How Piano-Yoga® Can Help You to Overcome Stage-fright: What Can Be Done A Month Before The Performance
It can be considered that there are 3 types of people. The first category of people is those who enjoy playing in public and when they go to play, they perform much better than they do at home. The second category is those who like playing and although they do experience nerves, but they know how to cope with them, so when they go on stage, they still play very well. The third category consists of those who experience stage fright – those whose playing actually suffers when they perform in front of an audience, sometimes resulting in the decision not to play at all.
So what can be done to avoid these issues?
What actually happens when people go onto the stage is that as the brain produces extra signals and sends them to the adrenal gland. The gland starts receiving much more than it does in usual circumstances, in turn sending them to the rest of the body and causing the body to go into the “fight or flight” response. Animals also experience this – you can see it for example in cats, when they get frightened and the fur on their back stands up.
With people, what we often see is that they get red in the face, they have sweaty palms, their hands and legs start shaking, their breathing will change and unfortunately often they may go into a panic attack. However, if you look at all the three groups, you can see that the rush of adrenalin actually occurs in all cases, it is just that some people react to it favourably and others don’t.
In this and the following articles, we will be telling you about the skills that will allow you to deal with the nerves your adrenalin causes, enabling you to move from the third category to the second category, thus noticeably improving your experience of playing in front of an audience.
The preparation for public performances should happen not on the day, not the night before, but an entire month before the performance. If you can spend 2 months preparing, it would be even better! This preparation consists of 2 different aspects – on the one hand there is the physical preparation, so learning your pieces, knowing them really well, working on difficult passages, etc. But the other aspect is working on the psychological preparation and actually working on the issue of your fear of public performance. This is an issue which is very often avoided by people, but it is in fact very equally important and work can be started well in advance of the actual performance.
We will continue talking about what can be done in order to prepare for the performance in the next article.
So what can be done to avoid these issues?
What actually happens when people go onto the stage is that as the brain produces extra signals and sends them to the adrenal gland. The gland starts receiving much more than it does in usual circumstances, in turn sending them to the rest of the body and causing the body to go into the “fight or flight” response. Animals also experience this – you can see it for example in cats, when they get frightened and the fur on their back stands up.
With people, what we often see is that they get red in the face, they have sweaty palms, their hands and legs start shaking, their breathing will change and unfortunately often they may go into a panic attack. However, if you look at all the three groups, you can see that the rush of adrenalin actually occurs in all cases, it is just that some people react to it favourably and others don’t.
In this and the following articles, we will be telling you about the skills that will allow you to deal with the nerves your adrenalin causes, enabling you to move from the third category to the second category, thus noticeably improving your experience of playing in front of an audience.
The preparation for public performances should happen not on the day, not the night before, but an entire month before the performance. If you can spend 2 months preparing, it would be even better! This preparation consists of 2 different aspects – on the one hand there is the physical preparation, so learning your pieces, knowing them really well, working on difficult passages, etc. But the other aspect is working on the psychological preparation and actually working on the issue of your fear of public performance. This is an issue which is very often avoided by people, but it is in fact very equally important and work can be started well in advance of the actual performance.
We will continue talking about what can be done in order to prepare for the performance in the next article.
Piano Journal
