Alexander Technique for Performance Anxiety
If you’re a pianist, you probably know that Alexander Technique can help you play with more ease and freedom of movement, but you might be surprised to learn that it can also help decrease performance anxiety.
When we feel anxious, our thoughts tend to increase in speed and frequency. If that happens while we perform, we can become acutely aware of every detail of our performance and second guess each choice and movement we make. It can be debilitating.
In Alexander Technique, we work with something called “direction”. When we’re directing, we give ourselves mental instructions to promote efficient movement. For instance, I might sit at the piano bench and bring my attention to my sit bones, and then I might think up along my spine to my head. Here’s a simple warmup you can try that uses direction:
Thinking through an exercise like that can be really helpful when our minds are racing. If we give ourselves mental instructions, it becomes much harder to think about what we may have forgotten to bring to the performance venue or whether that passage we’ve been worried about is going to work!
Working with direction brings us to the present moment and allows us to notice our bodies in space so we can prepare to move. Bringing our attention to how we’re moving is a form of mindfulness, which is known to lessen anxiety.
When we have tools like that at our disposal, we can become fully present with what we’re doing. If we’re thinking of the sit bone to head connection, for example, there really isn’t mental space for thinking about what’s next. We can do one or the other, but not both at the same time.
Practices like the one above are great for pre-performance, both for us and our students. They’re very easy to learn and remember, and they don’t have to take much time. We can also practice them without anyone’s knowledge, making them especially useful for our students to use while they’re waiting to play during their recitals!
If you’d like to learn more ways to incorporate Alexander Technique into your piano teaching, download this free PDF guide. You can also head over to the Workshops page to sign up for our next Alexander Technique class for piano teachers. Hope to see you there!