Blog - Page 19 of 23 - Activate You

Steps to conquer stage fright: Fight the fear factor

This is a series about conquering stage fright. Last week, we talked about the importance of knowing yourself. This week, we’re talking about the fear factor.

There was a pause. The group in the room all turned towards me expectantly. This was the moment I had feared. I breathed in slowly, trying to control my thumping heart. This is it, I thought. I tried to collect my thoughts, remember what I had to do. It’s now or never.

“Kalimera. Me lene Jennifer. Pos se lene?”

Yes, that was my first ever Greek class, and my first sentence in Greek. Scary stuff. My heart pounded, I can tell you, just as it used to every time I performed as a musician or actor.

But why? Why did it pound? Why was I so anxious about saying a very few words (albeit in a foreign language)? I mean, it isn’t as though I was doing anything death-defying!

And that’s just the point. When we stand up to make that speech or sing that song, our bodies pump us full of adrenalin. It’s the chemical that is behind the fight or flight response, the response that was so useful to us when we had to deal with dangerous animals on a daily basis.

But when we are onstage, or making a speech, we aren’t being chased by a lion. We aren’t in danger of imminent death. Our bodies just make us feel that way. I think this may be part of the reason why FM Alexander wrote “Unduly excited fear reflexes, uncontrolled emotions … are retarding factors in all human development… This is particularly the case when a person endeavours to learn something calling for new experiences.”

So how do we deal with the fluttering tummy and pounding heart?

Steps to fighting the fear

1. Accept that it is normal. So often my students think that the physical signs of adrenalin are bad and wrong and they shouldn’t be feeling them. On the contrary, it’s a normal reaction to stress. So don’t stress about it!

2. We need to do something to make the activity that is stressful to us, not stressful any more. And the classic way to do this is to give ourselves a few trial runs. FM Alexander says of teaching that the teacher should ask the student “to learn gradually to remember the guiding orders or directions.” And why learn them gradually? Be ause, in Alexander’s words, “satisfactory experiences … make for confidence.”

3. Give ourselves time. If we allow ourselves trial runs and give ourselves confidence from our steps to success, Alexander says that success is guaranteed. But he doesn’t say when: “This may not be today, tomorrow or the next day, but it will be…” So let’s give ourselves time, and a little bit of latitude!

Do you get butterflies? Do they stress you out? How will you deal with them next time?

Quotes are from Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, Irdeat Complete Edition, pp.338-9.
Image by renjith krishnan from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Steps to conquer stage fright: Know yourself!

A week or two ago, I did something I haven’t done in a fair while (and no, I won’t tell you just how many years!). I performed an instrumental solo in public.

It was only a local festival competition, and the audience wasn’t large. But it was a big occasion for me. For me, it was proof that I had finally found the key to the anxieties that I used to suffer before every performance. I was a stage fright sufferer.

And now I’m not.

Stage fright is a big problem, whether you’re a musician, a famous actor, or faced with giving the best man’s speech at your friend’s wedding. In fact, in the UK I believe that speaking in public ranks even above death as the thing that most frightens the general public!

In the next few weeks, I want to share with you the things that I have learned through studying the Alexander Technique that have helped me to conquer my stage fright. And for the first week, I’m going to start with the principle from FM Alexander’s work that makes it all possible.

Know thyself.

There’s a wonderful sentence in the introduction of FM Alexander’s final book. It’s towards the end of the chapter, and the unwary would find it slide past their eyes very easily. But it is pure gold. Here it is.

“I think I may confidently predict that those who are sufficiently interested in the findings I have recorded … will find their outlook and understanding … so completely changed that they will see that knowledge of the self is fundamental to all other knowledge”

Alexander makes three major claims here.

1. His work changes students’ outlook and understanding

2. His work is all about knowledge of the self

3. Knowledge of the self is prior to all other knowledge

This is important to stage fright sufferers because we tend to look for external fixes to our problems. We try imagining that the audience are in their underwear. We try deep breathing exercises. We walk; we pace. Some of us resort to alcohol to calm us down. Above all, we try to deal with the awful thought that our anxiety is all our own fault because we aren’t courageous enough.

This isn’t true. We don’t suffer from a lack of courage. We suffer from a lack of knowledge of ourselves: how we tick as humans. We need to know about adrenalin and the fight/flight response. We need to know about discipline. We need to know about attitude of mind.

And those are some of the topics that I’ll be dealing with in future weeks, because these are all areas where the Alexander Technique has helped me.

