Three Keys to Relieving Stress - PHH 234

I remember one Christmas Eve in particular. Christmas Eve kind of marked the end of a whole lot of playing that I'd been doing. All kinds of performances, all kinds of everything. It was a very busy December and I was still young. I was in my 20s, and I had just finished the Christmas Eve thing, came home and all I could do was to lie on the floor. My back hurt, my shoulders were tired. I was tired of sitting in the car, I was tired from moving the harp, I was tired from sitting and playing, and all I could do was just lie on the floor. Now it went away quickly enough, you know, a couple of. Couple of ibuprofen or whatever, and everything was relaxed and better. And of course, I had a couple days off, which made a huge difference. But the thing was that here I was at Christmas and hardly in the Christmas spirit. I mean, it didn't take me long to bounce back, but I shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Anne Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to experience more harp happiness. Over my decades long harp journey, I've had lots of successes and more than a few failures. And I know firsthand what it's like to feel that playing the harp the way you want may not be possible for you. Now, I play and teach all over the world, and I know what most harpists are never taught. The secrets to gaining the skills and confidence you need to play the harp with beauty, freedom, and joy. That's what the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast is all about. Showing you simple steps to help you play the music you want the way you want. If you're an experienced harpist looking for that next level, or a harp newbie anxious to avoid the pitfalls, or a harpist who just wants more fulfillment and a little encouragement, you're in the right place, my friend. So let's get started.

First, I want to let you in on something special. I think the most important thing you can do for your harp playing is to develop the habits that lead to success. Whatever that looks like for you. All of us want to learn how to play the harp beautifully, how to play with confidence, and enjoy making music. And if you really want to learn those things, videos are great. But live learning is essential. You need to be able to ask questions and and get answers. You can't do that with just a video, which is what makes the My Harp Mastery community so special. My Harp Mastery membership is for those who really want an online experience that lets them learn at their own pace and learn what they want and be able to learn live from expert coaches every single week. Plus, you get to connect with other harpists in the community who have the same desires for their playing. This is not only a powerful learning platform, but it's also the most generous community of harpists anywhere on the planet. They're harpists with a positive outlook, a growth mindset, and a spirit of support for their fellow harpists on the journey with them. We're ready for you. Join us just go to harpmastery.com join now. That's harpmastery.com joinharp hyphen now. Welcome to the show. I was moving the harp the other day, and once again it occurred to me just how much stuff we have to carry around with us. Granted, I move my harp all the time for rehearsals and concerts. It's a big Lion Healy Salzato model harp, so you would think I'd be used to it by now, and I guess I am. Mostly, I don't have to think about what goes in the car. My heart bag's always ready to go. But when I start counting the number of trips I have to make between my car and the concert hall in the pouring rain, I start wishing for a Star Trek transporter. But recently, while I was moving the harp my bench, my stand, my bag, I had this flash of insight. We harpists carry a lot of baggage with us. Not a revelation, I know, but it led my mind to consider the other other kind of baggage we harpists carry. The stress that accumulates in our practice and performance. That's a kind of baggage that piles up in a sneaky way until one day we find it has overwhelmed us. The physical stress that is part of practicing, the mental stress that can come with intense focus, and the emotional stress of wanting to do our best when we play can add up to a potentially toxic level. The worrisome part is that we rarely acknowledge the stress as it is building little by little. There's just simply a moment when we know we can't take anymore. Often as we're in the final stages of preparing for performance, right? That's when we want to be at our most focused. But that's when our mind and our body start to shut down, trying to protect us from too much stress. Now, I'm better at managing stress than I used to be, but stress used to be the baggage that I always carried with me. To some degree. It came and it went in cycles, and I'm embarrassed to admit that it never occurred to me that this wasn't or shouldn't have been normal. I don't want to be all doom and gloom here. What I want to talk about today is how to recognize that sneaky cycle of stress and and release yourself from it. We'll talk about the hidden symptoms of stress, how to recognize them, and how to keep them from coming back. It's time to ditch that excess baggage and feel free to play. Being free to play is what harp happiness is all about, of course. And that's why we're here. And that's why I want to tell you about two things we have coming up that can significantly increase your harp happiness. One is getaway retreat. Now you heard me talk about that before. Our flash sale pricing is over. And for those of you who took advantage of that, I'm so proud of you. I'm so glad you did and I'm looking forward to working with you in February if you didn't. We have early bird pricing which is available now for just a couple of weeks. It goes off very quickly. I think. It's actually open only for one more week from the time this episode goes