Progressive Muscle Relaxation
One of the body’s reactions to fear, stress, and anxiety is muscle tension. Excess tension is something that every musician tries to eliminate from their playing, either in the practice room or on stage. Whilst some level of muscle tension is required to play an instrument and maintain good posture, too much tension can be hugely detrimental. Tension can quickly reduce our playing capacity to that of a beginner, turning fluid and controlled motions into jerky, stiff, inflexible movements in no time. Your sound becomes tight and thin, accuracy greatly diminishes, and your sense of enjoyment and connection with the audience is stifled.
Sometimes you may not even notice that you are holding excess tension in your muscles. Maybe you clench your teeth together and tighten your jaw, you hold your breath and build up tension in your torso, your shoulders rise slightly and become tighter and sore after a long practice session. Or, in my case, you transfer the stress and anxiety in performance into your lower back, only to realise the damage you’ve done on the following day as you gingerly get out of bed.
Tension can spread through your body incredibly easily, so it’s important to recognise where you hold it, and how you can release it effectively.
One commonly used strategy for reducing muscle tension, as well as recognising the difference between tension and relaxation, is Progressive Muscle Relaxation, or PMR. This mind-body relaxation technique is based upon the idea that people become mentally calmer when they are physically more relaxed. It involves first tensing and then relaxing one group of muscles in your body at a time. This allows you to release excess muscle tension quickly and easily, and experience greater relaxation.
Sounds simple? Let’s give it a try!
Get started by sitting comfortably in a quiet space, away from any distractions. You can close your eyes if you feel that it helps you focus on your bodily sensations more clearly. Take a few long, deep breaths into your belly to get yourself feeling more relaxed and settled.
First, clench your hands into a tight fist (feeling discomfort, but not pain), and hold this for 5 seconds. Carefully notice what this tension feels like. Then release and relax your hands for 10 seconds, observing the tension drain away and the feeling of relaxation replacing the discomfort. It may be helpful to say to yourself “Relax” as you feel the muscles release. Repeat.
Now lift your shoulders up to your ears for 5 seconds. Drop shoulders back down and feel their weight pulling down to the ground. Relax for 10 seconds, and repeat.
Next, frown your forehead as far down as possible for 5 seconds, then release.
Lift your eyebrows up to wrinkle your forehead, then release.
Close your eyes as tightly as you can.
Clench your teeth together to tense your jaw.
Scrunch your nose and lips up.
Now clench your buttocks tightly. Then your thighs.
Point your toes up to the sky. Then point your toes down like a ballerina.
I’ve included a full list of muscle groups to scrunch, clench, squeeze, and tense up at the end of this post. Please feel free to download it, print it out, and put it in your practice book or stick it up on your practice room wall as a reminder. Like all practice, doing this regularly will help you become much more aware of your muscles, where you store up tension when you play, and how you can relax them throughout each practice session.
Alternatively, here’s a short video to guide you on how to do it:
or if you prefer a more thorough audio version, then here’s a 15 minute downloadable session from the Western Sydney University:
Not only does this technique relieve muscle tension, but it also reduces stress and anxiety levels. By increasing awareness of the sensations associated with tension, you can recognise and manage the physical effects much better when feeling stressed. This can give you a greater sense of control over your body’s anxiety response, resulting in improvements in overall health and well-being.
PMR also helps decrease heart rate and blood pressure, reduce cortisol levels (a stress hormone that keeps you in a stress-induced state), as well as relieve insomnia, and can reduce symptoms of certain types of chronic pain.
In a musical context, focusing on your physical sensations can help to anchor your attention to the present moment, rather than having it wander off into the future, or reliving what you have just played. An added advantage to this exercise is that you can do it sitting in your chair in the middle of a performance (often without the audience even knowing!) But it’s probably a good idea to begin working on this in the practice room first to get the hang of it before bringing it onstage as a part of your in-performance routine.
Try Progressive Muscle Relaxation this week and let me know how you get along. I hope it helps to relieve some of that excess tension that inevitably creeps into every musician’s practice and performances.