Yoga has taught me that the idea of using your emotional experiences as inspiration and information is critical to building a connection to what you are singing or writing or painting and, in fact, to building connections in your life. Called satya in yoga, this translates to truthfulness. It is imperative to speak your truth in your art and in your life. When we add singing into the mix, we find a way to vocalize our truth through song which is an incredibly powerful experience. Singing can open up the gates, so to speak, if you are used to holding back in your creative endeavors or in your life.
A conscious focus of my teaching this year has been this idea of satya; how connecting to emotional experiences enhances your voice and your ability to communicate your personal truth. On my side this has been about opening up to my students to show more of myself in my teaching and for them, how they can open up to their own emotional experiences and allow those to inform their singing and by extension, their existence.
The ability to convey emotions means you must be aware of them and how they feel when you experience them - physically, emotionally and mentally. Delving into this territory takes courage and will probably make you uncomfortable. (Big side note: If you are uncomfortable doing this, you are probably on the right track!).
In her book DARING GREATLY, Brené Brown says, "To put our art, our writing, our photography, our ideas out into the world with no assurance of acceptance or appreciation - that's vulnerability." Indeed, how many times have you created something new, a concert, a character, a book, a presentation and felt terrified before setting it free into the world?
But, how many times have you gone to a concert, seen an art exhibit or read something where the creator has clearly laid their soul plain for the world and loved your experience? I know I have. I also know that vulnerability is definitely not my strong suit which is I why I understand its value. My greatest experiences performing, teaching and living come when I have opened to my own emotions allowing them to inform my experience. Not in that messy, over-sharing TMI type of way, but in the way that yoga has taught me: mindfully - when I have worked through the experience and transformed it into wisdom that informs my journey.
For me yoga is the pathway into vulnerability and the voice is a way to get comfortable expressing it. I work to center myself before
teaching and engage with students honestly, being open about my experiences
singing and in life. Lessons begin with breathing, centering, and
meditating. Sometimes I do make them lie on the floor in a yoga pose to
open up the body along with the mind. We pause while vocalizing and
singing through rep to look at things through the lens of emotion and
see how that informs the moment. Sometimes we both end up in tears. I've learned not to shy away from those moments, but to lean in because I know good things are happening.
When we relax the body, slow the breath and quiet the mind, we can see and feel our emotions without letting them carry us away as though we are on an out-of-control freight train! We learn to be a compassionate observer who gathers data without judging and we move closer to our personal truth. When we verbalize it through song it becomes more comfortable.
Is your vulnerable truth coming through in your craft, be it singing, writing, painting or presenting? It might be uncomfortable, but it is always worth it in the end.
Showing posts with label yoga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label yoga. Show all posts
Friday, April 25, 2014
Monday, February 24, 2014
My Yoga Story
I get asked periodically how I got into yoga and why I linked it to singing, so here's my story....
Singing always came easily to me, but what I know now is that performing did not.
In high school, I frequently had solo parts and leads in musicals and concerts. Along with all that singing (hello, I sang Cunegonde as a JUNIOR IN HIGH SCHOOL), came nerves. Mostly, I would snap at people (usually my mom, sorry mom!), not knowing that my fear was talking. Also, I was living with a heart condition, called supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), that caused my heart to race when under physical or emotional stress. The worst that could happen was fainting which I never did, but it was impossible to be connected to my breath while my heart was racing at over 200 beats a minute and all I wanted to do was sit down and put my head between my legs. I can recall being on stage many times while I had an SVT episode. It was never pleasant.
In college, I ended up majoring in English and didn't come back to pursue using my voice for my career until I was 28. I had a procedure done to eliminate the heart condition, but it didn't entirely work. It was better, but I could still have episodes when nervous (I took a beta blocker daily to manage it, but nerves trumped all).
Once I was in graduate school I had a mental game to play because I perceived that I wasn't as good as everyone else there because my undergraduate degree wasn't in music. That perception caused me to shy away from auditioning for solos in choir and going after the parts with the gusto that I saw in my friends.
One day in the fall of 2001 a friend invited me to go to yoga with her. Quite honestly I had no other plans that night so I went.
