Presentation by Mary Ann Ranney: A New Way to Handle Performance Anxiety.

A New Way to Handle Performance Anxiety: Tapping Your Way to Playing Ease.

As a performance date approaches, we often begin to experience nervousness, worry, unease, stress, even fear.  We practice and prepare, yet still anxiety in our mind and body can linger.  Tapping focuses first on the anxiety, honoring the truth of how we feel. As intensity lowers, our body is given permission to relax, open to more ease, feel present, safe, grounded. As pressure is alleviated, we can bring in curious, accepting inspiring, and even playful thoughts. We can begin to imagine how we would approach our performance without anxiety.

In the last few years, research studies have demonstrated how this new modality of Tapping calms the nervous system by directly affecting the amygdala, center of fight-flight-freeze responses in our brain. Tapping allows us to “get out of our own way” so the magic of our musicality can emerge. We will experience basic Tapping procedures specific to performance anxiety in this program.