Quick Tip #2: Gratitude

My grandmother died last week at age 93 and she was a force to be reckoned with until the end. She hosted a monthly event in her retirement community she called Happy Notes, where she played and sang and got others to sing for a full hour! I hope to be that zesty when I'm in my 90s. 

I loved playing for her funeral. Mostly.

Because, my older sister happens to be a trigger for all my fears! Her being two years older than me, I lived my formative years in comparison to her. 

When I sat down at the piano bench, after Karina's beautiful playing, my body experienced a wide variety of intense feelings. Gratitude and warmth for music, for my grandma, for all the people in the church who loved her deeply. Appreciation that she asked me to play. Gratitude that I could fulfill this request for her.

And nerves. Adrenaline crackling in my arms and legs, heart pounding, fingers and legs shaking. 

I kept coming back to the warm feelings of love running through my body, and my gratitude, and in retrospect, those warm feelings were enough to keep me in enjoyment and in the moment - all the while, my legs continuing with their shaky shakiness.

Gratitude, in fact, is one of the first tools that I discovered that worked for me as a antidote to fear. Not that I am the first to discover this. But it felt like 'discovery' when I first internalized the power of the warm feelings as a way to stay in the moment, be more grounded, and to relax some of my chronically tight muscles.

As I was working on tools to deal with performance anxiety, I learned the Centering Exercise. One of the steps is consciously relaxing tense muscles.

This is what would happen in my head when I tried to relax.
Brain: Relax. Say ahhhhh. Let go. Feel good. Feel free. Come on, you can do it.
Shoulders: NOOOOOO
Brain: I believe in you, it's time to let go.
Shoulders: NOOOOO
Brain: COME ON, I SAID RELAX
Shoulders: NOOOOOO!!!!!!

It didn't work for me. 
Letting go of tension takes some amount of faith, of trust, that things will be okay. That you will survive. That you can do it. That you don't need to clench muscles to protect against judgment, wrong notes, and rejection.

This is all subconscious of course. I know in my head that I'm safe, that I will survive, that I'm okay if I play wrong notes. But my shoulders and the deeper, more vulnerable parts have taken longer to internalize and believe that truth.  

Gratitude is not the end-all-be-all solution to tension, and it doesn't solve the problem forever. But finding something in your performance, or your collaboration, or your creation that you can genuinely enjoy and feel grateful for, can be a tool in your arsenal to help shift the focus from fear to enjoyment. 

Performing from a place of love and gratitude and positiveness (even if your character is not positive), rather than fear - well, we all want that, don't we?

Here's how to do it:

• Identify places in your performance and preparation of true enjoyment and gratitude.
• You might have a voice that argues, saying something like you don't deserve enjoyment or relaxation if you don't do it perfectly. Try experimenting with the 'buts' and 'what ifs' coexisting with the enjoyment and gratitude.
• Are you performing with another human being? Has anyone helped you prepare? Do you have stage management, lighting and sound designers, directors that you enjoy and appreciate? Sense what that gratitude feels like in your body. Maybe even explore extending that gratitude sensation towards these other people.
• If it feels right to you, locate where in your body you feel the connections, the appreciations, the gratitudes and focus on that feeling. What happens if you stay with that for a moment, or two, or longer?

As with anything you want to be effective, using gratitude to counteract fear takes practice. To get gratitude to be at the top of list, apply it as part of your practice routine. Or even write the word on your music in key places, so you practice applying it as you work through learning the music. 

As always, thanks for reading.
With love and gratitude,
Marta

PS - if this was helpful, you might be interested in Quick Tip #1: State the Obvious

Quick Tip #1: State the Obvious

It's go time. You're ready to walk into the audition room, or onto the performance stage. You've practiced, you've prepared, you've done your due diligence. 

And BAM!

Suddenly adrenaline is rushing through your body. You get hot. Or cold. You start to shake. You can't see as well. Your breathing gets tight. You've forgotten everything you've ever learned in your whole life. 

It's times like these that we need a quick solution. It is not practical to go deep and get curious about what is happening and why. You need to do your job and do it well. Right now.

Today’s blog and the following weeks will be dedicated to some short term skills and tricks for coping with nerves. 

State the obvious. Get as basic as you can – you are safe.

Our lizard brains evolved to be on the lookout for any potential danger. It reads DANGER from an audition panel or an audience and does not interpret between real and imagined threats.

