This content was created by The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. This content was uploaded by The Piano Pod with Yukimi Song. This is a YouTube video titled "When the Amygdala Hijacks - Fight or Flight in Action!" (uploaded June 12, 2024). The excerpt features performance psychologist Dr. John Skidmore explaining the amygdala-driven fight-or-flight response, describing an "ABCDE of the brain" approach (activation/amygdala, breathing, checking/correcting thinking, deciding, engaging) and applying it to performance anxiety (e.g., encountering a rattlesnake or a musician's worst performance). A second speaker provides a brief promo referencing the season 4 finale and directs listeners to the podcast platform. The content is an educational/talk segment focused on mental skills training for performers.
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think of my hands as the two spheres of my brain, the two hemispheres of my brain. And so, the thumb is the amygdala and the fingers are all the frontal cortex. So, I have these two parts of the brain inside my head. Well, based on survival, we want to be able to recognize very quickly those things that are going to hurt us or harm us. We don't want to have to relearn that rattlesnakes are dangerous every time we see one. We don't want to learn that putting your hand on a hot stove is going to burn us every time we see a hot stove. So those things are stuck in our brain that will automatically just fire off and send us into that fight or flight response. That's exactly what it's going to do. So here I am walking down a beautiful trail in Zion National Park in Utah, and I hear that buzz of a rattlesnake, at which point my brain totally activates. Wah! Now, this is called the ABCDE of the brain. So, you could say A is for the amygdala and activation. But are you in danger? The answer would be no. Okay, I don't need this. Well, the body has been supercharged. All kinds of adrenaline hormones are coursing through the body. Well, can I start to do the breathing and find that balancing point, get the body restored to a sense of balance? Can I check my thinking? What's the story I'm telling myself? Let's check and correct our thinking. With correct thinking, then we can decide— that's the D— we can decide what we want to believe here. And then we want to engage in that. So, one of my favorite assignments in my performance psychology class is to have students write a description of their worst performance ever. And these are dramatic performances. These are dramatic stories, very painful stories. Well, you can see they got activated, yes. But were they in danger? No. Was their body completely out of control? Yes. Was their thinking out of control? Yes. Could they decide on where to go? No. And they wanted to run away. So it's just like, ah, they were stuck in this, like, ah. But when we start to rewrite this story, it's like, oh, I wasn't in danger. Let's calm down the body. Let's correct the thinking. Let's decide what I want to do with this performance again. And let's go in that path. It's really interesting to look at it from the perspective that inside of every performance, there is a victory there. There is something of tremendous value. There's, there's some gold in there. We got to find it. It may not always be what we expect it to be, but it's something that can really make a difference for us.
In case you missed the premiere of season 4 finale with performance psychologist psychologist, Dr. John Skidmore, where we delved into profound discussions on the importance of mental skills training for musicians. Check it out on your favorite podcasting platform.
