Living WITH fear, not IN fear

Recently, my friend and Alexander Technique teacher, Jennifer Roig-Francolí, wrote a blog post about the effect of perfectionism on musical expression (1). I began writing a response, but quickly realized that I had much more to say than could be contained in a comment! I decided to put into words what I have been discovering for myself these past few months.

Since beginning my one-on-one Grinberg work last month, I have become more aware of how much of my life is controlled (or should I say, hindered) by fear. A few weeks ago, I was fortunate to have a lesson with Ruth Elkana, one of the co-founders of the Grinberg Method who specializes in working with musicians (2). After some discussion about my goals, my progress with the method, and issues that I would like to work on in my singing, she asked me to sing for her. 

As I stood in front of her, I began to feel those familiar sensations of panic, anxiety, and fear that I get whenever somebody who is not specifically "my voice teacher" asks me to sing for them. My throat started tightening and I could barely breathe, let alone sing (or so I thought)! My mind raced with all sorts of thoughts: "What should I sing? Will she like it? What if I mess up the words? Will she understand me? What if I start in the wrong key and I can't sing all of the notes? What if my voice cracks? What if....?"

I could feel my body stiffening as I was caught in the grips of a "fight or flight" dilemma. My body wanted to flee, but my mind was telling it to stay. What to do, what to do?

I don't remember the order, perhaps they happened simultaneously: I began to sing and Ruth began to work on my body, drawing my attention to the tension in my torso, neck, legs, back. I could feel my voice and breathing getting stronger as I was drawn out of the nebulous land of "What if" and back into the real, physical world of my body. 

My regular Grinberg teacher who was observing the lesson said that my body actually shrank as I was being worked on. Apparently I was doing a good impression of a scared cat by making myself seem bigger to protect myself from the perceived attack...of having somebody watch me singing. Until that moment, I hadn't realized just how petrified I was of performing. 


Over the course of an hour, we found more areas of tightness, especially in my upper body. The wonderful thing about Grinberg is that the more that you try to resist the pain, the more it hurts. So as I continued to breathe and to move my body despite the pain, I felt as if my body was expanding as it was freeing itself from this built-up tension (fear). 

At the end of the lesson, Ruth asked me to sing again while she worked on me and moved me around the room. Even though my legs felt wobbly and even though I felt as though I might cry at any moment, the words and notes continued to flow out of me - it was the most expressive that I have ever felt while singing. I felt that I was actually saying the words as I sang them, rather than just reciting them. 

In answer to Jennifer's question, yes, perfectionism has greatly impaired my musical expression. More precisely, it has been a fear of not being perfect that has blocked me from being able to express myself. In all those previous times when I felt like I was "on the spot" and "couldn't sing," I had never tried to just continue singing despite my fears. These past few weeks, I have continued to practice singing with more awareness of fear in my body. I'm learning that I can still sing (and speak and move) even when I am in pain or in fear and that the effect is more expressive, more genuine singing. 

Yesterday, I sang an audition for a place in a Yom haZikaron (Israeli Memorial Day) presentation. My voice cracked, a few notes wobbled, I made up some words, but the world continued to turn. And I have been asked to sing in the final presentation.


Well, that's all from me for today. I hope that you enjoyed this post!


Happy Afikomen and egg hunting,

Daniella

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[Fantastic] People/Works Cited

1. Roig-Francolí, Jennifer. "Does Perfectionism Block the Emotions in Your Music?" The Art of Freedom. February 23, 2105. Accessed March 30, 2015. http://www.artoffreedom.me/does-perfectionism-block-the-emotions-in-your-music/

2. GrinbergMethodVideos. "Grinberg Method, To Be the Music with Ruth Elkana" (YouTube). September 19, 2013. Accessed March 30, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNwtw-FUtDY

Part of Your World

Don't worry, I'm not going to break in to song. Nor am I going to dye my hair fire-engine red and sell my voice to a sea-witch. Instead I would like to share with you an interesting revelation that has been developing this past month.