To get back into our bodies and thinking brains, and outta survival mode, one strategy is to notice the basics of your situation. Even though it might feel silly, say it out loud.

• Take a look around you and notice – no one here can eat me. Lizard brain is truly worried that you might die. Remind it that you will not die. Alexander teacher Peter Jacobson suggests taking this another step and saying what action you are doing:
  • No one here can eat me…and I’m playing octaves.
  • No one here can eat me…and I’m singing a “o mio babbino caro”
  • My body is safe….and I’m [character] from [this] monologue
  • I am safe….and I’m dancing a box step.

As you know, the key to anything that improves performance is practice. Same with using a tool to address nerves.

The thing about nerves is that our prefrontal cortex, our thinking brain, goes offline. Our ability to remember what to do can feel nearly impossible, once the adrenaline kicks in and the lizard brain is scrambling for safety. So even with these tricks, you need to practice and train for the quick default when the rush of adrenaline washes everything away.

This tool will help bring your prefrontal cortex back online so it and you can function better, even while nervous.

Here's how to practice this tool:

• In the practice room, as part of your practice routine, look around, state your version of events. I am safe, and I am practicing a Chopin Nocturne. No one can eat me here, and I am practicing my speech on {this topic}. Observe how your body feels when you say this. Take a breath. How does your mind feel? 
• Do a practice performance. Include walking in to the room, and as you walk in, say your safety statement. Take a moment to look around the room and notice that nothing here can eat you. 
• Hook this activity to something else you do on a regular basis - washing dishes, brushing teeth, bathing, walking. Especially if you notice anxiety creeping in for any reason, try out saying a safety statement and observing what happens in your brain and body.

I've been doing this exercise while writing this newsletter - even though there is no adrenaline, I have plenty of avoidance desires creeping in. Looking around my yellow and turquoise room, noticing my safety made me smile and settle and commit a little longer and avoid facebook for a few more minutes.

I know you know this, but since we are practicing stating the obvious here, I will state the obvious: the more you practice any given tool, the more it will be available to you when nerves strike.

Consider dropping a note here on the blog about your favorite tools to deal with nerves. I'd love to compile and share a list of tools that really work. 

Warm wishes for the start of this new year!
Marta

Heartsick about hurricanes and violence? Me too.

I’m heartsick about politics and hurricanes and gun violence. It's all so much, it feels like a new tragedy every day. If it's not an actual tragedy each day, then it's the politicians tweeting and shaming and blaming and pointing fingers and nothing getting done. This inaction is having life and death consequences for many.

[Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. Tweets from President Trump.]

Blame for suffering.

Well, this is nothing new.

“Women shouldn’t wear short skirts, kiss too much, wear too much makeup, stay out too late, flirt with the wrong people, change their minds, lead someone on, play hard to get, etc”
“Black people should just be respectful, grateful. If they aren’t guilty, then don’t act guilty. Don’t run away. Don’t talk back. Don't be angry. Don't be loud.”
“Inner cities are shooting each other up. We need our guns to protect US from THEM.”
“If you want to live in paradise (Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico), there is a price to pay.”

It all makes me feel helpless. And my (not proud) fallback when I feel helpless is to stick my head in the sand. To grieve privately. Overwhelmed. Drained. Rage contained and turned inward. Rely on the privilege to choose to look away.

And that is my cue to look internally for what I can do to help myself. Taking care of myself renews my energy to turn back outward to do what I can externally too.

All of these external circumstances might stir up our deepest fears, for survival, for well being, for connection and belonging. Witnessing these grand disasters, it reminds us that our world is not as safe and secure as some of us are able to pretend. Tragedy can strike, and even worse, we can be blamed for it.

These fears that show up in the meta picture can show up intimately in our performing and creative lives. Because those parts of us that are afraid carry our deepest concerns about safety and belonging, they show up in our very personal work. They show up in the audition room, or dealing with rejection, or writing about personal experiences, or choosing to go for a non-traditional and uncertain career.

The situation in our country amplifies those personal concerns, putting those fears on high alert.

Which sometimes makes art and performance more scary right now, because those fears are on extra lookout for danger.

Which means it’s also an opportunity to deal with those big fears in a meaningful way. They’re coming to the surface, which means more access and availability for healing.

Here are some steps to take to be with your fears and bring some healing inward. If you like, you can journal about the following prompts:

First step – Notice those fears as a part of you. The fears are not all of you. How does it feel to say or feel that the fears are not all of you?