The physical practice was fun and challenging, but I wasn't so sure I bought the more subtle stuff the teacher talked about...really, I was balancing my brain by breathing through opposite sides of my nose (yes, I now fully believe that because I've experienced it!)??? Despite that something about the practice stuck with me and I stuck with yoga, going to the class every week.
There were several a-ha moments for me as my study progressed. The first came when I needed to go to a voice lesson right after a yoga class. The memory of sitting on my couch feeling like I was a rubber band and wondering how on earth I could sing when I felt that way is still vivid in my mind. I went to that voice lesson and found that singing was easier than it had ever been. Was I a rubber band? No. Was my body relaxed in a way it had never been before? Yes.
For my final recital I used the meditation technique of visualization. Throughout school I'd avoided having solos in choir and other places because of my faulty mental perceptions, but also to avoid the stress of having my heart act up. That year I read a book on performance preparation and visualization was suggested as a way to calm nerves. So, I sat on my couch again, closed my eyes and visualized the recital...WHOA...the nerves that I would feel when I walked on stage were all there. I kept at it, making time every day for the two weeks prior to the performance to see myself going through the program flawlessly. Each time it got a little easier and I felt less nervous. When performance day came, I walked on stage, sang through the concert without a strange beat of my heart or a sense of terrifying nerves.
After I finished school, I repeated the heart procedure with success this time, but the mental elements of performance nerves were still there. However, I found that attending a yoga class during the day before a performance at night caused me to be more grounded, connected to my breath and frankly, fearless in my performing.
When I moved into teaching, I saw so many singers who struggled with balancing the demands of life and singing. Many of them were coping with vocal injuries. In an effort to help them I took additional classes in Voice Disorders and attended clinics when I could on how to teach injured voices. What I learned was that hyper-function was often an underlying cause of vocal injury and when there's tension in the voice, there's tension elsewhere in the body. Be honest, who among us couldn't stand to be a little more relaxed??
It was after 20 years of singing, 6 years of yoga study and 5 years of teaching voice that I decided to pursue yoga teacher training. I knew that I was not the only person who could derive benefit from these practices. Physical practice, breathing and meditation are holistic ways to manage nerves, balance stress and connect to your authentic voice so you sing from your heart.
Singing may come easily to you. Performing may not. Yoga can help you with that!
Singing always came easily to me, but what I know now is that performing did not.
In high school, I frequently had solo parts and leads in musicals and concerts. Along with all that singing (hello, I sang Cunegonde as a JUNIOR IN HIGH SCHOOL), came nerves. Mostly, I would snap at people (usually my mom, sorry mom!), not knowing that my fear was talking. Also, I was living with a heart condition, called supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), that caused my heart to race when under physical or emotional stress. The worst that could happen was fainting which I never did, but it was impossible to be connected to my breath while my heart was racing at over 200 beats a minute and all I wanted to do was sit down and put my head between my legs. I can recall being on stage many times while I had an SVT episode. It was never pleasant.
In college, I ended up majoring in English and didn't come back to pursue using my voice for my career until I was 28. I had a procedure done to eliminate the heart condition, but it didn't entirely work. It was better, but I could still have episodes when nervous (I took a beta blocker daily to manage it, but nerves trumped all).
Once I was in graduate school I had a mental game to play because I perceived that I wasn't as good as everyone else there because my undergraduate degree wasn't in music. That perception caused me to shy away from auditioning for solos in choir and going after the parts with the gusto that I saw in my friends.
One day in the fall of 2001 a friend invited me to go to yoga with her. Quite honestly I had no other plans that night so I went.
The physical practice was fun and challenging, but I wasn't so sure I bought the more subtle stuff the teacher talked about...really, I was balancing my brain by breathing through opposite sides of my nose (yes, I now fully believe that because I've experienced it!)??? Despite that something about the practice stuck with me and I stuck with yoga, going to the class every week.
There were several a-ha moments for me as my study progressed. The first came when I needed to go to a voice lesson right after a yoga class. The memory of sitting on my couch feeling like I was a rubber band and wondering how on earth I could sing when I felt that way is still vivid in my mind. I went to that voice lesson and found that singing was easier than it had ever been. Was I a rubber band? No. Was my body relaxed in a way it had never been before? Yes.
