Joe Allen

Hi pals,

So today, for my first in-depth post on here I wanted to chat about your Nervous System – what is it? what does it do? and why do we need to know about it when we’re training Musical Theatre vocals?

Let me put something out there right away…

I didn’t know a thing about my nervous system for 24 years of my life.
That is:

• 14 years of school education
• 4-years BA (Hons) degree
• 1 year working full-time in a busy and understaffed Students’ Union
• And to top it off: a 1-year intensive MA in Musical Direction

Now having spent multiple years studying about the Nervous System and the Arts – and applying it to my own life & creative practice – I wish someone had taught me the information, the tools and knowledge I’m going to share with you.

Like many musicians and creative degree students I struggled throughout my education with feelings of failing, being unsure, stuck and unable to realise the potential I hoped might be possible for me.

So let’s dive in:

What is a nervous system

When I say Nervous System what I’m referring to is your body’s command centre and communication network made up of the brain, spinal cord and a massive network of nerves.

Animals, including us as mammals, constantly use their senses to gather information about their surroundings. In humans, and many other animals, this information collected by nerves gets passed along to the brain. The brain then uses this information AND past data it has gathered and stored from lived experience to subconsciously make predictions on outcomes and then send signals back through the nerves to tell the body how to react. This is called Neuroception and is your Nervous System’s way of keeping you safe and away from threats that could threaten your survival.

For most people they are familiar with a Nervous System state, without maybe knowing that’s what it is. Fight or Flight.

I definitely knew this term before I knew where it came from, and where it comes from and works from is fascinating. Our Nervous Systems are not massively far beyond the eras of Wooly Mammoths and Hunter/Gatherers. Yes, our outside world is far beyond that but internally evolution has not caught up. As my tutor, Ruby Rose Fox, put it when I studied on the MuscleMusic ‘Nervous System & The Arts’ accreditation course, ‘our surroundings and the lives we live are iPhone 15 but our operating system (nervous system) is not even an iPhone 1.

Fight or Flight is one of the Nervous System states, the others include:

• SuperPlay (coined by Ruby Rose Fox)
• Safe & Social (a.k.a Connect)
• Fight or Flight
• Preservation

So why is this part of singing lessons?

Have you or your child ever auditioned before. You’ve been fine in the lead up to the audition but the day itself is here. There’s a tight feeling in your chest, your heart is racing, you feel sweaty. You stand there in the audition room, your mind is going blank, your voice sounds different and your legs just won’t stop shaking…

That, my friend, is Fight or Flight. It is your body signalling to you that it doesn’t think this is a safe thing to do, that there is an imminent threat to your survival and it is preparing to either fight or get the hell out of there. The thing is, because our Nervous System is still in Hunter/Gatherer era it can’t tell the difference between an audition panel and a sabre-tooth tiger. All it knows is something terrifying is over there and it wants to get you out and safe.

Your heart racing is it responding to hormones and neurotransmitters telling it to get blood down to your legs asap ready to run.

Butterflies in your stomach, is blood being diverted to major muscles and away from your digestive system.

The mind going blank is blood rushing away from the frontal lobes and pre-frontal cortex (the rational decision making part of the brain).

You spotting the pattern? Your Nervous System is in that audition room telling you to run or fight and is preparing your body to do exactly that, meanwhile you’re clinging on trying to still get through that audition piece you’ve been working on.

No wonder standing there and imagining the audition panel naked doesn’t work or ‘just breathe’ – I can’t imagine that would be very effective against a sabre-tooth tiger! No, you need to equip yourself with the tools and knowledge to help you regulate and move up towards Safe and Social,

So that’s why learning our Nervous System is a core part of the curriculum at Joe Allen Musical Theatre Studio, because really that is our primary instrument and once we’ve learnt how to play that we’ll be ready to perform the way you know you can!

Cheers for reading,

Joe

p.s. Thanks to Ruby Rose Fox and MuscleMusic who have taught me everything I know through their Trauma-Informed ‘Nervous System and the Arts’ certification course and their Mastery program.