[ARTS] Mental experience while performing

[Seiraku]

Any other performing artists here? My wife and I just performed yesterday for an opera singer showcase in our town. I played classical guitar and she sang. (Performed two of John Duarte’s Five Quiet Songs.) I have more experience performing jazz/pop music so I tend to get more nervous for classical guitar. Backstage I tried doing some insta-zazen and breathing. During our performance it was like I watched my body express nervousness. I saw my hand shaking a bit or felt my tense arms but at the same time didn’t feel so nervous inwardly. All in all I played it about 90% right I’d say, haha. I was able to step back and tell myself to breathe during the pieces which helped.

How do you all give the moment full attention when you have to perform? Could even be for a stressful presentation or something.

Gassho,
Seiraku
satlah

[Shinshi]

Hi Seiraku,

Not so much anymore but in my day I have been an Actor and a guitar player in bands. I have a couple of thoughts that may or may not be helpful.

One of the things my high school drama coach taught me is that, interestingly, your physiological underpinnings of emotions happen before you label them . His point was that the same physical state might end up being labeled "I am scared/nervous" by one person or "I am excited and ready to perform" by another. So I have always tried to label "nervousness" before preforming as me being psyched up and ready to go. One of his points was that you kind of need that sense of being keyed up and ready to do a great performance.

So for me, when I get butterflies, or even a bit of the shakes I see that as a good thing. I am ready to go. I have also been a competitive athlete and the same thing holds there. You want to feel some jitters as it means you are ready to go.

Another random thought. One of the most rewarding things one can experience in life is when your performance becomes transcendent. When it feels like the music is flowing through you - almost as if coming from someplace else. For me, the times that has happened has always been when I have committed fully to the performance. When I just let my concerns about messing up, forgetting my lines etc just go. You can't be attached to those kinds of ideas as it will pull you into your head. It produces secondary processing about how you are doing and, for me, that always pulls me out of my performance. My son is a good guitarist but he just can't let a "mistake" go. He will literally stop playing sometimes. He gets sticky in his head. But you have to commit completely to the song - even if that means playing something other than what you planned.

But if you do play something unplanned - you might label it a mistake - that is completely ok. There is no such thing as perfect. You just have to commit to the performance and then what manifests, manifests. It is all in the moment and doesn't need to be labeled or evaluated.

It is kind of like when we sit. A thought comes and we don't engage with it - we just let it go. Same thing with a "mistake" - we just let it pass on by - we stay fully committed to the song and the performance.

And that is my ramblings on this topic.

Sorry for babbling on.

Gassho, Shinshi
satlah

[Seiraku]

Thank you Shinshi for your response those points make a lot of sense, and I agree the feeling of excited/ready to go vs nervous is kind of one thing until you define it. Next time might try to think, now I’m amped, let’s go!

Gassho,
Seiraku
satlah

[Tairin]

Hi Seiraku

Interesting question you posed. I have performed music for 40+ years performing original and mostly unscripted music. I also worked as a software architect for 20ish years where my job was involved giving internal or external presentations at least weekly. You’d think that with all that practice I wouldn’t suffer any nervousness but the reality is that I am still nervous every single time. I’ve tried tricks etc to overcome that but in my more recent years I’ve just accepted that this is the way it is any in a sense leaned into it. It is a little like what Shinshi said…. Partly it is excitement too. I’ve learned to just accept the nervousness and enjoy the ride. Usually the performance is over too fast and I wish I could have played longer


Tairin
sat today and lah

[Seido-nigo]

Dear Seiraku,

I don’t know if this is helpful but I can speak about performance from the perspective of medical skills, which physicians get assessed on throughout the early and middle stages of our careers, not just in medical school. The contexts vary but these are timed and structured tests or exercises where we’re given a prompt and enter a simulated scenario to demonstrate our examination, communication, teamwork and emergency management skills on a “patient”, while being observed by seniors and colleagues.