For my final recital I used the meditation technique of visualization. Throughout school I'd avoided having solos in choir and other places because of my faulty mental perceptions, but also to avoid the stress of having my heart act up. That year I read a book on performance preparation and visualization was suggested as a way to calm nerves. So, I sat on my couch again, closed my eyes and visualized the recital...WHOA...the nerves that I would feel when I walked on stage were all there. I kept at it, making time every day for the two weeks prior to the performance to see myself going through the program flawlessly. Each time it got a little easier and I felt less nervous. When performance day came, I walked on stage, sang through the concert without a strange beat of my heart or a sense of terrifying nerves.
After I finished school, I repeated the heart procedure with success this time, but the mental elements of performance nerves were still there. However, I found that attending a yoga class during the day before a performance at night caused me to be more grounded, connected to my breath and frankly, fearless in my performing.
When I moved into teaching, I saw so many singers who struggled with balancing the demands of life and singing. Many of them were coping with vocal injuries. In an effort to help them I took additional classes in Voice Disorders and attended clinics when I could on how to teach injured voices. What I learned was that hyper-function was often an underlying cause of vocal injury and when there's tension in the voice, there's tension elsewhere in the body. Be honest, who among us couldn't stand to be a little more relaxed??
It was after 20 years of singing, 6 years of yoga study and 5 years of teaching voice that I decided to pursue yoga teacher training. I knew that I was not the only person who could derive benefit from these practices. Physical practice, breathing and meditation are holistic ways to manage nerves, balance stress and connect to your authentic voice so you sing from your heart.
Singing may come easily to you. Performing may not. Yoga can help you with that!
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Energetics of the Voice
Our bodies are energetic vessels. In yogic thought, the energy of the body flows through channels called "nadis". The main channel we look at is called the sushumna. It runs from the base of the spine to the crown of the head and passes through each of the seven chakra points, the energetic hubs in the body. Two other nadis, ida and pinagala spiral around the main channel. The ida nadi begins on the left side and is accessed through the left nostril. It is considered representative of the feminine and is associated with the moon.The pingala nadi begins on the right side and is accessed through the right nostril. It is considered representative of the masculine and is associated with the sun. We move energy in the body through these channels by the way we breathe, move and think.
Our voices are our primary vehicle for emotional expression. Singing is one of the most universal human impulses. Yoga also seeks to quiet the mind and open the heart to allow for an expression of our essential selves. A voice that is free can enhance that process.
The throat chakra (5th
chakra), serves as the bridge between our hearts (4th chakra) and heads (6th chakra). It is the center
of communication, self expression and willpower. It also houses the possibility
for change, transformation and healing.
Energetic imbalances in the throat chakra
show up as...
Trouble expressing yourself
Blocks of creativity – your inspiration may be there, but
you can’t express yourself
Trouble singing – ‘tone deafness’
Timidity – you are quiet when you should speak up
Fear of public speaking/singing – not wanting to look
foolish, not being good enough
Tension in your jaw, tongue, shoulders, neck
When your throat chakra is in
balance, you…
Listen well
Speak with confidence
Sing well
Express your creativity freely
Have good overall communication skills
Relaxed jaw, shoulders, neck
Negative experiences of the past are transformed into wisdom
Singing is one of the best ways to open this chakra to bring it into balance.
However, what if you are a singer who is struggling to express herself? This is where yoga can help.
A practice that involves vocalizing on vowel sounds while moving, focusing on heart opening postures to release negative energy of the past and chanting bija sounds to awaken the chakra centers can bring your voice back into balance.
When you find your voice on the mat, you carry it off into the rest of your life!
Monday, January 13, 2014
Your Voice as Emotional Expression Center
In his book The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals Charles Darwin's 4th chapter is called "Means of Expression in Animals".
Here's what he has to say in this chapter about singing... "whether we believe that the various qualities of the voice originated in speaking under the excitement of strong feelings, and that these qualities have subsequently been transferred to vocal music; or whether we believe, as I maintain, that the habit of uttering musical sounds was first developed, as a means of courtship, in the early progenitors of man, and thus became associated with the strongest emotions of which they were capable,-namely, ardent love, rivalry and triumph."(page 87)
Whether Darwin is right about this or not, the point he makes over and over in Chapter 4 is that the quality of sounds animals and humans produce are intrinsically linked to emotions. Pretty modern thinking for 1872, no? We now know through modern science that the voice is linked to the limbic system, a set of brain structures that governs emotion and long term memory among other things.