Second – Notice when those fears get activated. Are you walking around every day with a knot in your stomach, or scrunched shoulders, or a spinning brain? How do your fears show up? Are there particular triggers?
 
Third – Is there a way to direct some curiosity towards those fears? Open curiosity is great, because we want to hear from the fears and all the concerns that they carry. We don’t want to change them or push them or pull them. Just hear them. When fully heard, they change on their own.

Fourth – Be kind to yourself. Self-compassion works wonders. Compassion doesn’t ask for anything to be different. Simply noticing, this is hard, this is a big burden. Extending warm heart energy towards those feelings. You can even place your hands on your heart and say something comforting to yourself, like you might comfort a child. "Yes, this is really hard. You are not wrong. I see how much you are hurting."

Concerned that turning inward to heal your own fears might be selfish? I view it the other way, this healing gives us renewed confidence and energy to continue to do our part in the world. Healing ourselves sends ripples in ways we cannot predict, but those ripples are a good and worthy goal.

With love and compassion, 
Marta

Taking care of yourself when it feels like the world is going to hell

Friends, I am reeling after the election last week. I'm in some deep grief. Not just about the result of the election, but also that half of our country is suffering in ways that have been so untended to and so unheard that they are willing to vote for a person who is hurtful, racist, sexist, and encourages violence and division. Yes, some people feel renewed permission to unleash stored up anger and meanness and we are hearing reports of just such events, causing fear of what is to come. But I choose to believe that people are good, and are designed to seek connection and common humanity, while knowing that humans are also capable of inflicting horrors upon one another. I pray that our deepest fears are not realized.

On Election night, as the results were coming in and I was feeling stunned, I saw this post by my friend Christine on Facebook:

"The five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with ________. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling."

How about you? Are you feeling any of these feelings? 

And maybe you're feeling pleased and happy with the results of the election. And yet you are seeing the protests erupting around the country and feeling disconnected or angry at the people protesting. You may have feelings stored up for years about past presidents, the legislature, the gridlock in Washington or your home state, the hopelessness and helplessness at seeing your job disappear, or wages decline, or ....

I'm adding my two cents to all that is torrenting in the blogosphere: holding space for how you are feeling in this moment. While these steps may seem small, in my view, they are essential in developing the capacity for long term action and healing. Because we all know the problems we are facing are massive and overwhelming. 
 

What to do when life is feeling overwhelming, scary, confusing, upended?

When things are tough and I feel muddled and confused, my fallback question is:

How am I feeling in this moment?

Not how should I feel, but how am I truly feeling? 

Where am I feeling this feeling?

So often my body gives me a trail of clues. Tense shoulders clue me in that my heart is feeling locked down and protective, and covering up my belly which is full of turmoil and anxiety. 

This brings me into this moment, into my body. Part of fear is about past events and about future worries. Being in the moment can bring some relief and calm our nervous system. So many of us are living in a heightened state of fear, which triggers the nervous system into Fight, Flight, or Freeze. Our body system is priming for survival on a daily or hourly basis, living in this adrenalized state far more than it ever was designed.

This is a long game, not a sprint away from disaster. Taking a minute to breathe into these feelings helps calm the nervous system, backing away from the ledge of panic. 

The next step, as painful as it is, is to acknowledge, "OK. That's how I'm feeling right now." No need to change, to process, to talk about, to journal, to distract, to run away. Just sit with it this moment, for as long as you can tolerate it. Sometimes, sitting with it long enough, it will change on its own. It might grow bigger, it might overwhelm, it might move around your body. Or checking back in on the feeling over the course of the day you might also see changes.

If you are feeling pain and fear from this election, these circumstances are not going to go away anytime soon. I have many fears for the world, for our country, for our economy, for our environment, for minorities, for immigrants, for women. At this moment for me, I fear getting stuck in fear and anger and depression and hopelessness for the foreseeable future. Tending to my grief and overwhelm are essential for my health and sanity. I would say that tending to our ongoing societal grief and fear, on all sides, from all parties, from all corners, from all income levels, from all education backgrounds, is essential as well, otherwise the same problems will continue without resolve.

