Cure for nerves?

pulliptears

Another vote for Bach's, which incidentally was a lifesaver for my little dogs on bonfire night. Couple of drops in their drinking water in the week leading up to the 5th would always leave them chilled

bridgetdunstable

Wow! thank you so much for all your lovely supportive replies. I will definately pick up some Rescue Remedy during the week. I wish I had known about it being good for dogs aswell as my poor old dog is suffering from all the fireworks going off tonight.

Spaghetti monster your ideas are really helpful especially the one about playing the whole repertoire a few times all the way through to build stamina etc, something I would never have thought of. In my case I think I need to practise the difficult parts of the pieces more rather than just playing them straight through and stumbling at the same point every time. I will try to play in front of as many different people as possible. I do play in front of the children although even that brings me out in a sweat but they just pretend not to take any notice. Actually they probably are just not taking any notice :-).

I'm sure if the examiner is as nice as all of you I'll be fine.

pusscat

bridgetdunstable wrote: »

Hi was wondering if anyone has any good tips for calming nerves. I am taking my first piano exam at the gand old age of 53 but get nervous just going for my normal lesson so dread to think what I will be like for the actual exam. Has anyone tried the hypnotherapy downloads advertised online?

I am a hypnotherapist – so naturally my vote is for the hypnotherapy

I see quite a lot of people for “nerves” for various things like exams/presentations/confidence/public speaking/driving tests etc

The principle is quite simple, a session for exam nerves would probably run for about 60 minutes and be something like this

10 minutes – sorting out paperwork/medical history/what the actual fear is of – is it the exam, the examiner, making a fool of yourself, being the centre of attention, failing, making a mistake etc
10-15 minutes of light hypnosis and relaxation just to get you used to the feelings
5 minutes for any questions that you have and things that have felt good or not so good in the session
20-30 minutes of deeper hypnosis including
· Visualising yourself in the exam room
· Finding and feeling the fears and dealing with them so maybe throwing them away or letting them go out of the window
· Feeling the sensation of enjoying the exam, enjoying feeling confident
· Learning to acknowledge those fears but then put them to one side
· Techniques to relax with some post hypnotic suggestions
· Lots of positive feelings to end the session on a high

5 - 10 minutes chat to make sure all was ok and that we had covered all that you needed to do.

I would also give you a personalised CD recording of the 20 min session to take away so that you can listen to it several times before the exam and practice the techniques until they are natural to you. In total this would cost you about £60 in my practice.

Obviously the details of the session would depend on you as a person and what it is that makes you nervous– that is where my skill comes in, I tailor the session and the techniques I use to the way you are feeling and reacting, for instance if there is a certain technique that you are responding very well to then I would use more techniques and suggestions in that format, whereas if there is something that is not working so well for you then I would very quickly move on to another one. This is the huge advantage of a one to one session over a downloaded generic one.

Downloads are ok – they have to be very generic and not very personalised so often struggle to be really effective, especially for first timers. I often find that people who have listened to them have struggled to understand if they have actually “been hypnotised” or not, once you have been to see a good hypnotherapist you will have no trouble recognising what is happening. I would recommend that if you can see a hypnotherapist for a session like the one I have outlined and then do the rest of the work yourself you will be fine….

Hope that helps a bit

Puss
xx

spaghetti_monster

bridgetdunstable wrote: »

Spaghetti monster your ideas are really helpful especially the one about playing the whole repertoire a few times all the way through to build stamina etc, something I would never have thought of. In my case I think I need to practise the difficult parts of the pieces more rather than just playing them straight through and stumbling at the same point every time.

When you practise the hard bits try not to fall into this trap (it's typical, and I do it myself): repeat the difficult bit with it's stumble/mistakes trying your hardest to get it right. Then you finally get it right! You play it one more time and think bingo, that's got it!
Actually you just played the bit in question wrong 8 times, ok one time and good enough just once. So when you play in a performance it will probably go wrong - that's how you practised it after all.

An old teacher of mine used to suggest - get 10 matchsticks in a pile. Take one from the pile and start a new pile when you get the difficult bit right. When you get it wrong, ALL the matches go back and you start again :eek: You have to get it right 10 times in row.. this is guaranteed to drive you nuts and I don't recommend it, but you get the idea behind it!

Your teacher probably has told you how to really break something down for practising. Sorry I'm not a pianist, so I don't have specific suggestions, but in general pinpoint and isolate the difficulty and really work on it, slowly and build up. You can do this methodically with a metronome.
Find some tricks that make it more difficult for yourself:
-play far too fast
-play with eyes shut
-play without music (always a good idea if you don't already)
-play it backwards
-play in a different octave to make it awkward
-play right notes but a different rhythm
-play different notes but correct rhythm
-sing along with yourself
-sing something different
-play left hand line with right hand and vice versa
-play with totally exaggerated but opposite dynamics/articulation

You get the idea - you can also ask your teacher for ideas specific to piano.

bridgetdunstable

Hi,

Just wanted to give everyone who was kind enough to post replies to my question a quick update. I heard yesterday that I passed my piano exam. Yay! I have to say it was one of the most nerve racking things I have ever done but I got through it thanks to Rescue Remedy, which certainly took the edge of my nerves. Although they didn't go completely I'm sure taking it helped, as did some of the other suggestions made in the posts. Although on the day my exam nerves weren't helped by having to sit with the examiner whilst she had her lunch before the exam. Still it makes for a good story to tell people.

Anyway thanks again to everyone who posted and were so supportive. If I can do it anyone can!

LJM

i took kalms when i was nervous they really worked for me

jcr16

my mum used to take kalms or quiet life.

duloch

another vote for rescue remedy, I suffer from anxiety and panic attacks and have recently (pasts 3 or 4 months) using rescue remedy. I have the drops and the chew sweets.

bubbs

I took kalms formy driving test as nerves ruined the 1st 2 lol and it was 3rd time lucky!!! They really helped me