And does it help performers? Just listen to Dame Nellie Melba, pre-eminent soprano of the early years of the twentieth century:

“When we come to know that certain actions produce certain results, and when we can, at will, perform those actions, uncertainty is removed, and uncertainty is at the root of most of our fears. In singing, as in all else, the precept “Know thyself” is of the utmost importance.”

So. Do you know yourself? Do you know how you get your results?

Image by scottchan from FreeDigitalphotos.net

Be Persistent! Stickability, Creativity and the Alexander Technique

This is the fifth and final post in a short series on what FM Alexander can teach us about steps to creativity. The first post was called Make Mistakes! The second post was called Make Decisions! The third post was called Make Allowances! The fourth post was called Be Methodical!

En route to South Korea (and ultimately Australia), I found a wonderful documentary on the airline entertainment system last night. It was about Jascha Heifetz, the great violinist. According to the documentary, after living and touring in America for a few years, the young Heifetz began to enjoy the trappings of fame – cameras, cars, parties – and moved away from the highly regimented practice regime that he had previously followed. But after a particularly poor review by a journalist called Henderson, in which the reporter suggested that The performer was short-changing his audience, Heifetz was so shocked that he made massive changes in his lifestyle almost overnight. He became, once more, the consummate professional and utterly brilliant virtuoso.

The story fascinated me because it reminded me of another key characteristic of the great creative minds: persistence.

Heifetz didn’t quit. He didn’t ignore the criticism. He took the setback in his stride, accepted the criticism, and acted upon it.

In a similar way, FM Alexander faced difficulties in his efforts to find a solution to his vocal problems. He had spent months observing and experimenting. But after he had tried putting his head forward and up but still found that he could not prevent his habitual misuse of himself, he wrote this line:

“I now had proof of one thing at least, that all my efforts up till now to improve the use of myself in reciting had been misdirected.”

This sounds like a setback to me! But Alexander, like Heifetz, didn’t give up. He keep thinking, reasoning, observing and experimenting. He went right back to the beginning and started again. He worked really hard.

Setbacks are normal, no matter what our field of expertise. But our creativity demands that we overcome whatever seems to block our path. In fact, as with Heifetz and Alexander, the setbacks can often become a spur to even greater accomplishment. The key is not to give up.

What obstacles are challenging your creativity? And how are you going to spur yourself on?

Be Methodical! Planning, Creativity and Alexander Technique

This is the fourth post in a short series on what FM Alexander can teach us about steps to creativity. The first post was called Make Mistakes! The second post was called Make Decisions! Last week’s post was called Make Allowances!

I’ve been having an argument with some of my teenage students at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama lately. I have been trying to teach them about the usefulness of planning, how it has a central place in Alexander’s work, and how it can help them achieve their creative goals. They don’t like the idea of planning. They think it will stifle their creativity. “But it will destroy our spontaneity!” they insist.

So… What’s the relationship between planning and creativity? Does being methodical bring results? Or does it ruin your spontaneity?

FM and the mirror

Being methodical and going about things in a stepwise manner is at the very root of the work we call the Alexander Technique. When FM Alexander decided to find out the cause of his vocal problems and first stood in front of his mirror, he went about things in a stepwise manner. He decided to watch himself first in ordinary speaking. He knew that he was suffering when he tried to recite, so he looked at his way of going about ordinary speaking first, so he had something to compare to. He saw nothing unusual. Then he watched himself while reciting, and saw that he did things with the relationship of his head with his body that didn’t seem helpful.

But did he stop there? No! He watched himself in ordinary speaking again. And he saw the same changes with his head-body relationship, but smaller.

Now, this is a classic example of a methodical thinker. FM wasn’t satisfied when he found the difference between ordinary speaking mk.1 and reciting. He tried ordinary speaking again – just to be certain.

And FM’s creation of his work is full of this sort of methodical thinking. He would do some observations, gathering as much information as he could. Then he would have a good think. And then he would try an experiment, and give himself time to really work on it. Then he would go back to the mirror, to check what was going on.

Being methodical didn’t destroy Alexander’s creativity. It gave it a framework. Because he was so methodical in his observations, he ws able to make reasoned, targeted experiments. Because he had a framework, his creativity had a direction and a purpose. It wsn’t trial and error. There was room for spontaneity precisely because he ‘knew the territory’ so well.

The framework

Do you have a framework built around your creative experimentation? If not, then try Alexander’s:

Observe. Cover all the bases.
Have a good think.
Experiment!
Observe again

Try using this framework. You may find, like my young actors who gave it a go to try to prove me wrong, that it really does help you to be not just more organised, but more effectively spontaneous too.