It isn't hard to understand - you can be in another room and if someone calls your name, you can tell from the tone of the voice whether they are happy, sad, angry or indifferent. When you are upset, you feel a lump in your throat. When you are excited your voice might take on a pitch that is slightly higher and a volume that is louder than your regular speaking voice. When our hearts are clear and our heads are quiet our voices ring true. We give voice to our truth by connecting emotionally to the core of a song. Our expressive ability is challenged when we've got emotions bound up in our memories and stored in our heart center.
For good and for bad, our voices are at the complete mercy of our emotions - and of our past via our long term memory.
In the summer between my first and second years of graduate school I lost my father to suicide. The level of grief was so overwhelming that it amounted to me feeling numb for most of the next year. I dutifully completed all the things I needed to, to finish my degree. I got by in classes where all I needed was my brain to function. My singing was another story. By the time May rolled around, my final recital, which was required to graduate, loomed. I knew I was going to stand on stage and sing right notes with no emotion. The emotions called for in the songs weren't accessible to me because when I tried to open to them all that came out was grief. The only emotion I had to offer was sadness and if I went there, all I would do was cry.
When I look back now I wish I had been brave enough to own my grief and just go to my voice lessons and cry. Every week for 9 months. What I know now, after more than a decade of time has passed since that event, and after many years of yoga study, is that our voices also have an incredibly powerful ability to help us heal. By staying with a difficult emotion and giving voice to it, we allow our psyche to release it, no longer giving it power over us. It wasn't until I traveled to Italy to sing for the summer after graduation where I reached the point that I could face my grief. And I cried. A lot. Sometimes in my voice lessons and sometimes on my own. Singing that summer as I processed those emotions, took on a new meaning for me. I finally owned my voice again.
Your voice might be bound up for different reasons - I meet so many people who love to sing but feel they shouldn't because some adult told them as a child that they couldn't sing in tune, or the quality of their voice wasn't nice. That moment of being told their voice was not good enough to be heard lodged inside them, taking up residence in their heart center. It leads to adults who hide in the back row of the choir, or those who feel guilty singing to their child. Their throat feels tight with muscle strain. Unless you are truly unable to distinguish between high and low pitches and speak in a monotone, you are not tone deaf. Your brain simply hasn't not developed the road map it needs to be able to tell your voice to sing specific pitches and you CAN learn that. If you got the message at some point that you can't match pitch, you also hold that emotional energy in your body and it hinders your brain's ability to do its work. When you do sing it helps if you are willing to sing out. I mean, sing LOUD. I always say to my singers, "if you're going to sing it wrong, sing it loud." I can work with wrong notes, I can't work in between the cracks. Beyond the bravery to sing out when you think others will cringe at what they hear, we need to release the energy you've stored up about how terrible you sound.
In our yoga practice of asana, pranayama and meditaiton, we bring attention to our heart center liberating it from the energy of past emotions. It is in doing this that the energy of the throat and the heart gain a fluid pathway on which to travel. Finding an expansive heart takes bravery. It is hard to go to places of discomfort and knowingly acknowledge hurt and the person who incurred the hurt -whether that hurt is new or old. You probably will cry. That's okay!
Everyone deserves the chance to sing, as Darwin said "with the strongest emotions of which they [are] capable". Yoga helps make this possible by combining a sense of community and trust with physical and emotional tools to work with the heart.
Here's what he has to say in this chapter about singing... "whether we believe that the various qualities of the voice originated in speaking under the excitement of strong feelings, and that these qualities have subsequently been transferred to vocal music; or whether we believe, as I maintain, that the habit of uttering musical sounds was first developed, as a means of courtship, in the early progenitors of man, and thus became associated with the strongest emotions of which they were capable,-namely, ardent love, rivalry and triumph."(page 87)
Whether Darwin is right about this or not, the point he makes over and over in Chapter 4 is that the quality of sounds animals and humans produce are intrinsically linked to emotions. Pretty modern thinking for 1872, no? We now know through modern science that the voice is linked to the limbic system, a set of brain structures that governs emotion and long term memory among other things.