Friend, I am sending you love and compassion, for whatever emotional state you are in, wherever you are in this process. 
With love,
Marta

PS, here are some articles that may resonate with you right now.
I wrote this post this past summer about dealing with the grief in the world. I feel the advice is still appropriate.
http://innerartistry.space/blog/is-your-soul-feeling-world-weary

I love, love, love this writing from Tad Hargrave. It is about death of old ways, rebirth of new possibilities, and staying in grief and heartbreak in order to birth the new. 
https://www.facebook.com/notes/tad-hargrave/let-it-burn-on-trump-this-appalling-moment/10154247540379032
"I don’t think what’s being asked of us is to get over our hurt and heartbreak of this moment. I think we are being asked to be heartbroken already, to feel the preciousness of what may be slipping from view and weave that feeling into everything we do and wear the heartbreak beautifully for everyone to see. I think we are being asked to create beauty from even our regrets of all that we didn’t see and all of the years we might deem now as wasted. I think we are being asked to do the hard work of lovinga world that keeps breaking our heart."

About building empathy, even for those who voted different than you: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_we_need_empathy_in_the_age_of_trump

Looking for the good in the election cycle:
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_you_can_find_the_good_in_a_nasty_election_cycle?

Your greatest strength? Liability? Or both?

Sometimes our greatest strengths can also be our most tender liabilities. In this video, I talk about how hiding underneath my desire for connection and relationship with people was also so much concern about what people think about me. This tender, vulnerable part of me spiraled out of control so that I couldn't function while practicing or performing, fearing that I would mess up, fearing that my colleagues would think badly of me, fearing I would need to find a new career. 

What is one of your greatest strengths? Is there a flip side to this strength? What is the root fear of the flip side? Understanding and healing the weakness will help you live in your strength in a balanced way.

In your emotional life, this means tending to the vulnerable parts of yourself, not pushing those vulnerabilities away, but hearing the concerns and pains and fears, making space. Once those fears have been heard and they have settled, then it's easier to reconnect to our intentions and dreams. 

In performing, this helps you find grounding, confidence, connection to your collaborators, and joy in the moment.

In daily life, this helps you stay focused on your goals and dreams.

Overcoming Performance Anxiety: improv classes

“I can’t do this anymore,” I said to my husband.

After 2.75 hours of sweating, flip-flopping stomach, racing heart, sweating palms, shaking legs, I was ready to be done. But our instructor had just enthusiastically said, “we have time for one more exercise!!!” 

Like that was good news.

This was our first night of improv class at IO Chicago.

My husband had done a year of improv classes at Second City before we met and always said I would really dig it. After the appearance of crazy performance anxiety 6 months earlier, I knew I needed a safe space to work on my fear without worry about totally falling apart on stage and getting fired. Improv seemed like a great choice. Until we got there that night.

I finished out class that night, and returned for many more, making it through 10 months of weekly classes. That translated into 10 months of weekly terror, sweating, butterflies in my stomach, racing heart, etc.

That also translated into 10 months of weekly opportunity to practice new skills, to let fear out from under my armor, to experiment, and ultimately to learn that I could survive, that I could even thrive while in fear. That fear was not the end, it was just a feeling. 

One tidbit I learned from the Bulletproof Musician is that the physical activation of performance anxiety is actually the same as physical activation of excitement. It’s what we label it that determines if we feel positive or negative. Every single class I would tell myself over and over, “I am excited, I am excited.”

The big takeaways from improv class? I can function while in fear. And even have fun at times! Inviting fear into my body, letting it take up space, letting it do its thing and not repress it, then it stopped the internal fighting, and which resulted in taking the pressure off. That allowed other emotions to be part of the process too – excitement, joy, curiosity.

If you suffer from nerves, finding a safe, practice performance space for experimenting can do wonders in overcoming fear. Finding a friend or colleague to support you through these experiments makes it even better - you can discuss, dissect, analyze, feel, cry, share better with a comrade who gets it.

Here are some suggestions of places and situations you could use:

• Practice Performance sessions

• A small group of friends in your home, practice room, work space

• Church

• Toastmasters

• Acting class

• Music lessons

Give yourself permission to play around with the feelings, be curious about your body’s response to the situation, take the pressure off by having low expectations for yourself. You might crash and burn sometimes - I certainly did in my improv classes!

Finding the right place to practice while in fear also gives you the space to reconnect with the joy of performance, the love of your art that brought you to this career in the first place.

This is 3rd in a series about my experience in overcoming performance anxiety. If you wish to read about Part 1 (the start of my anxiety) and Part 2 (Beyond Practicing). Coming up next week, coaching with a specialist in Internal Family Systems.