live. So if you're hoping to get to our getaway retreat, this is the time to purchase because after November 17th it will be full price. So get in and get those savings right now. If you're a My Heart Mastery member, you get an additional hundred dollars off. So do take advantage of that. The link, of course, is in the show notes or you can find it@heartmastery.com under upcoming events. But we have something that's coming up a little bit sooner than the getaway retreat. And if you're a beginner harpist or close to the beginning of your harp journey, you are not going to want to miss this. I'm giving a free seminar, a one hour online workshop called Pro Tactics for Beginners. The fastest way to stop being a beginner and start playing like a harpist. Now, this isn't just the kind of beginning seminar that talks about, okay, here's how to know tune your harp and here's where to put your harp in the corner. And here's how to take care of your harp. Here are the accessories that you'll need. We'll do a little bit of that, but this is really about what you do when you sit down at the harp. If you've had musical training before, you might have some ideas about what practice should be like and about how to make progress at a musical instrument. But I'll tell you, you've probably already figured it out. Harp is different. So I'll talk to you about what you, as a new har, need to do when you're playing the harp, what you need to learn. We'll talk about the key areas that you need to be developing and we'll look at the most important things you need to think about in each of those. We'll talk about the traps that new harpists often fall into with their practice and how to avoid those. And of course, I have a couple of things. One in particular that's going to be a daily habit that if you start implementing this, you will find your progress goes so much faster because after all, who wants to stay a beginner longer than they need to, right? We want to move you up in that harp ladder. So we'll be talking about that. So this is a free one hour seminar online. And yes, it's for beginning harpists. If you're an experienced harpist, you know all this stuff. But if you've been playing the harp for less than a year and you want to make sure you're not leaving any gaps in your knowledge, or maybe you haven't started lessons yet, or you know, you're looking for something that will answer the questions that all those online videos don't answer for you, this is the seminar for you. So you will want to register. Of course, that's coming up November 20th. That's a Thursday night at 7:30pm Eastern. That's when the seminar is. If you can't make it at that time, register anyway, because we will send out the replay, but we can only send out the replay for people who register. Really. So do that. And of course, if you register, we'll also be sending you a couple of PDFs to help you stay on. Track one is a get started checklist that we'll be talking about and of course a review of everything that we talk about on the webinar. So you'll have those available to you when you register as well. So you'll find the link again in the show notes under upcoming events heartmastery.com, you. You'll be able to find it right in the Harp Mastery app. So take a look. Register. I certainly hope that if you are beginning harpist, you attend this. Let me help you just move a little bit faster along that harp journey and help you start playing more of the music that you want to play. It's all harp happiness, right? So that's what we'll be doing on that webinar. But right now we're going to be talking about the stress that can sometimes build up in. And, boy, it's the time of year for that, isn't it? I remember one Christmas Eve in particular. Christmas Eve kind of marked the end of a whole lot of playing that I'd been doing. All kinds of performances, all kinds of everything. It was a very busy December, and I was still young. I was in my 20s, and I had just finished the Christmas Eve thing. Came home, and all I could do was to lie on the floor. My back hurt, my shoulders were tired. I was tired of sitting in the car. I was tired from moving the harp. I was tired from sitting and playing, and all I could do was just lie on the floor. Now, it went away quickly enough, you know, a couple of. Couple of ibuprofen or whatever, and everything was relaxed and better. And of course, I had a couple days off, which made a huge difference. But the thing was that here I was at Christmas and hardly in the Christmas spirit. I mean, it didn't take me long to bounce back, but I shouldn't have been there in the first place. Now, there are a number of ways I could have reduced the level of suffering that I was experiencing at the time. Obviously, I could have taken less work, but for me, at that point, that was work. I needed to eat, so I needed to take that work, or at least I felt like I did. And so I was taking everything that I could manage to take. And that meant a lot of hours in the car. It meant a lot of in and out, moving the harp and juggling different harps in different places and trying to learn all the music and play all the music. So there was a lot going on. Certainly it was very stressful. Because I was young, I was probably able to absorb a lot more of that stress than I could now. But I like to think that I'm also smarter now that I know that that's not the way to do things. It's not the thing to do, to take everything you can to the point where you are that overloaded, or you can take everything you can the way I did every piece of work that came along that I could do and learn how to handle it better so that you don't get in that situation. You may not be juggling that kind of harp load, although maybe it feels like that, especially when you're trying to juggle your harp load and all the other things that come up in regular life and then the added things that happen at holiday time.

