The Balanced Musician by McAllister Lesley Sisterhen;

Author:McAllister, Lesley Sisterhen; [McAllister, Lesley Sisterhen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2012-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

Alleviating Stress

Imagery may also be used to alleviate stress, which acts as a potentially destructive factor that is rarely, if ever, lessened by physical practice. Relaxation imagery in particular offers therapeutic benefits that offset the negative affects of anxiety. During any type of imagery, you dedicate time for yourself in which the outside world can disappear, and your stress level during performance imagery is easily controllable. Every imagery exercise should be preceded by a relaxation technique to bring the body and mind to a place of stillness and calm. Along with other techniques to increase relaxation, imagery can be used to achieve adequate sleep and maintain an overall sense of calm during the days preceding a performance.

Theories of Why Imagery Works

Though research in sport psychology has provided more than enough support for the benefits of imagery, researchers disagree as to how and why it works. There are several theories circulating to explain the phenomenon, but the two oldest and most well known are the psychoneuromuscular explanation and the symbolic learning explanation. Others include the attention-arousal set theory, bioinformational theory, theory of functional equivalence, triple-code theory, and dual coding theory.

Psychoneuromuscular Explanation

Physiologist Edmund Jacobson (1888–1983), who invented the technique of progressive relaxation, first proposed the psychoneuromuscular explanation after a series of experiments using EMG data. In a groundbreaking discovery in the 1930s, he found that very small muscle movements occurred in his subjects while they engaged in imagery. Furthermore, his research indicated that these movements were exactly the same as those recorded when the same task was performed physically. This muscle activity was identical to but much smaller than that which occurred during overt movement.

Building on this discovery, Jacobson theorized that these minute muscular activations provide for the rehearsal of motor patterns (Jacobson, 1930). If this theory is accurate, then imagery, or mental rehearsal, can benefit the user in the same way as physical practice. Later research would show that muscles in the eyes contract during imagery sessions and that muscles in the tongue and lips also contracted during inner speech. This theory provides a framework to support the idea that imagery is effective when used either in conjunction with or in place of physical practice, especially during periods when a musician simply cannot practice because of travel, injury, illness, limited access to an instrument, or other reasons.

Jacobson’s idea that imagery rehearsal duplicates the actual motor pattern being rehearsed was not completely new. A book written in 1916 described the phenomenon of imagining a movement (Washburn, 1916). The author suggested that “tentative movements,” or movements of slight magnitude, occur during imaging. Many researchers assumed that during mental practice there are certain neural and muscular responses. Jacobson and later William Shaw (1938) provided scientific support for the theory.

Research by psychologist Richard M. Suinn during the 1980s echoed Jacobson’s findings when electrodes were attached to the legs of a skier in order to record his EMG responses as he rehearsed a downhill race. Suinn found that the skier’s “EMG recordings almost mirrored the course itself” (Suinn, 1980).

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