Super effective pre-practice routine

During my recovery, especially in the early stages, I remember having tons of anxiety before I touched my flute each day. It became a part of my practice and after a while, it just felt ‘normal’ most of the time because I was so used to it. However, sometimes I was very conscious of it and I suppressed it by making the decision to power through and stop being such a crybaby. ‘You want to play, so you need to practice, so stop whining, shut up, and let’s just get on with it.’ (Yeah, the super abusive language used when I talked to myself was kind of typical those days…)

As a result, I always started my practice with an underlying sense of fear and with a highly active symptomatic nervous system (this part is out of our conscious control and is responsible for activation and the famous ‘fight or flight’ response).

I felt that if I engaged with my negative feelings, they would overwhelm me, so I had to push them away or ignore them as much as I could. While it sounds like a reasonable tactic, it actually has the opposite effect than the one intended. The reason for this is that while I banished them from my consciousness, they did not stop acting out in my subconscious mind. This has somatic consequences, such as higher heart rate, heightened blood pressure, more tension in the muscles, which is definitely not the greatest state for practising and correcting fine motor movements.

As counterintuitive it sounds, the best way to deal with such negative feelings is to acknowledge them, and engage with them. Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware of this particular technique during my own retraining, but I started using it successfully with all sorts of different tasks which caused any anxiety or even frustration. It also works super well when I find myself procrastinating - which opposing the general understanding is not laziness - it’s avoidance which is rooted in a fear that our skills do not match the task.

So, the exercise is surprisingly simple, like all great tools. Before you start practising or working on your retraining exercises, get a piece of paper and start to write down what you are afraid of. Examples of this could be: ‘I’m terrified that I’m not going to recover. I’m afraid that I’m making things worse. I’m afraid that I will be angry with myself if I don’t improve. I’m afraid that I can’t make a sound. I fear …. passage or technique.’ You can also tell yourself: ‘I’m afraid that this stupid exercise will overwhelm me or make the situation worse.’ If you feel any resentment towards yourself, your body, or another person which is very pronounced, add that to the list as well, but keep following the same format: ‘I’m angry with my finger, because I fear it will never move properly’. This will help you to avoid scapegoating or blaming - these are not healing emotions.

There are only two rules: one, be honest with yourself and write whatever comes up. Two, do not judge the feelings you wrote about. Meet them with the same compassion as you would meet a child’s distress, otherwise, the exercise will create a new circle of self-criticism.

You don’t have to show this to anybody or talk about it ever. You can destroy the page after you finished it.

I like to use a pencil on paper because it has good friction, and it feels right to really push it into the paper whenever I have intense feelings, but you can write with whatever you prefer. Try this for a few days and see how it makes you feel. Don’t be surprised if you tear up or get angry in the process. If it happens, cry it out, hug yourself or a loved one, or punch a pillow. Remember: the exercise does not create these emotions, it just expresses them. Whatever you choose to write down, was already present in your system. The point is to acknowledge these emotions instead of pushing them down and allow them to wreak havoc on your system.

One super important point though: if you suffer from serious mental illness, please consult your therapist or medical doctor first! Also, if you find the exercise too triggering, do not push on! While it can work miracles to acknowledge our negative feelings in a compassionate way, if you are carrying too much, it can become overwhelming.