How IFS can support live performance.

A question for you if you regularly get up on stage to be in the spotlight: realistically, what percentage of gigs go totally smoothly and live up to your best intentions? Which ones are they, what factors have made a difference?

Many of us can do something perfectly on our own in our private comfort zone, and yet faced with an audience in an unfamiliar setting, things can fall apart. There are physiological reasons why we can easily get thwarted by adrenaline surges. And these situations can trigger old wounds, or in IFS language, bring up parts of ourselves that have had bad experiences. There is something we can do to address all this.

Photo by Mim Saxl

This photo of Jim and I, was taken back in February. We've played music together for over seven years as The Hex Collective. That day we were both hoarse with whooping cough, having had under two weeks notice to get a set together for a gig supporting a very well loved performance poet Stephen Hancock, photographed below at the gig. Stephen has a big local following. It was an honour to be asked to support him and despite him saying "no problem if it isn't doable", we were on the program and didn't want to pull out at short notice. The picture below captures Stephens rapport with his audience.

photo by Hugh Warwick

I was fortunate in that a friend and colleague, Fiona Dobie, also a music teacher and an IFS coach, gave me an IFS session to help me prepare. She helped me articulate my intention. She helped me identify all the parts in myself that had concerns, and having heard all this she suggested some sensible ways of managing the long covid energy dips and any nerves.

In the end I felt one out of three of the songs we did went well, one was average and one was definitely a little rocky. So fate was pretty fair on offering me the full range of light and the dark: the way with most things.

The first song was solid: we took no risks doing something safe and very well rehearsed. I felt "in it" and enjoyed playing the cello, which I've performed on for over 20 years in front of many in that audience. I could feel the nerves and my energy was low, but I enjoyed making the cello sing, and loved hearing Jim hit some beautiful high notes. He sounded better than ever, despite the fact his voice was croaky. It was a delight to be surfing this wave with him, and my work on the cello in the preceding week was paying off. Here's the video (big thanks to Hugh Warwick).

The second two songs that night were chosen to go with the themes in Stephen's poetry. One was a setting of one of Stephens poems to music. I was playing and singing simultaneously, and we were performing both songs for the first time. I've not been singing my own material for more than a year. We'd practiced a lot but my hoarse voice didn't cope as well with the increasing adrenaline as Jims. I lack his years of singing experience and despite rehearsing hard, it took some IFS from my skillful IFS colleague Vera Hvratin the following week to help me sooth the parts that were rattled. And realising I was still at the early stages of being able to sing as well as I can at home when the adrenaline hits hard, I have taken more singing lessons!

I'm pretty familiar with this sort of flood of adrenaline and cortisol: performance anxiety is familiar territory is to me. Perhaps like you, I feel like I could write a book about the more challenging gigs I've experienced in the last 24 years. However, I don't regret these experiences. I have felt most deeply alive at these times, but there's still an edge. Perhaps there always will be.

Alongside these regular local gigs, I've been coaching other musicians for the last sixteen years. I've been enjoying helping people find their own grounding practices when they are about to go on stage or sit an exam, and supporting a more compassionate self appraisal afterwards.

Only yesterday I did a session with a thirteen year old girl who wanted my help preparing for her grade 5 violin. Without talking about "parts" and IFS, I asked her about her inner critic, and how it feels if this part gets activated. She realised that the critic was not always negative, that it had a useful role for her in many situations, and had made some helpful suggestions in the past that made a real difference. So instead of trying to shut it away, I suggested she ask if it could step back a little and sit in a chair a couple of meters away, and that she'd call on its help when she needed to.

We also talked about synesthesia, and how to harness this in our musical expression when performing. She said that the first piece often made her think of fresh pale green and pale blue, so when about to begin, she would think of a beautiful clear blue sky and of fresh spring greenery in nature and that enabled her to convey the mood of the piece. She had certainly conveyed that fresh energy to me in her performance.

We also talked about visualising the whole scene beforehand, imagining the pieces going as well as she's ever played them, and a device I find helpful which is to imagine I'm wearing an invisible coat that protects me from anything in the performance space that might throw me off. She looked excited by this idea and relived that there was something empowering she could visualise.

