Thank you, Mind– Practicing artistic presence

I invite you to participate in the following exercise. Read the following sentence: I can't open my mouth. Now, if it helps you focus, I would like you to close your eyes and let the only thing that comes to your mind be "I can't open my mouth." Believe firmly in “I can't open my mouth”, focus all your energy and attention on really believing that you can't open your mouth, go over it slowly in your mind, savoring each word and really internalizing that you can't open your mouth. Once you have believed it, I would like you to open your mouth. Ready? Begin!

Now, while you're keeping your mouth open, I'd like you to refocus all your energy and attention on believing that you can't blink three times in a row. When you have this very clear thought in your mind and have believed with all your willpower that you cannot blink three times in a row, blink three times in a row.

Perhaps this exercise seemed a bit strange to you. I will surely confuse you more if I tell you that it is closely linked to developing the stage presence that you want. Let's clear up these doubts. 


Those of us who speak Spanish will call the object in the image “manzana”. If we speak English, “apple”. If we speak Finnish “omena”. These are three words that look very different from each other, but they all refer to the same object in the image. Now, we could also invent the word “kekerioto” to refer to the object in the image. Try it and say it with me: “kekerioto”. The fascinating thing about language is that we could do without the image and, even so, when reading “kekerioto” we would picture the object in the image, remember its smell and taste. All just from one word on the screen! A word has the capacity to make us represent what it refers to. It even affects our physiology and motivates our behavior (I could go to the kitchen and find a kekeriote). Language has such power over us that we can respond to a verbal thought with the same intensity as if we were in the presence of the object to which the verbal thought refers.

The fascinating thing about our relationship with language is that we forget that a word is a symbol and not the object it refers to itself. It is very intuitive for us to get hooked on a verbal thought, take it as literal truth and act on it. For example, if I think of the word “kekerioto”, I will have a very clear image of what we call “apple” in my mind, and the word can motivate me to look for fruit in the kitchen. Now let's translate this example into a musical context.

Suppose a musician expresses the thought "I am very untalented." If they forget that language is symbolic and this verbal formulation is taken as literal truth, then three things may happen. First, they could actually believe that they have little talent, taking up a lot of their attentional resources. Second, they could lose motivation to practice. For instance, when making mistakes, they will take them as confirmation that they have no talent, and they may even consider dropping out. Third, the thought “I am very untalented” may be associated with unpleasant emotions, such as frustration, sadness, and fear. Thus, whenever the thought “I am too untalented” arises, the musician will disconnect from their environment and focus only on that thought, it will affect their musical performance in different ways, and they will experience a range of unpleasant emotions. Imagine what can happen if we add other thoughts like: “I can't make mistakes”, “I shouldn't feel like this”, “what would my teacher think if they listened to me”. How can we help this musician?

Defusion is learning to react to our thoughts in other ways. Through defusion, we create a mental space to recognize a thought as such (kekerioto) and not as a literal truth (the fruit to which kekerioto refers). This space allows us to decide how we want to react to a thought, giving us control over how we want to behave. Here we return to the initial exercise of this text. I asked you to believe with all your might in the literal truth of "I can't open my mouth." Imagine that instead I would have asked you to belief in “I'm very untalented”. Also imagine that you have repeated to yourself “I'm very untalented” thousands of times over the years and that you have taken events in your environment (for example, forgetting notes during a recital) as confirmations of that belief. The point of asking you to think that you can't open your mouth and still can is the following: even if our mind tells us something with all the force of its voice, we can react in different ways, even directly disobeying it.

By practicing defusion exercises, what we do is learn to channel our attention and energy into behaviors that are functional to the values and objectives that we have set for ourselves. In a musical context, it's learning not to fall prey to thoughts like “I'm very untalented”. It is recognizing it as a thought and not as truth, and then having the ability to refocus our attention and energy into other thoughts that can be useful in our interpretation (phrasing, rhythm, structure of the piece, expressiveness, etc.). It is good to clarify that defusion is learning to choose whether we want to be guided by a particular thought or not, depending on whether that thought is functional for us at the moment or not.

So what is artistic presence? Juncos and de Paiva e Pona (2022) define it as the combination of three elements: mindfulness, acceptance and defusion. That is, an interpreter with a great artistic presence is capable of reacting to mental and external events that occur at the moment, does not fight against mental events that may distract them from the interpretation, and is not prey to what their mind tells them, but rather that they have the option of reacting in another way, choosing what they want to focus on at all times. By practicing these three elements, you too can develop your artistic presence.

If you want to know more about my work and my consulting services for musicians experiencing anxiety, I invite you to check out my website: alvarochang.com.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels.

References

Juncos, D. G. & de Paiva e Pona, E. (2022). ACT for musicians: A guide for using Acceptance and Commitment Training to enhance performance, overcome performance anxiety, and improve well-being. Universal Publishers. 

Praxis (2023). ACT Immersion: An introduction to ACT as a process-based therapy [online course]. Retrieved from https://act.courses/signup/

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