Here's a question most performers never get asked. While you're playing, how much of your own body can you actually feel?
For years, my honest answer would have been: as little as possible.
I had learned, without ever deciding to, that the body was a problem to be managed. The racing heart. The shaking hands. The flutter in the stomach before an entrance. These sensations felt dangerous, so I did what so many of us do. I left. I dissociated. I floated up into my head and tried to operate the instrument from there, like a pilot flying through fog on instruments alone, disconnected from the thing actually making the sound.
The heart was the scariest place for me. It would pound so hard I was sure it would wreck my playing. So I found ways to not feel it. Beta blockers were part of that for me, and I know they're part of the story for a lot of musicians, even if we don't talk about it.
To observe the shaking with unconditional positive regard instead of fear. The sensations are not the enemy. The leaving is.
This is the part that surprised me most. When you can actually tolerate the intense feelings in your body while performing, when you can stay present with the heart and the breath and the nerves instead of fleeing them, something settles. The sensations stop running the show. Not because you forced them down, but because you finally stopped treating them as a threat.
You can't be in flow in a body you've abandoned. Flow lives in the body. All of it. Even the parts that scare you.
So the next time you perform, try noticing one thing. Where are you right now? Are you in your hands, your breath, your heart? Or are you somewhere above it all, watching from a safe distance?
Coming back into the body is where the work begins.