Many of the students I work with report that their breathing often goes totally haywire when they get up on stage, ready to perform. Other issues that come up are shaky hands, rapid heart beat, cold hands, and rapid, shallow breathing which is hard to control. All of these performance anxiety symptoms are examples of the sympathetic nervous system in action.
Let’s take a little detour through part of the nervous system.
The autonomic nervous system is in charge of regulating involuntary processes within your body, such as heart rate, blood pressure and breathing. It has two parts—the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system.
The sympathetic nervous system controls the “fight, flight or freeze” response, preparing the body for action. Heart rate, blood pressure and alertness all increase, while other processes like digestion slow down. The parasympathetic nervous system controls “rest and digest” functions. It calms the body down, slowing down the heart rate and supporting digestion as the threat passes. These two parts of the autonomic nervous system are functional opposites; they work together to keep the body in balance.
When sympathetic nervous system responses show up as we’re getting ready to perform, this is our nervous system’s response to threat. Our nervous system doesn’t distinguish between scary situations like going on stage vs. being chased by a lion. It’s all the same. Our brain’s number one job is to protect its human. It perceives a threat and activates the appropriate set of nervous system responses. What we can learn to do is to purposefully activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for calming us back down.
What to Do To Help
The quickest way to influence your parasympathetic nervous system and get it to come online is to control your breathing. It is not a coincidence that breath work has been a part of mediation and yoga practices for a very long time.
Here are two breathing methods that I teach in my classes with college students.
Box breathing
I don’t know who to cite as the original source for this technique. I first read about it in a book about training Navy SEALS.
~ Best to do this in lying down on your back with feet on the floor and knees bent, but can be done anywhere.
~ Starting position: Tongue in neutral – tip of tongue contacting where front teeth hook into gum, rest of the tongue resting comfortably. Lips touching, slight space between teeth. Breathing in and out through NOSE.
1) Breathe in for 4 counts.
2) Hold for 4 count.
3) Exhale for 8 counts.
4) Wait for 4 counts.
5) Repeat the cycle three more times for a total of 4.
The secret is that the length of exhalation is twice as long as the inhalation and other steps. The goal is to get out of sympathetic nervous system activation (fight or flight) and back into a parasympathetic state (rest and digest) and the magic happens on the exhalation.
Physiological sigh – Dr. Andrew Huberman
1) Breathe in until you reach full capacity, and then take another short breath in.
2) Exhale (sigh) through your mouth.
3) Wait about 20 seconds, repeat as necessary.
Practice Required
Like everything else we learn to do a musicians, breathing skills need to be practiced. Ideally, both of these breathing practices should be done every day. For musicians who struggle with performance anxiety, these techniques can help get the breathing under control. Doing a few cycles of box breathing in the warmup room can be effective. Doing a few physiological sighs right before walking on stage, or even right before playing the first few notes, can help.
Teachers, it’s important to talk to your students well before the performance about things that show up in their bodies. They need to know that breathing can get a little bit wonky and if that happens, here are the tools to be used. This discussion needs to happen well before the recitals. Anxiety and exhilaration are opposite sides of the same coin. Being excited to perform and share with others is good thing!