervous, our physical symptoms will be greatly reduced. Same goes for shallow breathing. The more we can support our breathing with our whole self, the less fragile and stuck our breathing will be under duress.
Yet racing our fear doesn’t heal it because even if we win, performing still feels like surviving instead of thriving. In order to heal our fear, we must unpack our wounds.
Facing our Fear by healing our wounds
Our wounds are negative self-beliefs best captured in “I” statements such as: I am bad, I do not matter, I do not belong, I am not enough. These judgements originate from outside us, but we internalize them so deeply that we begin to believe them, without even realizing it. Before any audience can tell us we don’t matter, before any colleague can say we don’t belong, before any jury can tell us we’re not good enough, we’ve already rejected, dismissed and ostracized ourselves. In other words, more often than not, what we most fear others doing to us, we actually first do to ourselves.
The hope in this tragedy is that we also have the power to STOP doing this to ourselves, and oh what a difference that makes in our performing confidence and overall mental health. Instead of over-preparing to avoid the wrath of the outside world, we can turn our attention to curbing the wrath we bring onto ourselves. That way, even if the outside world does attack, at least we will always have a strong ally in ourselves.
Feldenkrais heals our wounds through movement because all of our negative self-beliefs show up in how we move. If we feel we are not enough, we’ll push beyond what's comfortable because we must do more to be enough. If we feel we don’t matter, we’ll dismiss our body’s boundaries because what difference does it make anyway? If we feel we are bad, we won’t even seek out pleasure because why would we deserve to feel good anyhow? Feldenkrais gives us a safe space to reevaluate how we treat ourselves. As we come to trust, value and respect ourselves more in movement, we learn to do the same on stage and in life.
That said, some of our fears are not based in our wounds, they’re based in our needs.
Replacing our Fear by meeting our needs
Unlike our wounds, our needs are not a sign of past trauma to be healed. They’re simply what we require to be whole. Our basic physical needs include food, sleep and shelter. Our basic emotional needs include security, connection and significance. The beauty of needs is that we can meet them in different ways. Yet many of us limit ourselves to only one way - and we suffer when that one way becomes unavailable.
This is what happens to many of us musicians. It takes such dedication from such a young age to excel at music that for many of us it becomes our sole source of significance, contribution, financial security, and sometimes even connection. Therefore, the result of a concert or audition directly determines whether our basic emotional (and sometimes even physical) needs will be met. Only if I win the audition am I secure. Only if I sell tickets am I significant. That’s enough pressure to make anyone feel incredibly nervous, even if their wounds are healed and their technique is honed.
That's why it's important to diversify how we meet our needs so that not all of our eggs are in one basket. For example, maybe we can find significance through political activism much better than we ever could through nailing a Liszt Etude; maybe we can find financial security through studying business far better than we ever could perfecting our excerpts; and maybe we can find connection better by practicing less and socializing more. Some of these are easier said than done, yet the more we meet our needs outside of performing, the less pressure we’ll feel while performing.
Feldenkrais does not directly address our finances or social life, per se, but it does teach us how to be strategic and flexible in how we meet our goals. We learn what it means to be functional (always organized around our needs); to be reversible (never stuck in one way); and to be distributed (spreading our options). When we experience these ideas directly in our body, they flow into the rest of our life in surprising and profound ways.
A bonus of meeting our needs more securely is that we can then perform from a place of desire instead of desperation. Maybe we genuinely cherish connecting with people and music enables us to do that in a magical way. Maybe we feel a sense of deep purpose by contributing new compositions to the world. Whatever our particular motivation, we can perform out of love instead of fear. And yes our butterflies will still be there, but as a sign that we care, not that we doubt.
The Feel Good Sound Good Program
The richness of Feldenkrais means that we can address the many layers of performance anxiety from multiple angles. If you’d like to not just race your fear, but face it and replace it too, then come for a Discovery Session and let’s chart your path forward to performing with confidence and love.