But it doesn't matter whether you have the same kind of overload that I did at that point. If you're feeling the overload, you've got the overload, whether you've got 50 gigs to play or one. The feeling of it is the overload itself. And I think that the beginning of releasing all the stress from that starts with that peace, with recognition that the overload is there and that the stress that is part of that overload is there. So let's talk about how we can recognize the stress that we allow to build up. And that stress builds up in lots of places, doesn't it? I think we feel stress in lots of different ways. That's what I mean. I think we feel physical stress, right? Your body is part of your instrument. It's what you use in order to be able to play. And of course we have lots of places. We often experience tension in our shoulders or in our neck. Maybe maybe your hands get tense and tight when you play. So it's important to realize that those are the tension points that we need to be aware of, that we need to keep track of. So there are the physical things. Then we have mental stress as well. Now this mental stress is not something perhaps that you've considered, but it's the stress that just comes from focus. When we practice, we focus hard. We're really working hard. If you've ever gotten up from what feels like a really productive practice session and felt a little drained, you might have wondered, well, gosh, why do I feel so tired? All I did was sit at the harp. Yeah, but that's mental energy. That's mental focus and that is very wearing. I know you know that, but we need to account for that. We need to remember that just practicing and practicing well is stressful. And then if you add on some of the unnecessary pressures that we put on ourselves, like, oh, maybe perfectionism or maybe some negative self talk, letting some frustration build up, that's the kind of pressure that we need to also be aware of because that's detrimental too. And of course it all adds up. So now we've got some mental pressure on top of our physical pressure. But there's a third level and that's emotional stress. Because especially at this time of year when you might be sharing your music in ways or places that you don't mostly during the year you're playing for other people, well, that's tough. We know that we're putting ourselves on the line or we feel that way. Even if the performance itself is, oh, low key. If we feel like it's low stakes, low pressure, that's fine. But we still get that little adrenaline rush. And that's a body's response to stress. That's what that adrenaline is. Maybe you've heard about adrenaline junkies. I don't know, maybe you are one. I am not. But these are the people who love the thrill rides, who love the dangerous things. And there are people, there are harpists, there are musicians who love the excitement, the tight wire act that is part of performing. I'm not one of those. Probably you're not either. I don't think there are that many of them. I have met them. I know they exist. But I think for most of us, worrying about how we might play in a given performance, that's stressful, that's scary. We think about all the things that could go wrong and we forget that music is supposed to be joyful. It is supposed to be something that we're giving generously from our hearts. And even when we remember that, it's hard to actually put that into our music and bring that into our own being, right? And say, oh, it doesn't matter. All I need to do is relax. Because the truth is, it does matter. The way we play matters to us. That's why we practice. That's why we prepare for performances, because it matters. So now we're looking at the physical stress of playing, the mental stress that comes from focus, the emotional stress that comes from wanting to do a good job. It's no wonder we feel stressed out. So what do we do about it? Because you know, I wasn't going to leave you without a framework for relieving that stress. Right? That's what we're going to do right now. Talk about how to break that cycle. And because I want you to remember these steps and remember them easily, I'm going to give you sort of three Rs, three R words that you can use to help you break that cycle and help you step out of stress and step into that freedom of playing that harp. Happiness land, right? So we're going to start with the very first R, which you might already have guessed from some things that we just talked about a second ago. The first one is recognize. You need to know when you are gathering stress. You need to acknowledge it, you need to feel it, you need to know where it happens. So let's talk about those places where you might usually build up stress. What's important to realize here right now is that sometimes these places that stress builds up are so common for us, are so typical of the way we work, that we may ignore Them, we may forget that these are things that are stressful. So that's why I want you to remember that this is the first step. You need to know