Musical performance anxiety represents a relatively unexamined but seriously debilitating problem that functionally impairs large numbers of musicians. In the past two decades, there has been considerable interest in meditation as an approach to reduce emotional distress among a large community of clinicians and empirical psychologists. Meditation research is a young but vigorous field. More than 1,500 publications have demonstrated a variety of psychological, physiological, and chemical effects of meditation.
The purpose of meditation is to learn to experience life fully as it unfolds–moment by moment. Ultimately, good performance quality is the goal of every musician, and performance anxiety is an obstacle one needs to overcome. This seminar will discuss the potential benefits of meditation on musical performance anxiety and performance quality based on two studies that I conducted.