My own route for dealing with on stage nerves is

1. Being as well rehearsed as possible, aiming to make things as easy as possible technically, as confidence in what I'm about to do is key

2. Setting my intention: what do I want to convey, how do I want the music to feel to the audience.

3. Visualising it all going well beforehand, in lots of detail, from my arrival at the venue, exchanges with others, in the setting up, and through every piece

4. Making sure I have time to tune up and set up and plug in so I'm really happy everything is working as well as it can be

5. Somatic work: just before going on stage, tuning into the sensations of the body, steering away from the busy mind, allowing the physical sensations in. It seems counter-intuitive, but once there, with an open awareness, I try to shift the focus from the shoulders and chest (pounding heart, shallows breaths), to the belly, which is more grounding and calming. Breathing starts to feel easier. This all helps get the parasympathetic nervous system to unwind my revving internal engine.

Performing at the Northwall Arts Centre in Oxford with Telling the Bees 2014

By nature, most artists are blessed with a very sensitive nervous system, and we have a steep road to climb in learning how to drive our "vehicles" when the road gets a bit wild.

My sons and I were watching Kasabian perform a new song on TV last night and somehow the singer Sergio Pizzorno seemed both distant in the interview beforehand, and also while singing on stage. My sense was that I was watching an internal battle, where an anxious protective part of him wanted to prevent the rest of him from feeling the full impact of the live performance. For whatever reason, this part seemed to be cautious about fully entering into that situation. Maybe in was the sound, the setup, who knows. Even though he had high level in ear monitoring be sounded like he was struggling to settle into the vocal parts and feel "in it". I recognised the struggle I was watching. He did a fantastic job in the end, especially in the louder choruses, but in the more exposed sections, my sense was that it seemed a lot harder.

When asked about headlining on Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage in 2014 he said he did nt remember a thing about it. Everyone laughed, but I wondered whether this was less about him being off his face and more about a protective part kicking in again. Even the seasoned professionals continue to experience these dissociating moments.

The connection between high level adrenaline and memory is interesting. I still find nerves can sometimes take me backwards several days in terms of preparation. I see this with my music students too. I wonder if memories get effected is because when adrenaline hits us, and we feel a little "unsafe", we revert to our mammalian brain, and our more recent learning stored in the short term memory gets lost. I'm always deeply in awe of the students who manage to incorporate newly learned elements when I'm filming them for a video take for an exam, for example.

Even when we rehearse with all the right technical gear, and mental prepare by visualising the details of the gig beforehand, seeing it all going smoothly, as Forest Gump would say,"life is like a box of chocolates..." We are often at the mercy of external factors beyond our control. It only takes an experienced sound engineer, an illness, technical problems, bad acoustics or grumpy staff at the venue, a stressful exit from our other life, a rushed soundcheck, the sudden appearance of someone unexpected while we're playing. I don't know about you, but these things can definitely throw me off balance.

This article from Harvard Medical School explains why we become more sensitive to external factors when experiencing an adrenaline rush. In a nutshell, the amygdala interprets the sounds and sights we are processing, and sends an alert to the hypothalamus. This part of the brain switches on the fight or flight mechanism and stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, providing us with a burst of energy, raising the heart level, blood pressure, and breathing rate. Extra oxygen is sent to the brain, increasing our alertness. Sight, hearing, and other senses become sharper.

At the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, the stress response is countered by using a combination of approaches including deep abdominal breathing, focus on a word such as peace or calm, visualization of tranquil scenes, repetitive prayers or mantras, yoga, and tai chi. These approaches are now being used in mainstream healthcare.

Now and then, I'll get a gig where everything works like a dream and nothing really goes wrong. It is a wonderful experience, and often comes after long weeks of consistent rehearsal, a luxury we don't always have. Since then 2009, I have had a second child and am a busy working and multi-tasking single mum.

So here we are, on planet earth, and I believe we have chosen this particular material, unpredictable life, to develop our abilities, adaptability, and awareness. There's a law of averages, so perhaps we need to learn to cope with all the ups and downs, and keep going.

Accepting these external challenges and welcoming them, rather than trying to control them or push the difficult aspects away can help. Buddhist teachings might say that hope and fear are just two sides of the same coin. By clinging onto hope you are clinging onto fear too. Personally I find that a bit too hardcare.

What I love about the IFS approach is its inherent compassion. Understanding the science behind why we react the way we do, and being kind and curious towards ourselves when our self critical parts are at the forefront, or a part just wants to disappear and move out of the spotlight, is the work. For me, IFS has helped unpick the different parts that have show up in live performances, and tend to them, as you would different children, revealing their grazed knees or bumps on the head.