where stress builds up. Sometimes there's stress from a particular situation and you know right away exactly where that stress is. But we build up stress all the time, and those are the sneaky places, the ones where we don't always remember to look. So let's take a look at some physical places we might build up stress. Obviously, tension in our playing, fatigue, either from playing too much or just from playing being tired. But you know, when tension or tightness creeps into your playing, that's what we need to be aware of. If you're just tired, go take a nap, get enough sleep. We can't underestimate the value of real rest. But when it comes to your playing, you probably know where you gather tension, where your body holds it. And I want you to be very intentional about this step. Take a moment. You can do it right now and pause the podcast and come back to it, or you can just come back to it later when you have time to think about it. I don't want you to stop if you're driving, but I want you to take a moment to write down all the places in your body that you know you gather or hold tension when you play. Obviously, it could be in your hands. That's one of those places. And you might say, well, it's my thumbs that get tight. That's fine. But consider some other places where I know people hold tension. I've caught myself doing it in some of these places. So explore these, too. Think about your feet. Are your feet relaxed when you play? Are you clenching your toes? I know that sounds funny, but it does happen. And you might find that you're doing that or tightening up your leg muscles or your thigh muscles or anything, just to add what you think is strength to your playing. And you're probably not aware of it. But take stock of your body as you're playing. Are all of those lower body places relaxed? What about your core muscles? Those muscles are probably doing their job and supporting you. But make sure that you're breathing. Do you hold your breath when you play? Not helpful. So let's take a look at that. Make sure that that isn't something you do, that you don't hold your breath while you play. And then obviously we have shoulders and neck. Those can get stiff. What about your jaw or your lips or your forehead? Are all of those things relaxed while you play? You might make a Quick list of all the places where, you know, you gather tension. And then make it your practice to do a quick check through that list at various points during your practice. Mean, doing it at the beginning of practice is great because that'll remind you to stay relaxed. But if you do it several times during your practice, you'll be able to come back to that state of relaxation that much faster. So make that list. All right. Mental tension. This is that overthinking. It's that intense focus that we bring when we practice. Obviously, focus in our practice is important. We don't want to give that up. But where it can start to add stress is when we go down that practice black hole. You know what that is? You might not have thought of it that way, but, you know, there's that place in your music that, you know, you need to woodshed. You know, you need to go over it and you need to repeat it lots of times, and you need to get it hands together and get it a little faster. And so you repeat and you repeat and you repeat. Well, that can become the black hole, where you focus so much on that particular spot and doing it over and over again. It's almost like, you know, a gambling addiction kind of thing. Oh, let me just do it one more time. This next one. This will do it. This will do it just one more time. That's all I need. That's adding stress. That's not fixing a practice problem. You need to learn to stop before you get to the black hole. So your exercise for this, your observational exercise for your mental stress. Think about your practice over the last few weeks. Were there times during your practice that you let yourself get sucked into one of those practice black holes?

When was it? What were you thinking? And did it help? Chances are it didn't really help. They can help in the short term, but I don't know if the stress that they add is really helpful in the long run. And remember, as I have told you more than once, right. Practice happens over time. So, you know, you don't have to fix it today. You can let it fix over time. Okay, then what about that emotional stress that we add? Right. Ooh, scary. Well, what worries you about playing for others? We know we have worries. They might not like it. They might not think we're good enough. I might not think I'm good enough. Or they might not like the piece, or I might totally screw up. The strings might break. I might not be able to see my music. Whatever it is that's causing you stress about a Particular performance. Make a list, write it down. Might as well acknowledge them. That's what this recognition step is all about. Call out your fears. That's the first step for releasing yourself from them, is to call them out to recognize them.

