I get nervous at karaoke! 7 ways to ease your nerves and relax
Methods to ease tension and relax include stretching, taking deep breaths, slowing your movements, placing your awareness in your abdomen, lowering your Adam’s apple, straightening your posture, and telling yourself it’s okay to make mistakes.
Even if you don’t get very nervous when practicing singing alone, many people become extremely nervous when they have to perform in front of others, such as in a karaoke room.
Whether it’s karaoke or not, some people tend to get nervous easily, but trying the following seven methods can help you loosen up.
Now, let’s look at them one by one.
Do some stretching.
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One way to ease tension and relax is to do some stretching.
Stretching helps relieve muscle tension.
When you're nervous, your muscles are tensed strongly.
By stretching, you can loosen muscle tension and try to reduce overall tension.
Since it can be awkward to stretch in front of everyone in a karaoke room, it’s a good idea to excuse yourself to the restroom or somewhere similar before you sing and do a light stretch there.
It might be hard to find the time or place to do a full-body stretch, but even doing some light upper-body stretches will definitely reduce muscle tension.
Tension tends to increase especially when your shoulders are tight, so it’s a good idea to thoroughly loosen the muscles around your shoulders.
Take a deep breath
One way to ease tension and relax is to take deep breaths.
Humans have a tendency to feel anxious when their breathing becomes shallow.
When you’re feeling nervous, your breathing is often irregular and, in most cases, becomes shallow and small.
When you get panicky, your breathing can become big and deep, but when you’re just very tense, it tends to become shallow and small.
You can’t consciously control things like your heartbeat, but you can change your breathing by will.
By taking slow, deep breaths, send oxygen to your brain and try to ease your tension.
If you can sing using diaphragmatic breathing, you may start to relax as you sing, but if you haven’t mastered diaphragmatic breathing yet or you’re feeling too tense, first take some deep breaths to steady your breathing.
In deep breathing, you first exhale completely, then inhale.
Inhale slowly for about 5 seconds, then exhale over about 7 seconds.
If you repeat this a few times, you’ll gradually start to calm down.
Deep breathing can be done even while someone is singing, so it is relatively easy to do.
If you start to feel nervous, try doing it slowly a few times.
Regarding diaphragmatic breathing,
Can't Do Diaphragmatic Breathing! 3 Tips for Singing from Your Belly
I’ve written about it in detail, so please give it a read.
3) Slow down the movement
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One way to ease tension and relax is to slow down your movements.
When your movements are fast, your breathing can quicken, making you more easily excited and increasing your tension.
Conversely, when you move more slowly, your arousal decreases and you become able to relax.
When you want to raise your energy, make faster movements; when you want to lower your energy and calm down, shift to slower movements.
If you project your voice loudly, you become excited, but if you speak softly, you start to calm down.
When you feel nervous, simply trying to do each movement slowly can help you gradually calm down.
Place your awareness in your abdomen.
One method for easing tension and relaxing is to place your awareness in your abdomen.
When you're nervous or excited, your awareness tends to rise upward.
Especially as you move toward the head, the tension and excitement increase.
When you want to calm your nerves or regain composure, it’s helpful to place your attention on your abdomen.
Since long ago, martial artists and the like have strongly emphasized always keeping your awareness in the abdomen (the tanden).
In martial arts and the like, when the mind becomes unsettled, techniques stop working well. To calm this disturbance of the mind, it is good to place your awareness in the hara (tanden, the lower abdomen).
A state of nervousness is a state in which one’s awareness is disturbed.
There are very few people who don’t get nervous when they’re doing something they’re not used to or when they have to do something in front of a large crowd.
However, there are many ways to reduce that tension even a little, and one of them is to place your awareness in your abdomen.
When you think while keeping your awareness in your head, both fear and enjoyment become easier to feel more intensely than in reality.
However, when you keep your awareness on your abdomen while thinking about something, you can think about and feel both fear and enjoyable things with a calm sense.
When you feel nervous, try shifting your awareness from your head down to your belly.
5) Lower the Adam’s apple
One method to ease tension and relax is to lower your Adam’s apple.
Lowering the larynx improves nasal airflow and allows you to inhale more air.
Even if it’s not a deep breath, the more air you can take in, the more your tension will ease.
If you lower your larynx when you sing, it becomes easier to produce your voice.
If you can’t lower your larynx well, you might end up straining too much, so it’s a good idea to practice lowering your larynx in advance.
When you become extremely tense, you may find it difficult to lower your larynx properly, so it’s best to do this before the tension builds up.
How to lower the Adam’s apple,
Women can sing with a cool voice too! Three techniques for producing a husky voice
I’ve written about it in detail, so please give it a read.
6) Correct your posture
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One way to ease tension and relax is to straighten your posture.
When you're nervous, your posture is also likely to become significantly misaligned.
Even when you're standing, it can be easier or harder to stand depending on where you place your body's center of gravity.
When your posture deteriorates, it becomes harder to keep your balance, your body grows unstable, and your mind naturally starts to feel uneasy as well.
To prevent that, correct your posture and make a conscious effort to maintain a stable state.
In particular, when you hunch forward with a rounded back, it puts a heavy strain on your neck, which can lead to stiff shoulders and, due to the stiffness or pain, feelings of anxiety.
When you’re feeling nervous, try adopting a posture that’s confident enough to make you stand tall.
It’s more stable to shift your center of gravity backward (toward your back) rather than forward.
Regarding posture,
How Not to Sing from Your Throat: 3 Tips to Avoid Straining Your Throat While Singing
I’ve written about it in detail, so please give it a read.
I think it's okay to fail.
One way to ease tension and relax is to adopt the mindset that it’s okay to fail.
You can significantly reduce nervousness just by taking a body-based approach.
However, when your mind is filled with anxiety, it can cause your heart to tense up all at once.
Allow yourself to be nervous, and remember that when you're not used to something, it's natural to make mistakes.
The mindset of “I mustn’t get nervous, I mustn’t fail” actually makes you more prone to feeling nervous.
Please focus your attention on the enjoyment of being there now, and make sure to enjoy the present moment.
Be grateful for the joy of being able to go to karaoke with friends and for having a healthy body that lets you sing, and try to focus on the fun things.
The more you act, the more you will also fail.
The fact that you fail a lot is proof that you’re acting with courage.
If you stop taking action, you will stop failing—but you will also stop succeeding.
Even though you’re afraid and even though you stumble, the fact that you’re taking action makes you truly remarkable.
Everyone makes mistakes, so there’s no need to be afraid.
Just by thinking about how to make karaoke fun for everyone, your nervousness will likely disappear as if it were a lie.
If you focus too much on yourself, your tension will increase.
When you feel nervous, it’s helpful to shift your focus from yourself to the people around you.
People who have strong feelings of shame or inferiority,
Embarrassed to sing! Four mindsets to let go of shame and inferiority
Please also read the article.
Summary
Ways to ease tension and relax
- Do some stretching.
- Take a deep breath.
- Slow down the movement
- Place your awareness in your belly.
- Lower your larynx
- Straighten your posture.
- It's okay to fail.
It would be good to try to think that way.