Shinshi’s points are great and they match the neuroscience and psychology research (I’m going to nerd out a bit, soz!) Namely:
- There’s research to suggest emotions are post-perceptual explanations your brain comes up with as a reasonable inference for the context and your physiological data (https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-hum...t-are-emotions)

- A bit of a stress response - the shakes, butterflies - is normal and appropriate when coming up to a performance. There’s a framework called the Yerkes-Dodson law which links optimal performance to stress level and there’s a sweet spot where you want just enough stress to motivate you through the task, but not too much that it interferes with performing well. The more recent research suggests the rule is more nuanced and depends on task, but broadly speaking it can be a useful way of thinking about stress and performance. (https://www.simplypsychology.org/wha...odson-law.html)

The best “performances” I’ve had have balanced the automatic with being present and responsive in the moment. There’s a sense of riding each moment as it comes. Being present is a state of openness, of total acceptance to whatever happens when I start. It takes comfort and trust in the me that showed up to perform at that moment. There has always been and will likely always be a certain level of nervousness.

For the automatic to be there, I need two things: 1) Enough practice, 2) Self-belief or trust in myself that I’ve had enough practice. The moment there are doubts, like, “oh no, I’m not sure about this…what if this comes up, I haven’t done that skill in awhile…I hope this goes well, but I’ve got a feeling this could go badly...” those thoughts feed a stress response (think sympathetic nervous system) and if that nervousness grows too big (because my thoughts have fed it), it overwhelms neural circuitry. Any automatic muscle memory I have goes down the drain because my brain is living out multiple imaginary negative futures and responding to those threats rather than being present. It’s essentially too much thinking, leading to worry to the point that your normally automatic actions feel foreign to you. (Famous real-world example: Simone Biles and the twisties: https://www.discovermagazine.com/the...twisties-42738)

A similar thing can happen if I make an error and it “catches” me, pulling me from the moment-to-moment flow. The trick is to do as Shinshi said, letting the error go and committing to here and now. For me, that means “owning” the error because if I tell myself to just pretend it didn’t happen, it’s like someone telling me to not think about pink elephants. All that fills my mind is pink elephants.

Expectations, either from ourselves or from others, can also affect performance. If I focus at all on expectations, I usually lose. I tend to perform better when I focus on the values that are important to me: Is my practice safe and compassionate for patients and my team? Have I provided the best possible care I can, given the circumstances?

I hope something of this way too long ramble is useful to you. I'm not sure how much my own experience is applicable, but can definitely relate to anxiety, the shakes and breathing through a performance!


Gassho
Seido
Sat today /Lah

[Seiraku]

Thank you Tairin and Seido-nigo for your thoughtful answers! I think from the start I'm labeling those heightened sensations as 'anxious', positioning it as something negative, and then trying to calm down. Just leaning into it instead could be helpful. I could also do with more practice on the instrument, for sure, and maybe I'll try exciting a little helpful nerves before practicing at home. It was great reading through those links you shared, Seido. Particularly the bell curve sweet spot when stress can be helpful. It also makes me think I should do some jumping jacks before my sedentary job tasks to work better!

Gassho,
Seiraku
Satlah

[Seido-nigo]

Thank you Tairin and Seido-nigo for your thoughtful answers! I think from the start I'm labeling those heightened sensations as 'anxious', positioning it as something negative, and then trying to calm down. Just leaning into it instead could be helpful. I could also do with more practice on the instrument, for sure, and maybe I'll try exciting a little helpful nerves before practicing at home. It was great reading through those links you shared, Seido. Particularly the bell curve sweet spot when stress can be helpful. It also makes me think I should do some jumping jacks before my sedentary job tasks to work better!

Gassho,
Seiraku
Satlah

I'm glad if at all helpful! We could probably all do with some jumping jacks before sedentary work...they release endorphins, which are our bodies' naturally producing opioids The human body is quirky and amazing.

Gassho
Sat today/Lah