This morning I decided to meditate with my legs crossed the opposite way, just to play with discomfort. Right away I noticed I couldn’t find ease in my breath, and I got curious: if I sat this way tomorrow and the next day, etc., would my body and breathing adapt? I’m guessing they will, but I’ll report back in a few days.
Do you choose to encounter discomfort in your rehearsal process? When we practice tolerating discomfort, we learn what we can breathe with, and what we cannot – and riding that edge builds capacity.
If I scan my memory for techniques for building capacity in this way, I come up with things like this:
-singing while standing on one leg
-singing in an acoustically dead space
-singing with eyes closed or facing away from each other
-singing outside where it’s hard to hear yourself
-singing on the edge of your emotional threshold
-singing in uncomfortable costume/shoes/makeup
…and many more possibilities. As many of us ramp up to competition season, how might you practice building your capacity to breathe with a little discomfort, so you can ride that performance intensity better?