Last month was a challenging one. The Year of the Horse seemed to want to exit with a bang and stirred up a whirlwind of obstacles for me. Not least of these was having a pretty nasty bike accident that prevented me from doing yoga for two weeks and effectively canceled my February plans of learning how to execute a handstand. Don't worry, nothing was broken (except for the bike), and I sustained some very colorful bruises and was confronted with my fear of falling head-on (not literally).

I also started private Grinberg sessions in February and they have been the catalyst for a major shift in the way that I think, act, and live.

After the first lesson, I realized that I find it difficult to trust myself and my body, which in turn makes it difficult for me to trust other people. The physical manifestation of this is that I try to hold my legs and arms up with unnecessary tension in my hips and shoulders, instead of trusting that my limbs will stay attached to me and to let gravity do its work. In my Grinberg classes, I have a hard time keeping my eyes closed because I don't trust that my body won't run into people or the walls or fall over. To date, I've only had one notable collision with somebody, and I've obviously lived to tell the tale. And now that I've survived falling off of a fast-moving bike, I think I can survive falling from a stationary standing position.

During the first session when my Grinberg instructor helped me to release built-up tension; suddenly there was so much energy flowing through my arms and hands that I felt like I was being electrocuted! My hands were buzzing so much, I was convinced that they must have been trembling like leaves in the wind. But when I looked at them, they were perfectly still. When I stood up and started walking, the ground seemed much closer than before because my legs had relaxed and lengthened.

The next few sessions were mainly devoted to releasing the trauma that my body sustained from the bike accident. But once my bruises and scrapes were on the mend, another pattern emerged, which was that I expect myself and others to be perfect. Obviously, this is impossible, but it has led to a great deal of frustration and disappointment in myself and in others (although I tend to be much more understanding about others' "failings" than in my own).

I realized that I have never been able to just look at the positive aspects of something that I've done without adding "but I didn't/I need to/I should have..." Lessons, recitals, papers, relationships...you name it, I've criticized it! This constant criticism of myself and of others makes it really difficult to accomplish anything, let alone get along with others.

For myself, I've decided to employ the phrase "[a,b,c,] went well today and tomorrow I will work on [x,y,z]."

You're probably familiar with the idea that when you see something that you don't like in somebody else it could be that it reminds you of something within yourself that you don't like. This is exactly the case with my quest for perfection. When I see other people behaving or speaking or thinking in a way that I don't like, it's usually because I don't like it when I behave/speak/think that way.

In my most recent Grinberg session, my teacher was pressing points on my face and my arms were tingling in response. I asked how tension in my face could cause energy blocks in my arms and my teacher replied that I wasn't seeing my whole body as me. That rather stopped me in my tracks. And then I realized that I fixate on the labels for these parts instead of understanding that my whole body is me.

This made me think of something else that Esther Ekhart sometimes talks about in her yoga teachings. In one particular video, at the end of the sequence when you are in the relaxation pose, Esther asks you to imagine that you are a Google Earth camera looking down from above. You see yourself lying on your yoga mat, the room around you, your apartment building or house, the streets outside, the people going by, and it just keeps zooming farther and farther out.

She asks, "What is you? Where do you begin and end?"

I think one answer is that we don't end.

Every person, every circumstance, every thing that exists in our lives is an extension of ourselves and creates our world - We are each a star at the center of our mini-universe. When I find it hard to accept somebody with "less-than-perfect" tendencies it is because they are an extension of my own "less-than-perfect" tendencies.

So I have decided to be kinder to myself and to see where improvements can be made without punishing myself for not being perfect. And since we are all part of each other's mini-universes, I will affect all of the lives around me by changing my own life and how I behave/speak/think.

I hope that this post was coherent and interesting to you. I would love to hear what you think.


Love and peace,

Daniella