It isn't hard to understand - you can be in another room and if someone calls your name, you can tell from the tone of the voice whether they are happy, sad, angry or indifferent. When you are upset, you feel a lump in your throat. When you are excited your voice might take on a pitch that is slightly higher and a volume that is louder than your regular speaking voice. When our hearts are clear and our heads are quiet our voices ring true. We give voice to our truth by connecting emotionally to the core of a song. Our expressive ability is challenged when we've got emotions bound up in our memories and stored in our heart center.
For good and for bad, our voices are at the complete mercy of our emotions - and of our past via our long term memory.
In the summer between my first and second years of graduate school I lost my father to suicide. The level of grief was so overwhelming that it amounted to me feeling numb for most of the next year. I dutifully completed all the things I needed to, to finish my degree. I got by in classes where all I needed was my brain to function. My singing was another story. By the time May rolled around, my final recital, which was required to graduate, loomed. I knew I was going to stand on stage and sing right notes with no emotion. The emotions called for in the songs weren't accessible to me because when I tried to open to them all that came out was grief. The only emotion I had to offer was sadness and if I went there, all I would do was cry.
When I look back now I wish I had been brave enough to own my grief and just go to my voice lessons and cry. Every week for 9 months. What I know now, after more than a decade of time has passed since that event, and after many years of yoga study, is that our voices also have an incredibly powerful ability to help us heal. By staying with a difficult emotion and giving voice to it, we allow our psyche to release it, no longer giving it power over us. It wasn't until I traveled to Italy to sing for the summer after graduation where I reached the point that I could face my grief. And I cried. A lot. Sometimes in my voice lessons and sometimes on my own. Singing that summer as I processed those emotions, took on a new meaning for me. I finally owned my voice again.
Your voice might be bound up for different reasons - I meet so many people who love to sing but feel they shouldn't because some adult told them as a child that they couldn't sing in tune, or the quality of their voice wasn't nice. That moment of being told their voice was not good enough to be heard lodged inside them, taking up residence in their heart center. It leads to adults who hide in the back row of the choir, or those who feel guilty singing to their child. Their throat feels tight with muscle strain. Unless you are truly unable to distinguish between high and low pitches and speak in a monotone, you are not tone deaf. Your brain simply hasn't not developed the road map it needs to be able to tell your voice to sing specific pitches and you CAN learn that. If you got the message at some point that you can't match pitch, you also hold that emotional energy in your body and it hinders your brain's ability to do its work. When you do sing it helps if you are willing to sing out. I mean, sing LOUD. I always say to my singers, "if you're going to sing it wrong, sing it loud." I can work with wrong notes, I can't work in between the cracks. Beyond the bravery to sing out when you think others will cringe at what they hear, we need to release the energy you've stored up about how terrible you sound.
In our yoga practice of asana, pranayama and meditaiton, we bring attention to our heart center liberating it from the energy of past emotions. It is in doing this that the energy of the throat and the heart gain a fluid pathway on which to travel. Finding an expansive heart takes bravery. It is hard to go to places of discomfort and knowingly acknowledge hurt and the person who incurred the hurt -whether that hurt is new or old. You probably will cry. That's okay!
Everyone deserves the chance to sing, as Darwin said "with the strongest emotions of which they [are] capable". Yoga helps make this possible by combining a sense of community and trust with physical and emotional tools to work with the heart.
Monday, December 16, 2013
From Good to Great, What Tips the Balance?
This question of greatness has been on my mind recently. What is it that separates a great singer from a good one?
There's a high level of singing that a lot of people are doing. If you look at the classical music world, there are lots of conservatories, producing a lot of singers. If you look at the local music venues in any given area, there are a lot of different singers and bands performing 7 nights a week.
If you assume a certain amount of natural talent, a high level of training and a drive to perform, what is it that makes some people move on to greatness and others stay in the category of good?
Some of it is luck, being in the right place at the right time, knowing the right people, leveraging your network and practicing hard. But, I've come to the conclusion there is another element. One that isn't so obvious to the naked eye.
It is the ability to connect emotionally with what you are singing: the ability to sing from your heart.
For some this comes completely naturally. I love to watch these people on stage. When I see them sing it always seems that it doesn't matter if there is an audience, they simply must share what is inside them.
