Page 120 - How to Shine on Stage

will think (Kenny, 2011). Curiously, research over the past decade has
increasingly indicated that internal factors are more prevalent, with the
fear of one’s own fallibility outweighing the fear of social evaluation. It is
therefore not surprising that even top performers, regardless of their out-
standing musical achievements and the positive reactions of social stake-
holders, still feel that their performance is not quite exemplary enough
and face performance anxiety. The most common and entirely normal
physiological response present in almost every performer before walk-
118 ing on stage includes symptoms such as an increased heart rate, stomach
tension, shallow breathing, and tremors. It is important to note that dif-
ferent groups of musicians experience different symptoms; for instance,
wind and brass players may experience dry mouth, while string play-
How to Shine on Stage cognitive and, in extreme cases, behavioural responses are layered onto
ers may face sweating and hand tremors (Kenny, 2011). Subsequently,
these primary responses. This initiates a vicious circle where, upon the
performer’s arrival on stage, mental or behavioural cues can activate an
associative physiological response as a conditioned reflex.
While there is an inverted U-curve relationship between physiologi-
cal symptoms and performance, meaning that we perform best when we
are optimally physiologically excited, the relationship between perfor-
mance and mental symptoms is inversely linear, meaning that the fewer
distracting thoughts we have, the better we perform. Hence, the prob-
lem lies in our mental interpretation of a perfectly normal experience
of pre- performance excitement as either positive or negative. The first
step is therefore for the performers to become aware of their unrealis-
tic expectations and desires to prevent pre- performance excitement from
manifesting. The latter needs to be brought into awareness, accepted as
a welcome performance companion and, in the case of under/over-acti-
vation, use coping strategies such as various breathing techniques, visu-
alization, autogenic training, progressive muscle relaxation, or a number
of physical techniques (the Alexander Technique, Feldenkreis method,
Body-Mind Centering, etc.). It bears emphasizing that these techniques
should be practised daily, and that the performer should use minor per-
formances to try out what works best for them personally. In certain
countries where music is driven by high productivity demands the phar-
macological approach involving the usage of betablockers is still wide-
ly applied. Recently, there has been a growing recognition of the pivotal
role teachers play in this context, highlighting the importance of provid-
ing them with training in the approaches of the Acceptance and Com-
mitment Therapy (ACT). Another common approach is performance
coaching, which is problem-oriented and operates mostly on the surface