These parts will all respond to the Self's care and compassion, because the SELF will always listen with curiosity and without judgment. In that environment these anxious parts of ourselves begin to sit down and develop more trust as they have been heard. They will start to feel more courageous in the live process when we are able to engage kindly with them before and after we get on stage. Then, we are often more resourced, and then open to learning from each live experience in order to hone our craft.

Sometimes we chose to learn a new instrument or a new skill. For me, the new thing has been writing not just cello and bass parts to go with other musicians songs, but my own songs and tunes which only started emerging in the last 7 years. I thought it would never happen in my 20s, so its been an unexpected and wonderful development.

More recently I've had the wonderful experience of co-writing with Jim Driscoll, who I trust after years of gigging together. He's been generously supporting me with my goal to be able to sing these while playing an instrument. Its a tall order, as I haven't got a naturally strong voice so I've needed to get comfortable in front of the mic. I've needed lessons. Its definitely work in progress.

Another aspect of performing, highlighted by my friend Aloise on a walk today who works with performing artists (herself a very accomplished cellist) is that sometimes the loneliness after a gig, when you've given a lot of yourself, is profound. She's not wrong. But on the occasion above at Stephens gig, when I came off stage I was surrounded by friends in the audience who kept close by, they read me, understood, and those on either side of me, both seasoned musicians, were silently reassuring me the way some of the best people in your life do. I'll never forget that.

When we are vulnerable, our audience can be drawn closer. I remember seeing P.J.Harvey during her White Chalk tour at Bristol's packed Colston Hall and loving it when she stopped and restarted a solo song accompanied by her autoharp, giggling softly, and reporting in her beautiful Dorset accent that she'd messed it up. We all softened in the face of her vulnerability. She was far from alone at that moment.

We will never know what aspects our audience are seeing. I'm often surprised by feedback from those listening when I'm unconvinced by my own performance.

When the experience has felt painfully isolating, IFS is particularly powerful modality in that it provides an opportunity to relive challenging experiences, but this time with our "SELF" alongside. The self will be listening, watching, being a kind and encouraging presence, open to providing whatever was needed at that time. With the guidance of a supportive IFS therapist, we can visualise the event in some detail, "redoing" the whole thing with that much needed support and practical help that we'd wish we'd had at the time. This retrospective work can be tremendously helpful if we tend to ruminate or struggle with intrusive thoughts.

Somatic meditation, informed by Buddhist techniques, has also been hugely helpful for me. Instead of trying to tune out the distressing feelings and fear, or difficult physical sensations, we find a safe space and with mindful breathing, we slowly travel towards them as they are felt in our body, with curiosity, and and open mind. If we can stay there for a while, breathing, listening to all the sensations, we let their full impact in. Often the act of going into these feelings and sensations and allowing them can help the feeling or the trauma move through us, as the affected parts feel you are really listening to them, and they don't need to shake us up so loudly any more. Another word for this is shadow work, and its not as horrendous as it sounds.

In some ways, learning to work with the existing polarities in our experiences, the good and the bad, the wonderful and excruciating, rather than wishing they were different, is the secret. We don't want to wish our experiences away altogether and lose our part in what we have even though there are big challenges. We would lose too much. Again Buddhist philosophy reminds us of this in the four noble truths. Life is a series of subtle waves of good and bad, rather than perfect experiences. Our job is to learn to accept all of it.

I've been surprised by the change in my ability to cope with surfing the peaks and troughs of live performances since using somatic meditation. I've found Andrew Daniel's YouTube clips from his series on Cine-Somatic Development really helpful : heres a clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3QX9X9Nv8I

Andrew Daniels has written a book called "Awaken to your True Self". He uses the body to explore, or go fishing into the subconscious, get out of the mind, and start feeling, the emotional, the physical, the energetic; saying "the way we show up in our body is the way we show up in our life". Andrew's website is here and he's also on insight timer.

Like he says, having someone filming our performances can be helpful. There's no hiding from the truth, but that can be instructive. We can see our patterns, signs of what's going on in the subconscious, see the subtleties in our challenges, and can learn so much and put new strategies into practice for next time.

Do get in touch with me if you'd like to try a free discovery session and see what IFS could do for you in and your own live performances. Email me at info@ifs-safeharbour.com to find out more. 

Josie Webber, June 26th 2024