A Soprano On Her Head: Chapter 13
Emily Cottam
Chapter Summary: When it comes to best determining how to “counteract” your “nervous” reactions on stage, you need to first identify what your symptoms are so you can focus on them. Trying to focus on amplifying those sensations often results in the opposite occurring--once you’ve pushed it to a certain point, it actually begins to reverse itself. It’s better to let your “nerves” out than trying to force it away. Identifying your “nervous” reactions as excitement rather than fear can help you to utilize the adrenaline rushes and your physical responses to your advantage to spice up your performance (much like that TED talk on stress that we watched in class). Exaggeration of stage presence (sometimes to the point of ridiculousness) can help improve your overall confidence/performance because you give yourself permission to make mistakes and the pressure on you to be perfect is alleviated. Relaxing isn’t the key to fixing tension; pay attention to what muscles/movements you are making that aren’t required for your activity. Learning to relax the unnecessary things (being more specific) is more instructive and helpful than just “learning to relax” in stressful situations.
Key Concepts: Learning to identify how you react in stressful situations is the first step to working with those symptoms--by pushing them to their limits, you can actually get them to “reverse.” Give yourself permission to make mistakes. Try to view stress as your body preparing itself, rather than inhibiting itself.
Making Connections: This chapter was extremely insightful for be, because I tend to get extremely “nervous” before performing, and my coping strategy used to always involve trying to force my stress symptoms away, when it would be so much more productive to view stress as helpful.
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