For many, many others, the emotional connection is elusive. It isn't the music that is the issue. Music is always emotionally driven. It is your heart center. Emotions can be big. The can be scary. If you aren't in tune with your emotions off the stage, it can be hard to tune into them when you sing.
It can take some work to get below the surface to see what is going on with your emotional center that is influencing your performing. Perhaps this is why voice lessons so often feel like therapy!
Keeping a journal, talking with a therapist and engaging in heart centered practices will all help you identify your work and move forward.
Yoga is at its core a heart centered practice. By cultivating present moment awareness you are able to ride, without judgement, the waves of emotions that occur in life. The physical practice helps to develop awareness of what is going on with your body, but it is meditation that will tune you in to your emotions and help you move through whatever your issues are so you are present to the music!
Try developing a regular meditation practice. Start small, 10 minutes a day and add time as you get comfortable with the practice. Keep it simple and just focus on your breath. Your thinking mind will engage and all you have to do is notice that you've started thinking and return to focus on your breath. The results might astound you!
There's a high level of singing that a lot of people are doing. If you look at the classical music world, there are lots of conservatories, producing a lot of singers. If you look at the local music venues in any given area, there are a lot of different singers and bands performing 7 nights a week.
If you assume a certain amount of natural talent, a high level of training and a drive to perform, what is it that makes some people move on to greatness and others stay in the category of good?
Some of it is luck, being in the right place at the right time, knowing the right people, leveraging your network and practicing hard. But, I've come to the conclusion there is another element. One that isn't so obvious to the naked eye.
It is the ability to connect emotionally with what you are singing: the ability to sing from your heart.
For many, many others, the emotional connection is elusive. It isn't the music that is the issue. Music is always emotionally driven. It is your heart center. Emotions can be big. The can be scary. If you aren't in tune with your emotions off the stage, it can be hard to tune into them when you sing.
It can take some work to get below the surface to see what is going on with your emotional center that is influencing your performing. Perhaps this is why voice lessons so often feel like therapy!
Keeping a journal, talking with a therapist and engaging in heart centered practices will all help you identify your work and move forward.
Yoga is at its core a heart centered practice. By cultivating present moment awareness you are able to ride, without judgement, the waves of emotions that occur in life. The physical practice helps to develop awareness of what is going on with your body, but it is meditation that will tune you in to your emotions and help you move through whatever your issues are so you are present to the music!
Try developing a regular meditation practice. Start small, 10 minutes a day and add time as you get comfortable with the practice. Keep it simple and just focus on your breath. Your thinking mind will engage and all you have to do is notice that you've started thinking and return to focus on your breath. The results might astound you!
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
Stilling the Lake of the Mind
In one of them he talks about 'stilling the lake of the mind'. That image worked for me. It helped to imagine my mind as a body of water that is often full of thoughts causing rough waves. Those thoughts prevent me from really seeing or hearing my inner voice which is powerful, but quiet as opposed to my fear voice which hollers at the top of its lungs and makes all the waves to begin with.
What I learned from my meditation practice is not only that difference, but also that when my mind is quiet I can see and hear my true self. My quiet, inner voice speaks what is true in my heart and the ability to express what is in one's heart lies at the center of creativity.
I took the above picture while my family was on vacation in Maine last week. As I looked out over the lake early one morning, I was struck that the stillness of the morning water, before any boats have driven by or the winds have picked up, is exactly what a quiet mind allows. Just as I can see the entire tree reflected in the water, rather than the distorted version later in the day, I see myself clearly when my mind is still and quiet. A still mind allows me to open to creativity and discern what I want to express with my art.
How still is the lake of your mind? If you'd like to learn more about this meditation, you can visit the ParaYoga Store and scroll down to the CD "Meditations for Inner and Outer Peace" or read a description of the meditation from this blog post.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Going to the Source: Origins of Performance Anxiety
Recently I talked with a singer who told me she'd been to an audition and in her words, "bombed it". She said she'd disconnected from her breath, forgotten the words and generally felt awful. She chalked it up to not having done an audition in a long time.
