It has been my experience that most issues of performance and practice, including “stage fright,” can be alleviated through the development of sustained and focused attention. Although every person’s experience is different, for many the internal dialogue that takes place while we play can become a distraction during performance. The mind does not efficiently manage multitasking between highly demanding activities, such as accurate performance, and the internal chatter of judgmental observation. The goal for musicians who deal with excessive or pronounced internal chatter is to cultivate the ability to actively choose to focus complete attention on playing, rather than on critical commentary while we are playing.
When we practice, we are in the habit of closely monitoring and examining our playing. Self-observation is a necessary aspect of practicing. This critical reflection helps us to identify areas in our playing that need to be worked out and polished through careful, repeated practice. However, this habit of self-critique also becomes a distraction during performance. When we practice with a high level of self-criticism, the internal judgment becomes a habitual part of our playing. This becomes a distraction during performance and leads to self-conscious fears of things that can go wrong, ultimately robbing us of the mental resources needed for complete absorption in the music.
A way to address this issue is to practice performing. This means consciously changing the practice strategy from addressing technical issues of “learning the piece” to practicing “performing the piece.” Practicing performance means playing through the piece, in its entirety, with complete focus on the music in the here and now.
Understanding the “Monkey Mind” and Its Influence on Anxiety
In Eastern philosophy, there is the concept known as the “monkey mind.” Similar to findings in evolutionary psychology, the mind is understood as a restless, craving, sensitive instrument looking for threats in our environment. Individuals who have a heightened sensitivity to perceiving potential threats in the environment are often arrested by the mind’s efforts and become completely absorbed in the mental chatter of “what if!” Gestalt psychotherapy teaches us that anxiety comes from the attempt to control the future, whereas depression is the feeling we experience when attempting to control the past. When we are captivated by the mind’s minding of the potential dangers of the future, or the regrets of the past, we are placing all of our mental resources away from the immediate act of playing in the “here and now.”
Training the monkey mind requires a daily practice of remaining in the here and now and gaining volitional control over the seemingly directive monkey mind that is seeking out danger. Some people are surprised to learn that we can take volitional control over what has appeared to be “hard-wired” instinctual mind activity. Through daily, meditative practice, one can cultivate a degree of volitional choice to act rather than react to internal chatter.
The first step in this process is to accept that what seems out of our control is, in fact, a habit that can be reshaped. This is not something that happens overnight; it takes months of rewriting the habitual reactions that we have been practicing since childhood. The effort is not only part of our music making, but it is an overriding quality of our entire way of being in the world, our personality.
Training the mind to sustain presence in the here and now is the point of mindfulness meditation. The techniques of this ancient practice can be learned in a traditional way, through a meditation teacher, or they can be understood in a contemporary psychological and neuroscientific framework, for those who prefer a more scientific framing. Either of these approaches will teach the same habits and can achieve the same results.
Applying Mindfulness to Music Performance Practice
After the initial practice of mindfulness is learned in everyday life, we can begin to apply this to the practice of performance in the music studio. After technical “learning” the new piece has been done, we can devote time in each practice session to practicing our performance of the entire work. Some strategies include closing one’s eyes and pausing before playing, choosing to mentally “center” in the here and now. Feeling the heartbeat of the piece (tempo) and beginning to play with complete focus on beat, tone, and phrase. The goal is to sustain focus in complete absorption into the playing of the piece while choosing to ignore or let go of any thoughts that creep in during performance. Play from beginning to end, for better or worse. This includes playing through memory flubs, recognizing distraction internal dialogue and choosing to ignore it, and redirecting the monkey mind back to pulse, tone, and phrase.
Through the practice of performance, we gain conscious control of what we experience as a natural reaction. We understand that this is a reshapable habit that we can gain volitional control over and that we can enhance not only our playing but our experience of everyday life through the cultivation of staying in the “here and now.”