Recommended Books
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- A Soprano on Her Head: Right-side-up reflections on life and other performances by Eloise Ristad (Real People Press, 1982)
- A book that playfully encourages unblocking fear, guilt, and inhibition, so that inner freedom can allow spontaneity and creativity in performance. A very popular book with musicians.
- Sensory Tune-Ups: A guided journal of sensory experiences for performers of all ages by Kay S. Hooper (AllSense Press, 2005)
- A thoughtful workbook that helps you become aware of your body sensations, thoughts, and feelings during practice and performance. Asks excellent questions and stimulates relevant experiences with plenty of room to write and/or draw answers.
- What to Say When you Talk to Yourself by Shad Helmstetter and The Self-Talk Solution by Shad Helmstetter (Pocket Books Simon and Schuster, 1982 and 1987)
- The first of these is excellent at explaining how and why positive self-talk works, how it interacts with our behavior, attitudes, beliefs, and programming, and how to use self-talk. The second book is more advanced look at using self-talk; the last half contains hundreds of affirmations organized into different aspects of life such as self-esteem, getting organized, becoming successful, etc. In both books, the only concern I have is that the author occasionally uses negative words in some of the affirmations, but considering these books were written in the 1980's, this is minor and such words can be easily changed into positive phrases according to what we now know about brain psychology.
- Overcoming Performance Anxiety by Rod and Eversley Farnbach (Simon and Schuster, 2001)
- Based on Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, this book looks at activating events, beliefs, and consequences, and gives many exercises and techniques, including disputing, a variety of relaxation methods, "awfulising,"etc., to help reduce anxiety. Has a specific chapter on procrastination.