Okay, so I just gave you a lot of homework. All those different places that tension can build up, that stress can build up. We're going to start by recognizing them. Now let's get to the second R. The second R is release. We need to release that stress, don't we? Releasing physical tension is actually pretty easy. It's the one I often don't do because I think, oh, I can just shake it out and go on. But I really think that we ought to be, and I ought to be a little bit more intentional about releasing the physical tension that we're feeling. So as you're going through your practice, remember that you don't have to just sit there and keep barreling through it, right? You can take a couple minutes to reset, to stretch, to breathe, to make sure that you're actually releasing some of that tension that builds up. It is a powerful habit, and I'm going to work and try to do better on that myself. I'll tell you, sometimes I learned so much from just doing these podcasts. It's like, oh, you know, this is what we should be doing, and I'm not doing it. So this is what I'm going to try to get better. At my suggestion for you, I might have to start smaller, and maybe you will too, just because this is going to be a new habit for me. But every hour of practice, you should take four to five minutes. I know some people will say more, but, you know, I'm going to come from a really idea, from an idea of what's realistic for me. If you want to do more, that's great. I. We probably shouldn't be doing less, but four to five minutes every hour, get up, stand up, stretch. Do some shoulder rolls or some neck rolls or just some breathing exercises, any kind of yoga stretching that you like to do. Whatever works for your body, that's what you need to do. Walk for a little bit. This is something I will do. I will get up every hour and walk to the kitchen, make a cup of tea, stand there while my tea is brewing, and I'll just sort of wiggle around and move a little bit then. And then I've got my cup of tea and I can take it back and do some more practice. And of course, my tea sits there and gets cold while I'm Practicing. Because who has the mental, you know, determination to drink tea when you could be practicing the harp, Right. So that's usually what happens to my tea, but that's how I take a little break. It's not as much as I should be doing, but there it is. If you're just practicing for half an hour or, or maybe half hour breaks are better for you. Try three minutes every half an hour, stand up, do those stretches. By the way, if you're looking for harp stretches, I love the stretches for harpists cards, little flashcards with specific stretches that are great for harpists on them. You can use them like little flashcards. My friend Mary Jane d' Arville did these. They're event available from the Atlanta Harp Center. I will put a link in the show notes so that you can find them easily. I think they're fabulous. I. We used them at my teacher's retreat just a few months ago and the teachers all loved them too. So go ahead and do that. But it's about physical activity, right? Our heart playing is physically very static, so you want to get up and move.

Releasing mental tension. Not quite so easy, but I think we can do it by just creating mental transition space as we move from segmentation to the next segment of our practice, right? So that as you move from your technique work, maybe to one piece or maybe between pieces, and as you make that switch, you know, anytime you would switch music on your music stand, that's the transition time. And take a moment as you do that. Pick up your practice journal. Take 60 seconds to just write in your practice journal what you did, what went well today, and what you're going to work on tomorrow. Just take that moment to get away from playing for a second before you dive into the next thing and reflect. That can be very, very powerful. It's a very easy way to release your focus and get ready to refocus. The one thing I think I want to warn you about, do not pick up your phone when you're trying to make this transition. If you pick up your phone, that's the end of your practice right there. It's going to take you so far away from your harp focus that you might never get back. So don't pick up your phone. If that's where you keep your practice journal, then try just doing some sticky notes during your practice instead and put them in your online journal later. Don't pick up your phone, but do create those transition points between practice segments.

And then we have releasing the emotional stress that can come from worrying about a Performance. Well, first of all, think about the pre performance ritual, right? I've talked about it as sort of a pre check. Like, you know, you're going to close your eyes, take a deep breath, smile, relax, think about your peace. You create your own pre playing ritual so that when you sit down at the harp, you have three to five short steps that you do every time that allow you to release the tension. Steps that you can do when you get in front of an audience. You can sit there for a minute, reflect, do those steps and feel prepared to play and be relaxed as you start. That's an important thing to do. And if you're really worried about a performance, what I encourage you to do is to write out the worst possible scenario. The one where you trip on your way up to the harp and you knock the music, stand over and you have to pick up everything. And then while you're playing, a string breaks and then you put that one on and another string breaks and you don't have that one and you're trying to say something to the audience and you stammer and stutter. Forget what you're doing. You mix up your pieces, whatever it is, come up with your worst possible scenario, write it out and then create a funny story about it, one that makes you laugh. I want you to laugh at your worst possible scenario. That's just about the best thing that you can do for putting your own fears in perspective. Make it a funny story and laugh at it. But whatever you do, when you get up from your practice, leave that stress on the harp bench. Don't take those worries with you. Don't let them come into the rest of your life. If you're worried about a harp thing, you can worry about it when you're sitting at the harp bench, but then you need to let it go. When you're done practice, those worries stay right there. They don't have to come with you. They don't have to eat at you the rest of the time. That's a powerful release mechanism. And I want you to remember that that's a tool you have at your disposal. All right? So now we have recognized the stress, we have hopefully released it, and now let's talk about restoring ourselves to the right kind of balance. That's our third R restore.

