CLEF Life Resources

Performance Anxiety for Musicians: How Stress Affects Playing and Singing

For many musicians, performance anxiety is one of the most common ways stress affects playing and singing, both in rehearsal and in front of an assembly. But a number of things can impact our playing and singing, including stress, distraction, lack of preparation, discouragement, depression, anxiety, unresolved issues with others including ensemble members or leadership, or even things we bring with us from home and work.

We play, sing, and serve at our best when we are most comfortable. Attentive relaxation improves performance, so how do we get to a place of relaxed readiness? One significant source of anxiety is unresolved stress. Another word for anxiety is arousal, i.e., the body ramping up its energy and resources to do something. Too much arousal and you become overloaded — memory, attention and your ability to creatively solve problems all suffer. Too little arousal and you’re asleep at the wheel. The goal is to find that place of balance in the middle where you have focus, attention, and muscle memory with your cerebral cortex firing on all cylinders.

Performance anxiety and the body’s stress response

Stress is our response to a threat or challenge. This is handled by our autonomic nervous system, which operates automatically and not under our conscious control. Deep in the primitive part of our brain, our amygdala acts as a threat detection/early warning system. As Richard Rohr puts it, fear is the domain of the lizard brain. It does not distinguish between a sabretooth tiger intent on turning you into lunch, or a dangerous traffic situation, or a critical glare or comment, or the fear of making a mistake and looking foolish in front of others. It sees threat and issues commands to your hypothalamus, which charges your system with adrenaline and cortisol. This increases heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate, while also narrowing your focus and shifting circulation to large muscles and away from fine motor control. This is the sympathetic nervous system in action. It simultaneously dials down the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for our rest, digest, and heal functions.

These are the two parts of our autonomic nervous system. They function outside our conscious control and are designed to be in harmonious balance. The sympathetic half of the system gets the survival ball rolling. This autopilot is the fight-flight-freeze-fawn response, which kicks into gear before we are even aware of it. It is a self-protection system that does not discriminate between physical threats, emotional threats, or psychological stress. We have been refining this system since we were infants, so it is usually well-established in our habits.

Part of that design, when its work is mindful and healthy, is that our fight-flight-freeze-fawn response activates when we unconsciously perceive a threat. Our awareness comes online. We resolve the threat and celebrate our survival. Our amygdala is satisfied and directs the hypothalamus to restore balance in our autonomic nervous system. Cortisol and adrenaline levels drop. Breathing slows and deepens. Perception widens. Function returns to our inner organs and immunological system. We experience being calm and relaxed. It’s how the systems are designed to work.

But, we live in an age where there is a much wider number and variety of stresses built into life than our prehistoric forebears experienced. Unfortunately, our amygdala has not gotten much of an upgrade. When we experience stress that doesn’t go through this cycle of recognize, respond, and restore, it becomes chronic stress. Our bodies never quite get to that calm and relaxed resolution that looks like being mindful, centered, and in balance. This impacts us physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

In addition to the stresses of daily life, many of us carry unresolved stresses and traumas going back to childhood. These play a role in shaping our stress responses which had survival value in our earlier years but usually result in less adaptive coping in the present. Recognizing and reshaping those through therapy, soul friend/spiritual direction, healing practices, or a supportive community can make all the difference. As a note on my wall says, “It is important not to mistake the edge of the rut for the horizon.”

Supporting your nervous system

Implementing some regular practices to support your autonomic nervous system can help improve the way your body responds to stress, whether that stress is coming from something like performance anxiety, relationships, work, or elsewhere. This isn’t a comprehensive list, but here are some practices that can be helpful for keeping the autonomic nervous system in tune.

Walking in nature. We were created to be stewards of and in harmony with nature. In addition to the value of steps for your physical health, there is a boost in quality of perception, productivity, and creativity associated with walking in nature, as well as some protection against stress.

Slowing down and quieting your thoughts. This is a simple way to focus on what’s important and let distractions go — often accomplished by focusing your eyes or gazing at a spot on the floor a few feet in front of you and taking a deep meditative breath or two.

Box breathing is useful for a quick shift from the stress response to a place of better focus, problem-solving, and performance. Breathe in to a count of four, hold to a count of four, breathe out to a count of four, and hold for a count of four. Doing three or four rounds of box breathing can shift the needle from an anxious mindset to a more relaxed mindset.

Breathing exercises can help fine tune your autonomic nervous system. These fall into the category of meditation or contemplative practices and help train your physiology to have a higher threshold of stress tolerance. With regular practice, whether that’s six minutes a day or two separate 20-minute sessions each day, these exercises can allow you to snap into a more relaxed state faster.

  • Sit comfortably in a chair with your feet on the floor.
  • Breathe through your nose rather than your mouth.
  • Breathe with your diaphragm (the way all of your vocal teachers tell you to). You should feel the expansion from your stomach rather than your chest. The reason this is important is that chest breathing is shallower and tends to activate the arousal system while diaphragmatic breathing fills all four lung lobes better and activates the parasympathetic nervous system.
  • Breathe rhythmically. One way is to use a metronome set to a 10/4 time signature at 60 bpm. That’s a good average value. With practice, people tend to settle into something between 50 to 65 bpm.
  • Breathe in for four beats and then out for six. This ratio of 2/3 (or 4/6) has a positive feedback loop for your vagus nerve, communicates to your nervous system that you are not under threat, and facilitates active relaxation. Oxygen exchange is better when air is pulled in deeply from the bottom rather than through shallow chest breathing. You get the best ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide which is crucial for effective gas exchange in your circulatory system — something your fingers and vocal cords appreciate.

Breathing practices are one of the most effective tools for musicians who struggle with performance anxiety and stress during playing or singing. Try one of these practices — or something else that resonates with you — and notice how your response to stress changes over time.

Additional reading on this topic

If you’re interested in learning more about the topics of stress, breathing, performance anxiety, or other related topics, try this list of resources.

Written by Ken Gilman, a retired music director and an obbligatist on a variety of instruments – mandolin, bouzouki, violin, octave viola, bass mandolin, etc. As a semi-retired psychologist and mediator, he works with first responders on topics of teamwork, communication, and burnout.

Copyright © 2026 Catholic Liturgical Ensemble Formation

Looking for more resources? Search our full online library of CLEF Life resources, or sign up for CLEF Life email updates to receive the latest resource in your inbox once a week.

Share this post:

Recent Posts:

Get free weekly resources on music and liturgy topics when you join our email list.

No thanks.