Let me know what you think in the comments!

Image by nuttakit from FreeDigitalphotos.net

Make Allowances! Patience, Creativity and Alexander Technique

This is the third post in a short series on what FM Alexander can teach us about steps to creativity. The first post was called Make Mistakes! Last week’s post was called Make Decisions!

A friend of mine sent her 4 year old son for his first day of school. When she picked him up, she asked him how the day had been. “It’s not right, Mummy,” he replied. “They haven’t taught me to read yet!”

It’s a funny story. We laugh because my friend’s child had unreasonably high expectations, both of the teacher and of themselves. But how often are we guilty of just this sort of impatience, this brand of unwillingness to make allowances for ourselves and others?

I subscribe to the newsletter produced by Michael Bungay Stanier, productivity expert and author of Do More Great Work. He told the story this month of how he (briefly) considered writing the year off as a failure after he fell behind schedule with his plans of writing four books this year.

Often my students come for their lessons and complain bitterly about how the thing they most want to improve in themselves hasn’t shifted, or hasn’t shifted fast enough. They wonder why they are so stuck. I look at them and marvel at how fast they are changing.

Wondering why we aren’t fixed yet / finished yet / better yet is really a potent form of cognitive distortion. We are demanding of ourselves perfection, and becoming impatient when we fall short of the mark.

There are two important things to remember about creativity and change.

1. It isn’t a linear, constant progression.

Oddly, most of us seem to expect our progress to be a constant, steady movement forwards over time. This is a fallacy. Progress in the real world so often happens in fits and starts, giant leaps punctuated by long gaps of frustration.

Why?

First of all, we are human beings with lives and families and commitments. There are so many external variables that could go awry.

Second, because we are human, sometimes we get ourselves stuck. FM Alexander likens us to a man standing at a crossroads. We’ve tried one road and know that it doesn’t lead to where we want to go. But sometimes we would rather try that road again and again rather than take the other road. Or as AT teacher Frank Pierce Jones put it, “changes take place when you are ready for them and can permit them to happen.”

2. Success is guaranteed.

Yes, you read that correctly! This is what Alexander wrote:

Where the “means-whereby” are right for the purpose, desired ends will come. They are inevitable. Why then be concerned as to the manner and speed of their coming? We should reserve all thought, energy and concern for the means whereby we may command the manner of their coming.”

If we are following a good process, if we are following it faithfullyand with a sense of direction and control, we are guaranteed to have a positive outcome. Eventually.

So what is your relationship with perfection? Are you willing to allow yourself the time you need to do the process well, and leave the results to come when they are ready?

Image by Federico Stevanin from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Make decisions! 3 Alexander Technique aids to decision making in creativity.

This is the second post in a short series on what FM Alexander can teach us about steps to creativity. Last week’s post was called Make Mistakes!

Decision making is a shadowy discipline in creative ventures. We all do it, but we don’t necessarily give our decisions their full value or significance. Will I play that phrase legato or portato? Does my character say that line because he is in love with the girl, or because he is pretending? Should I blend in the vermillion, or leave a harder edge?

The Alexander Technique has a lot to teach us about the value of decision making. FM Alexander’s account of his creation of his work (in The Use of the Self) is full of it! Here are the elements ofAlexander’s endeavours that I have found useful:

1. Examine the evidence.

Alexander’s account of the evolution of his technique is bursting with words descriptive of examination and deliberation. “This led me to a long consideration…” “I observed…” “It gradually dawned upon me…” “On discovering this, I thought back to see if I could account for it…”

Alexander gathered evidence, and then he evaluated it at length. Nothing was discarded or discounted. He even included this step as part of is plan to employ his reasoning processes, as analysing the conditions present.

Do you gather and examine the evidence? All of it?

2. Make the decision!

Once FM analysed, he used his reasoning processes to make a decision, and he acted upon it. So often we try to avoid making a decision, especially if it involves difficult or equally problematic alternatives to choose from. But we need to make a decision. Until we do, we keep ourselves stuck.

3. Make the decision, then STOP WORRYING!

Often, our reluctance to make a difficult decision stems from worry about whether we are choosing the right alternative. What if we get it wrong? What if the other choice was better after all?

There are no guarantees for us, and there certainly weren’t any for FM. He was facing the loss of the career that he loved. He had no idea if the theories and physical experiments he was trying would work. But he tried them anyway, and when they didn’t work, he tried something new. The prospect of success was worth the risk of failure.

