How to Manage Performance Anxiety for Harpists (Even With Shaky Hands)

Shaky hands and a racing heartbeat do NOT mean you’re doomed to play poorly.

Not at all! You just need to prepare yourself for that physical response to nerves.

As a professional harpist, I’ve learned that performance anxiety doesn’t automatically mean you’ll have a bad performance. Instead, it’s about preparing yourself so that when nerves show up, you know exactly how to handle them.

In this post, I’m going to share the best ways to prepare for nerves and performance anxiety that I use myself as a professional harpist.

Start With the Right Mindset

The first step to managing your performance anxiety is starting with the right mindset.

A lot of the time when students have shaky hands, they ask: How can I stop my hands from shaking?

And that’s actually the wrong angle to approach this from.

When you feel nervous, your body is going to have a response to that, and that’s not really something we can control.

So if you have shaky hands, it’s not about trying to stop them from shaking.

That’s only going to make you panic more because now you’re thinking, Oh no, how can I possibly play if my hands are unsteady?

Instead, we want to say:

“Okay, my hands are shaking, and so today I’m going to play the harp with shaky hands.”

We need to come in with the mindset that we can both be nervous and play well.

Because nerves are either going to happen or they won’t, and unfortunately, you don’t get to decide that.

But what we can control is how we prepare for the body’s nervous response.

1. Simulate a Racing Heart Rate

The first thing you can do is simulate playing when your heart is racing and you feel out of breath.

Part of the reason it feels so scary when it happens on stage is that your body feels unfamiliar, and you don’t know how it feels to play the harp like that.

What we can do is this: at home when you’re practicing for a performance, do some exercise right before playing the harp, like running up and down the stairs a few times or doing some jumping jacks.

Then, sit down and play while your heart rate is still elevated and your breathing is coming faster than normal.

This gives you an opportunity to get used to how that feels so that it doesn’t surprise you on stage.

2. Simulate Distractions

The next step is to simulate playing with distractions.

When we’re on stage, it’s not just our hearts that race, but our minds too.

In addition to all the things we need to think about in regards to the music, there’s also the audience sitting in front of us:

What are they thinking? What if I mess up?

And maybe the floor looks different than your floor at home, or maybe someone in the audience coughs loudly.

If you’re not used to staying focused when something distracting happens while you play, it’s hard not to let that throw you off.

So, we can prepare by making our environment more distracting while we play.

For example, you could put on a noisy YouTube video while you play, like café sounds or construction sounds.

Or, you can turn on your selfie camera on your phone or iPad and place it somewhere in your peripheral vision so that you can get the feeling of someone else being in the room.

Then you’ll be more prepared to keep your mind focused on the task at hand while you’re on stage.

3. Prepare Your Body for Performance Anxiety

The last step in my performance anxiety preparation is something that will actually help with your body’s physical response to nerves, to a degree.

Starting in the morning and continuing throughout the day until you need to perform, take long, deep breaths in and out.

You should be able to count to four on both the inhale and the exhale.

There are two reasons I do this:

Deep Breathing Helps Calm Your Nervous System

First, your breath is linked to your heart rate, your muscle tension, and how anxious or relaxed you feel overall.

If you can breathe more slowly and deeply, your heart rate will slow at least somewhat, and that’s going to make it easier to think and control your body.

It Conditions Your Body to Breathe Better on Stage

The second reason is that my experience was always that once I was about to go on stage, I knew I needed to take deep breaths, but it felt like I couldn’t.

It felt like my chest was too tight to breathe, and I needed more air, so I wanted to take another breath sooner and I couldn’t get out of that cycle of fast, shallow breaths.

So what I discovered was that if I spent all day leading up to that performance taking deep breaths, before I was even in the building I would be playing in, my body would be conditioned to breathe like that.

And I would be able to breathe better when it came time to play.

I’m not saying that deep breaths will make your performance anxiety go away completely, but it sure feels a lot better when you can breathe.

Final Thoughts: You Can Be Nervous and Still Play Well

What always makes me feel the best about a performance is knowing my music inside and out.

Because the truth is, shaky hands and nerves do not mean you’re doomed to play poorly.

You can be nervous and play well.

It just takes preparation.

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