I'm sure that was a part of it. There is an art to auditioning, as any singer will tell you. However, as our conversation continued, she went on to tell me how, at the end of the month, she would lose the administrative job that has been the bread and butter of her existence for many years. She runs a music program for children in the mornings and then goes to her desk job in the afternoon and sings in a prominent chorus as well as doing her own solo work on top of it all. Time to practice, she indicated, was hard to come by. The more we talked, the more I began to wonder if it was really the length of time between auditions that caused her anxiety and subsequent poor performance.
In our bodies, anxiety is created in the amygdala, a part of the brain where primal emotions are generated. When triggered it bypasses the rational part of our brain and sets off a physical reaction. Unfortunately, anxiety is also addictive in the sense that the more you worry, the more you wire your brain to worry. Your mind, therefore, will either be your biggest ally or your biggest enemy.
Anxiety can strike before, during or even after a performance (or it can happen all three times). Your brain's ability to bypass the rational part of itself means you are left with a racing heart, shallow breathing, shaking body, nausea, dry mouth, tense shoulders and jaw and sweaty palms. Mentally there are repercussions too. You might have trouble sleeping, feel depressed, avoid practicing, snap at people around you because you are moody, forget the words, be confused on stage, worry, wrongly assess your performance or assume everyone there is waiting to see you fail. Once you start down the path of anxiety it can be hard to short circuit and instead it can snowball, pulling you into a vicious cycle. Some of you have probably experienced that on stage where you get anxious before going on, get out there and feel your knees knocking together, you can't ever connect to your breath and then before you know it you forget the words and lose your place in the music. Ugh. No one should have to experience that more than once!
Understanding where your anxiety comes from can be tricky. You might be naturally shy or anxious, be afraid of the audience critiquing your performance negatively or had a specific experience in your past that triggered your anxiety. Perhaps you are singing music that is a bit beyond your current capacity, or you haven't practiced enough or performed enough to feel comfortable. Maybe you just haven't been taking good care of your self or are your own worst critic, seeing only the negative aspects of your performance. It could be that there is a stressful event in the rest of your life that you haven't dealt with and that emotion is being represented as anxiety in your singing. Maybe you are not yet mindful of your anxiety to even know what triggers it for you.
In yogic thought, anxiety stems from a sense of disconnection from a larger Universe due to our limited notion of who we really are. In other words, we forget that we are all a part of something greater than ourselves, that we are more than our physical form. Instead we create 'us against them' situations and wrap ourselves up in our identities of being singers, parents, workers or any other hat you wear in your life, believing those identities to be who we are. When we engage in those behaviors we disconnect from ourselves, our audience, (or conductor, band mates, pianists etc.) forget that we are all connected and box ourselves into specific identities. What anxiety universally tells us is that there is room for us to grow. If we befriend our anxiety we can see it as an opportunity to learn so as to make different, mindful choices in the future.
The time we spend on the mat in yoga helps us off the mat in these every day situations that arise. In yoga we get to know ourselves through the lens of compassion by being present. Present to our breath. Present to our bodies and what they can do for us. Present to the thoughts in our minds. If we pay attention through non-judgmental observation we begin to gain insight into our patterns. After our awareness is raised and we understand how we tend to act, we have an opportunity to make different choices at any given time because we are living in the present moment.
Let's go back to the singer I mentioned in the beginning of this post. Her story told me several things: She hadn't auditioned in a long time. She was facing a major life change by leaving a job she'd been at for a while which brought with it a need to find new patterns in her daily life and a big financial shift as well. Her life, in general, is a constant balance of juggling multiple sources of income, the demands of finding practice time, performing and fitting it all in around her personal life. Knowing what we do about where anxiety can come from, it becomes easier to see how her identification with her job, its end and the emotions surrounding that along with the constant stress of balancing her busy life on top of whatever other history she has with anxiety about auditioning/performing, how she typically assess her own performances and whether she is aware of any that, all contribute to her sense of anxiety. All of those things shunt her brain in the direction of anxiety, rather than staying open to connecting with the larger Universe and the people around her.
Her situation may sound familiar to you, or you could replace a few parts of her story with your own and see how this could be you. In Part II of Going to the Source, we'll look at specific yogic based practices that when engaged in on a regular basis help quiet the mind, connect to the breath and turn performance anxiety into energy that can propel you to achieve your performance potential. Stay tuned!
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