Balance. Actual balance is probably a mythical thing. You can't maintain this perfect equality and stasis in any area of life. It's just not like that. Life flows. It goes one way, it goes the other way. We're always in a sort of A situation of trading things off rather than actual balance. But the balance that I mean here is that we want less stress and more music. That's what we're looking for. We want less of what we don't want. That's the stress and more playing music, which is what we do want. So here are some simple little tips that might help you restore that sense of balance, giving you a little bit more music and a little bit less stress. Here's one thing to keep in mind. Think about what gives you harp joy. What makes you happy about the harp. Is it a piece that you play? Is it looking at your harp? Is it drawing a picture of your harp? I mean, it could be that, right? But think about what gives you harp joy and add a little bit of that to your practice day.

Remember what causes you stress. Is it tension that builds up in your body? Is it that practice black hole that you get sucked into? Is it worrying about what could go wrong? Is it that perfectionism thing? Oh, it's a horrible thing, right? So remember what causes you stress and remove a little. How can you remember to relax your body? How can you stop from going down the practice black hole? Well, I'm only going to do this five times, then I'm going to move on. I'm not going to worry about this because I can't help it if a string breaks. String breaks. What do I do? I have to fix it. Okay, can do. So whatever causes you stress, remove a little bit of that and then establish those small, consistent habits that are going to help you stay healthy and energized. Get plenty of rest, drink plenty of fluids, all those things, right? Any kind of mindful practice that you do, whether it's meditation or yoga or listening to music, those things can help you find that sense of balance as well. And particularly, I would say, let practice become a habit for you. Not something that you have to do, not a chore. But practice is the thing you do that confirms that you are a harpist. Remember, being a harpist isn't about a level of mastery that you've achieved. It's simply that that's what you do and that that's what you do regularly. So by having a practice habit, you are affirming that you are a harpist. Pretty cool, right?

Find music you love, play it every day. Simple way to keep things in perspective and to keep those stress demons away. But in case you need a little bit more, here's sort of a quick five minute reset. If you need to just release that bad stress and Bring in some of that good harp happiness. Here's a quick thing you can do. Put on some music. Put some music in your headphones or on your stereo system. Whatever it is, have Alexa play it for you. But get that music going. Music that you love. Stretch while you're listening, or walk while you're listening, or run or dance. But move to the music. Breathe in that joy. Oh, music is so energizing. We love music. That's why we choose to play it. So breathe in that joy while you're moving and then let it flow out of you as you play the harp. It's really not that difficult and it feels really, really good. If my mission this week was to help you relieve some of those horrible places where we harbor stress in our harp lives, next week I'm here as the champion for harpist beginners. What I would like to do is explore some of the areas where beginners go wrong. Now, I mentioned at the top of the show that on November 20th I'm holding a one hour seminar specifically for beginning harpists, harpists who have been playing less than a year or anybody who considers themselves a beginner because there are some things that we teachers forget to tell beginners or we're afraid to tell them in case they develop bad habits. But there are some things that could be so helpful for getting beginners to move past those very early struggling stages and play their music faster and set up good harp habits for the rest of their harp journey. So we're going to be talking next week about where beginners go wrong and how we can make things go just a little bit more right. So that's next week on the podcast. Remember, if you are a beginner harpist, be sure to register for that one hour seminar on the 20th because you get some extra resources when you register for sure. And the replay, of course, if you can't be there live. So all those links are in the show notes or you'll find them@heartmastery.com and of course we have our special early bird pricing still available for our getaway retreat in February. Not quite as good as the flash sale pricing was, but it's still a huge discount and those prices will go up before the end of November for sure. I don't remember the exact date, so get in and get those early bird discounts while you can. My Heart Mastery remembers you get an extra hundred dollars off. So there. So that's all that's coming up at Harp Mastery. And here on the podcast I look forward to talking with you next week. But in the meantime, remember, every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.