How to stop the vicious cycle

Do you practice when you are feeling upset, anxious, or elevated in any way? I used to. I think this is part of why I got injured last year. Maybe you are thinking, how could practicing when you are upset make you injured? Well, I’d love to tell you! 

If someone is standing across a crowded room with their arms crossed, tight shoulders and a furrowed brow, you could guess that they are feeling uncomfortable in some way. There have been times that I have been that person, but haven’t realized how tense I was until I get in my car and am finally alone. The body responds to emotional stressors physically, whether we are aware of it or not. And that tension actually feeds into a bit of a vicious cycle: if you are feeling upset, your body will commonly respond with tension, and if you have tension in your body that sends a message to your nervous system that you are stressed…the cycle continues like that until your physical manifestation of stress or the stress itself changes. 

Now put an instrument in your hand…. You could see where this would get hairy, and fast. 

My injury was an overuse injury, meaning that my muscles got in a cycle of being ‘on’ so often that they were unable to rest and recover. I was always breaking down muscle tissue and not ever giving it time to heal so that it could get stronger. That doesn’t mean that I was always practicing copious amounts each day, it means that, for me personally, I held tension in my muscles more than I should have - in and out of the practice room. I think this was due partially to my unwillingness to recognize that I was in a stress response, before, during or after practicing. I fell victim to that vicious cycle I was talking about before. Just went round and round until I didn’t know what was an actual stressor and what was my body anticipating stress.

It is sometimes difficult to know that you are feeling elevated, because that noticing is not something that people are born with, but rather a skill that someone develops over time. I promise, once you begin to let the awareness of your emotions come to the forefront, you will see the manifestations of those emotions in your body. Further, when you go to do something physical, like playing an instrument, you might find that those physical reactions do not go away just because you have changed the activity. Over time and repetition, the body learns certain postures in relation to certain activities. My body knew the posture of hold-every-myscle-really-tightly-when-you-play-the-trombone-or-touch-the-trombone-or-think-about-the-trombone because I practiced in a tension cycle.

So, I try to allow myself to process through the height of an emption before picking up my instrument. Like any meaningful relationship, it is good to respect its boundaries by processing through things and responding, instead of coming in and being really reactive and charged. I want to respect my relationship with my instrument. I know that if I do that, it will show me that respect back!