In his book Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki writes, “Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.”

Are you prepared to risk failure in order to succeed?

Image by jscreationzs from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Make Mistakes! What FM Alexander teaches about experimenting and creativity.

This is the beginning of a short series on what FM Alexander can teach us about creativity. I hope you like it!

For my son’s birthday recently, I gave him a book called Make Art, Make Mistakes. It led me to think about the relationship between creativity and experimentalism.

Often, especially when I work with musicians, I encounter people who have come to believe that mistakes are not a good thing. Indeed, for some musicians, one of the most prevailing lessons that they learned through their training is that Mistakes are Bad.

Of course, the mistakes that the teachers were warning against was the sort of slip-up that we are led to believe mars a good (read: flawless) performance. But what tends to happen is that in our desire for the good (flawless) performance, we begin to fear the mistake. And as we fear, we make what FM Alexander might have termed a mental reservation, a decision to close ourselves off from performance choices that we consider riskier and more likely to result in mistakes.

We play it safe.

But safe is, ultimately, boring.

And safe doesn’t get us to new places and new ideas. FM Alexander didn’t play it safe when he stood in front of the mirror, trying to work out what was causing his voice problems. He experimented. He tried things. At one point, midway through his experiments, he even wrote “all my efforts up till now to improve the use of myself in reciting had been misdirected.”*

Alexander was prepared to risk failure in his efforts to resolve his vocal problems. And we need to be prepared to risk failure if we want to push the boundaries of our creativity.

Be like FM Alexander and experiment.

Make art. Make mistakes. Have fun.

What one thing can you do today to help you take more risks? What one project or task will you pledge to stop playing safe?

Next week: how decision-making can help you, and how FM Alexander used it to great effect!

*FM Alexander, The Use of the Self, in the Irdeat Complete Edition, p.419.

Picture by Jennifer Mackerras

“You let the tiredness out!” – Fatigue and Alexander Technique

Last week I wrote about why it is that working with the Alexander Technique can have a dramatic improvement upon your energy levels. But what about when it doesn’t? What if you experience a short-term fatigue?

The quote in the title is from my husband. When he has Alexander lessons, it is a common experience for him to feel all the usual beneficial stuff – lighter, freer, less muscular discomfort – but also one less welcome sensation. Tiredness.

Similarly, I have had students who experience a tiredness reaction to a lesson so extreme that they could barely keep awake!

So what happened to my husband and my students? Why did they feel so tired? What follows is my best guess on the subject.

Habits of body, habits of thought.

In his first book Man’s Supreme Inheritance, FM Alexander is very clear that there is a relationship between movement and thought. He writes: “the majority of people fall into a mechanical habit of thought quite as easily as they fall into the mechanical habit of body which is the immediate consequence.”

So – what we do with our bodies is the consequence of beliefs we have or decisions we make. If this is so – and I believe that it is – then we could create a story of a hypothetical student.

I can well imagine that, if our hypothetical student has had a particularly tiring or stressful time, they may well make the decision that, for whatever reason, they are not able to allow themselves to rest. They decide to keep going. And in order to keep going and keep concentrating on their work, they turn on muscles (FM writes about this in Man’s Supreme Inheritance too).

And then they keep them turned on. And on. And on.

They forget, in fact, to turn them off.

So now, in addition to the original fatigue, our hypothetical student is expending energy on the needless use of muscles.

When, therefore, they come for their Alexander Technique lesson, and the teacher convinces them to give up the excess muscular energy that they were using to counteract the fatigue, our student is going to feel the full force of the tiredness that they were originally fighting. In the short term, they will probably feel terrible. But if they allow themselves to rest, in the long term they will feel better because they will have stopped the unnecessary muscular activity that was not just masking but adding to the fatigue.

My question to you is: does this ring true for you? Do you think you might be masking your fatigue with extra activity? If so, can I urge you to stop, allow yourself to feel tired, and rest? It might not be great in the short term, but in the long run you’ll be so much more effective!

Let me know what you think!

Image by Ambro from FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Can the Alexander Technique Improve my Energy Levels?

The question of energy levels is an important one to many of my students. Perhaps it is important to you, too. Life seems to be so busy, and there always seems to be more that needs to be done. Some of my students have had the experience of struggling to maintain energy levels through a busy day. And what makes it all the more galling is that colleagues or friends may have similarly stressful, action-packed days, and yet apparently breeze through them unscathed.

How can this be? Are those of us who struggle with energy lacking stamina? Short of tearing up our To do lists, is there a way of improving our energy levels? Can the Alexander Technique help us to have more energy and vitality?

