Mindfulness for musicians
Every musician has concerns about a performance. You want to peak at the moment when this is important for you. And actually it is quite logical that anxious or negative thoughts and feelings arise. And as much as we would like to get rid of them, research has shown that we have much less control over thoughts and feelings than we would like.
Mindfulness and ACT techniques and exercises allow you to experience that fears and negative thoughts do not have to be an obstacle to playing music freely or to delevering a good performance. Both mindfulness and ACT offer an effective way to clear the path for optimal performance. It frees you from ingrained thoughts patterns and habit patterns that can hinder you during practising or performing music. It offers the posibility of approaching thoughts and feelings differently and experiencing them differently. And this leads to stressreduction and more positivity.
It is not a quick fix solution, you do have to do some effort. But as a musician you know better than anyone else: exercise pays off! The same applies to mindfulness and ACT: you can learn it through a series of simple exercises that train your ability to focus. The exercises only take a few minutes a day and you can easily apply them in your daily life and music making.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is an attention training, in which you notice and allow thoughts and feelings to be present. By noticing and allowing, you develop a different relationship with your thoughts and feelings. You learn to look at them from a distance and you become aware of old, ingrained habit patterns. By repeatedly noticing and allowing, ingrained habitual patterns lose their power and space is created for a different response.
Mindfulness is a practical training in awareness, to experience and approach things differently in the long term. It provides tools to deal with worrying, work stress, performance anxiety and personal problems, among other things.
Whatever you do in daily life, everyone can benefit from mindfulness.
Mindfulness is also an effective way for musicians (and other performing artists) to train the ability to focus and achieve an optimal stage performance.
Reviews from participants in prevoius trainings:
– “It openend my eyes about what I coild do to improve my relation to problems and stress.”
– “I am very happy I did the training. The practical examples, the application in daily life, was the most important part for me.”
– ” I ‘ve learned to be less strict with myself, and that gives space to approach difficult things differently.”
– “Negative thoughts now have much less impact. this makes me feel much more free. That had a positive effecton things that I’m worried about.”
– “The most important eye-openener is that things are ‘okay’ the way I do them. the critical voice in my head no longer hinders me. I feel much more powerful.”