Speaker 1Shut up, and sit down. Welcome to Being On Stage, the only podcast that gives you motivation, inspiration, and confidence to be better on stage. No matter how you entertain, sing, dance, band, comedian, public speaking, MC, drag, burlesque, performance art, or street performer, this is the show for you.
Speaker 2Hey, rock stars. Reggie Dawson, your host of the Being On Stage podcast. Can I talk to you for a minute about what goes on in our minds during rehearsal? And specifically, about what should be going on through your mind in what's called a mental rehearsal. I've been doing a lot of thinking about this because I've talked to some performers who rehearse differently, mentally. Like, when they go through the rehearsal in their head, they do it a couple of different ways. And I heard something a couple of weeks ago that kind of stuck with me. And so I tried it a little bit, and I noticed that even with the podcasts, I felt like they've been going smoother. I felt like I've had less editing, you know, because I've gone through a mental rehearsal a little bit. And specifically, certain parts of it, when I'm going through certain parts of things and things I want to say. So I want to share with you some of the things I picked up. And before I get into that little intro, and I haven't done this for a couple of episodes, but my name is Reggie Dawson. I am a stage performance coach. I love everything about being. I love being on stage. My goal is to help other performers improve their confidence on stage, land more gigs, and turn their audience into fans. And that's what I do, man. That's the simplest version of what I can say I do. And that's what this podcast is all about. So enjoy, without further ado, mental rehearsal for performers. Cue dramatic music. No, I'm just kidding. We don't have any of that dramatic music or sound effects or anything. It's just me talking. Sorry. Burst your bubble. So anyways, a mental rehearsal, there's a lot of different ways you can do it. And a couple of people that I spoke to indicated that their version of a mental rehearsal is just kind of like thinking through what they're going to do on stage. And then they just go out on stage and do it. And they kind of do this just leading up to getting out there. So that tells me they don't really rehearse the actual performance as much. But then another couple of people said that, you know, when they rehearsed, they think about the harder things that they have to do and the certain sections that they struggled with. And they kind of run through it at a slower pace. And then they slowly speed, you know, they speed it up to normal speed in their head. And then they go out there and they just absolutely crush it. But there's one thing that I heard from one performer, and he's a musician, and it is that he rehearses at different speeds in his head. And so I want to kind of run through the method that I put together. And I kind of combined a couple of things. A couple of these things, really. But hear me out. Because a couple of people said they just meditate and that's all they do to improve their mindset for performing. So I'm going to go through a couple of different things that I picked up. And then that'll be that. That'll be the podcast. And then, no and then. If you get that, I love you. So the technique I want to share with you is first step is you got to clear your mind and do some sort of relaxation exercise, just like, settle you down and calm you, almost like a meditation thing. But it's as simple as taking like five deep breaths and holding them for three seconds or something. You can choose how long you hold them or you can just close your eyes and take five deep breaths. And the idea here is during the deep breaths, the only thing you're focused on is the breathing that you're doing. And that's it. So that is clearing your mind. So then you enter into the actual rehearsal space in your mind and you begin to rehearse your material only in your mind. This is not a physical rehearsal. You can be sitting, you can be laying. Uh, I usually do my laying down in bed, truthfully, but you enter the rehearsal space in your mind and you start to run through your material. I want you to run through it at a normal speed, just a normal speed that you would run through it. Now, this can be done for an entire performance, which of course you want to block out a larger period of time for. This can also be done for smaller pieces. If there's something you're struggling with, is there, if there's something new you're trying to learn, this is, this is something that can help you there as well. So first visualize yourself going through your material at a normal speed. After you do that a couple of times, you want to visualize it at a slower pace. Now, as you're doing this at a slower pace, you want to focus on the distinct movements, the distinct patterns, the distinct notes, whatever it is. Now, again, I'm not biased. Whatever you do on stage is great. As long as you're doing it on. Stage and you're putting your passion and your emotion into it, that is amazing. So as you go through it at a slower pace, focus on the details, focus on how your body moves, focus on how your voice changes, focus on where your eyes are