Why the answer is yes…

It is a common experience of Alexander technique students to feel more ‘alive’ after a lesson. They often report feeling more awake, more alert, lighter, and somehow more able to concentrate on tasks. So why does this happen?

The secret lies in the stuff we do to ourselves – unnecessary muscular activity.

FM Alexander noticed in himself, and subsequently in others, that it was something that he was doing in the way he went about activities that was causing his problems – the problems that led him to create the work we call the Alexander Technique. He noticed defects in the way he was using himself.

And in his first book, Alexander noted that when defects in the poise of the body are present, “the condition thus evidenced is the result of an undue rigidity of parts of the muscular mechanisms … Which are forced to perform duties other than those intended by nature.” In other words, if we are experiencing problems, it is likely that some of our muscles are working far too hard, and probably in ways that they are not designed to do.

So it makes sense that if we are using more muscular activity than we need, and using the wrong muscles anyway, that we would start to feel fatigued.

This is why feeling an increase in energy is a common experience in Alexander Technique lessons. Students not only decrease the work done by their muscles, but they work out for themselves (with the teacher’s assistance) the most effective way of carrying out the activity they are working on. They work out which muscles they need to use, and then experience using just those muscles, doing just the right amount of work.

2 things you can do to improve your energy levels.

Here are two simple things you can do to help yourself improve your energy levels.

1. A bit of brainpower. Have a think about the activity that is causing you fatigue. What is involved in the activity? What is the least number of muscles and joints you need to use to carry out the activity?

2. The 50% less game. Pick an activity, and try using half as much energy as normal. For example, can you use half as much energy to type on your computer? Hold a pen? Click a mouse? This is a great game to play. My students usually discover that they don’t need to use nearly as much energy for most activities. Just pick the activity wisely- holding a kitchen knife or a steering wheel might require a little caution!

Are you willing to give these ideas a go? Tell me about it in the comments!

Image by Richard Styles, stock.xchng

Surviving the Dark with FM Alexander

Last year, in my other blog I wrote a post about my worries around going a bit nuts in the darkest part of the year. Well, I thought I should write a bit about how I am getting on.

You see, this year I haven’t suffered nearly as much from the chronic sleepiness or craziness that I have in previous years. And I think the reason why is straight out of my day job as an Alexander Technique teacher. I had a change in my point of view, and that has shifted everything for the better.

Like millions of others, for Christmas 2010 I watched the Doctor Who Christmas Special, that year entitled A Christmas Carol. It starred Michael Gambon as a Scrooge-like figure called Kazran Sardick, and began with a shot panning over a snowy Victorian-style streetscape covered by Kazran’s words in voiceover from Gambon:

“On every world, wherever people are, in the deepest part of winter, at the exact mid-point, everybody stops and turns and hugs. As if to say, ‘Well done, everyone! We’re halfway out of the dark.’ “

This simple line of dialogue caught my attention. I had never thought about the Winter Solstice like that before. I knew all about it, of course. I knew on a scientific level that it was the date when the sun’s maximum elevation in the sky is at its lowest, and therefore the hours of daylight are at their shortest. I knew that many cultures and religions celebrated this day. But it had never occurred to me that they were celebrating being halfway out of the dark.

Put simply, I had not linked together my scientific knowledge of solstices and my cultural knowledge. Nor had I linked in my personal experience of days getting shorter before the solstice, and then longer afterwards.

FM Alexander believed that the linking up of knowledge was vitally important. He said, “Knowledge is of little use in itself; it is the linking up of what we know with that which comes to us daily in the shape of new ideas and new experiences which is of value.”

Doctor Who script writer Steven Moffat gave me a new experience of the solstice, and it was the spur to me to link up all my bits of knowledge. On the day of the solstice, I had a little private celebration.

The result?

My experience of this winter is profoundly different to previous years. I have not gone crazy. Though I’m still struggling a bit to get up in the mornings, it isn’t as draining to my energy or my mood as in previous years. More interestingly, since the solstice I have been acutely conscious of the days getting longer. Every few days I rejoice in how much more daylight there is. I feel more in contact with nature.

The lesson to take from this? If you have a problem that feels intractable:

Don’t despair. It isn’t impossible; you just don’t have the answer yet.
Look back over all the information you have about the problem. There may be a link you haven’t seen yet.
Get out there in the world and do things that aren’t related to the problem. Like me, you may well find inspiration comes from a very unlikely source!

FM was right. Linking up knowledge is a good thing.