directed. Focus on your facial expression when you go through it at the slower pace. Now, if you need to go through it at like a turtle pace and then like a faster turtle pace, like two different slower paces, I guess you can do. That, but I usually do it at just one slow pace, and it's usually like half speed, if you will. So try to think of it as half speed. Now, musicians, singers, that doesn't mean go turn on a metronome at half speed. You got to feel it. So that after you do slow speed, you go back and do it at normal speed again and apply the details that you just focused on. Keep in mind, this is all in your head. You can replicate this in a physical rehearsal, but right now this is all in your head. You're just laying in a hammock somewhere. You're on a beach, you know, thinking about your next performance. So after you've done your normal speed again and you focused on the details and you focus on those smaller pieces, then you do it fast. I want you to imagine yourself and visualize yourself performing your show sequence, song, dance, insert talent here, performing at a almost a double speed. Depending on what you do, it can be quite humorous to picture yourself going at double speed. But there's. There's a reason I say this going at double speed after you focus on the details and after you've done it at normal speed and apply them there. Now you're going at double speed and applying all those things that you've already picked up through their first two mental rehearsals. You're applying them to double speed. This is where you're going to build your confidence. This is where you're going to start to feel like I can do this. If I can do this at double speed, I can definitely do this at normal speed. Easy. It's going to help all those details. The only thing I will warn you about when you do double speed is you only want to do double speed once or twice and you always want to go back and do normal speed afterwards. It's very easy to try to end on that high note because it makes you feel really good. You have that confidence. You just visualize yourself nailing your show at double speed. You're awesome. But you have to go back and do normal speed again because that's going to set you for the performance when you perform on stage. You don't want to try to speed yourself up depending. Well, sometimes you can't speed yourself up if you're not in control of the music, but if you are in control of the music and you are in control of the speed, you definitely want to go back and practice again normal speed in your head. Again, we're all in your head. That way you can set yourself for the performance at a normal speed. You'll still have that confidence, but you also want to make sure that you don't speed yourself up on stage. Once you've gone through all the speeds. So again, it's normal. Slow, normal, fast, normal. Now we kind of have a memory exercise just to kind of like set it all in, set everything that you reviewed and everything that you focused on in your mental rehearsal just to set it in. It's a counting exercise and it kind of helps expand your focus and your memory. I watched a couple of meditative videos and this was in them. So I want to share it with you. And it really does help. Like it's helped me set the things that I've picked up and the things that I've gone over in my mental rehearsals. I want to share it with you. And so what you do is. It's along the same breathing exercise we did at the beginning. You know, you're breathing in, you're holding it, and you're breathing out. Now this time, you're not counting if you inhale and exhale. You're counting it as one breath. But you're going to count the first breath, not the second breath. Count the third breath, not the fourth breath. And count the fifth. But you're going to count one, two, three, four. The idea is you want to do this eight breaths, four counts of breaths. Okay. And you want to expand. Expand them each time. So the first time, it's going to be like a. Okay. And then by the time you get to the fourth count, it should be much longer. And it can be even longer than that. Like I'm not even sure if that was very long. But I think you get the point. So you count every other breath up to four and you expand the amount of time you inhale and exhale each time. And then you're going to count the last breath. reggie at beingonstage.com or better yet, you can hit me up on instagram at being on stage this mental rehearsal guys it's no joke this is going to empower you it's going to give you more confidence and it's going to help you hone in on the details and just improve those little things that you may overlook because of all the nerves and the lights and the crowd and the cheering and that's what it's all about you know we got to care about the little things too hit me up let me know what you notice is different from one rehearsal to another after you've done this exercise two to three times and of course you know if you want more being on stage you want to get into the motivational area that i focus on you can head over to the being on stage group you can get there by going to beingonstage.com slash group and that's the game i guess so keep on shining everybody
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