Balancing Mastery and Recognizing Humanity

Summary

In this episode, Shawn and Karen discuss the concept of Becoming mBODYed and its importance in the performing arts. They explore how safety and belonging are central to this work and how it can help artists thrive. They also delve into the topics of perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and the continual learning mindset. The conversation highlights the need for personal development and self-connection alongside mastering the craft. Overall, the episode emphasizes the power of becoming embodied in fostering creativity, curiosity, and authenticity. In this conversation, Shawn and Karen discuss the concept of mastery and how it relates to personal and artistic growth. They explore the importance of self-compassion and self-honesty in the pursuit of mastery. They also discuss the role of fundamentals and the balance between pushing oneself and embracing one's strengths. Shawn shares his process of empowering his clients to embody their mastery and own their unique abilities. They also discuss the significance of the body in artistic expression and the importance of honoring and leveraging the body's responses. They touch on the topic of performance anxiety and the need to accept and work with the body's natural responses. Overall, the conversation emphasizes the importance of personal development, healing, and embracing one's enoughness.

takeaways

• Becoming embodied is centered in safety and belonging, and it involves acknowledging that artists are not broken and there is nothing that needs to be fixed.
• Perfectionism and imposter syndrome are closely linked, and they stem from the continual learning mindset prevalent in the arts.
• Therapy and coaching are essential in navigating imposter syndrome and maintaining a healthy balance between mastery and recognizing one's humanity.
• Becoming embodied fosters creativity, curiosity, and authenticity by teaching through the body and building upon what artists already know. Mastery involves self-compassion and self-honesty in the pursuit of personal and artistic growth.
• Fundamentals and embracing one's strengths are essential in the journey towards mastery.
• Empowering others to embody their mastery requires guiding them through self-discovery and owning their unique abilities.
• The body plays a crucial role in artistic expression, and it is important to honor and leverage its responses.
• Performance anxiety can be reframed as the body's natural response, and acceptance and working with it can lead to growth and empowerment.
• Personal development and healing are integral to embracing one's enoughness and achieving mastery.

Becoming mBODYed is a production of and copyrighted by mBODYed, LLC, 2024. www.mbodyed.com
Follow me at https://www.instagram.com/mbodyed/ and https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61566020594221
The intro and exit music is Dark Matter by Carlos Velez, recorded by Tosca Duo on their CD Dimensions.
A link to Carlos’s music is available at
https://composercarlosvelez.wixsite.com/carlosvelezmusic/about-me.

Transcript

Shawn (he/him) (00:01.816)
Welcome to the Becoming mBODYed podcast, where we explore how safety and belonging cultivate embodied creativity, curiosity, and authenticity. I am your host, Shawn Copeland, the founder and CEO of mBODYed, a program dedicated to embodied education in the performing arts.
 
 Karen Cubides is back with us today. Karen is a saxophonist, coach, and marketing expert. She is the founder of the Karen Cubides Agency, the one -stop shop for musicians looking to take their careers to the next level. Karen, I am so grateful that you are still on this journey with me. We are now on episode four. Thank you so much for doing this with me and guiding me through this and walking the walk with me. I really appreciate it.
 
 Karen Cubides (00:47.235)
 Yeah, I'm so excited to be here. I think we might be like episode five or six.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (00:55.257)
 goodness. It's really.
 
 Karen Cubides (00:56.227)
 on this journey. It's flying by, so I'm very excited. But yeah, I mean, I feel like last time we left off with like some amazing Brene brilliance with your methodology and just hearing more about your process and how we can all, you know, move in a direction of striving to be superhuman, which I think is such a cool concept. So I feel like if you're open to it, I'd love to kind of expand a little bit more on that. And I feel like every time we talk, we keep coming back to like, why does this matter?
 
 Who is this for and what's the purpose of this? So I don't know. What do you want to talk about today?
 
 Shawn (he/him) (01:30.508)
 Yeah, that's kind of where my brain is.
 
 I, we ended that last episode going, and now it's time to talk about Brene's work and why this work is so important. And I think probably a good place to start is to kind of unpack how did becoming embodied, how did it take shape or how is it continuing to take shape? Why, why is my work becoming something new? And that's a very interesting question, I think for me, and it's something that I keep pondering.
 
 So that's how good to kind of dive into. OK. So I think the story behind this is that two years ago, coming up on two years ago, when the idea of starting embodied became real, and that was right around the time we'd been working together for about four or five months at that point. And in my mind, I was really in the
 
 Karen Cubides (02:05.103)
 Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, yeah.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (02:32.544)
 in the world of I'm gonna do Alexander Technique teacher training and I'm gonna do it.
 
 the standard way, the way I was taught, we're gonna benefit from what we learned from the pandemic that Alexander technique and body mapping and all the somatic arts can be taught online. And that there's absolutely nothing lost by doing online work in this realm. It's just different. If you're working with a person, one -on -one in person with each other,
 
 you get the benefit of their hands -on skills. If you're working in an online environment, you get the benefit of you, the student, developing that agency right away. If you're going to change, it's going to be because you are doing the work yourself. And the teacher on the other side of the screen is just there listening and looking and offering suggestions and giving you things to think about and watching you and guiding you. But ultimately, it's you.
 
 doing the work and that's the benefit, know, the surprise. Hey, we're stuck in our houses and we can't leave and we need to figure out how to teach online all of the sudden and the Alexander world and the body mapping world learned really quickly, we can do this, which
 
 for our field is tremendous because it gives us immediate access worldwide to people. There's so few of us.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (04:09.24)
 who teach this work around the world, and that's one of the problems with getting it out there is that there's just not a lot of teachers. Now we have an online community and we can reach so many more people. So I started thinking, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna teach people to do Alexander Technique. And then the Houston contract came.
 
 And I started working with university professors, which was something I never expected, you know. And so grateful to their new chair, Brian Chen, for welcoming me to campus, for believing in me and believing in the...
 
 the truth of this work and the power of this work and in my ability to bring it to his faculty in my particular approach. It took me a while. It took me several evenings of sitting in Houston having some bourbon with him and him going, yes, Shawn, yes, Shawn, this is you. Yes, Shawn, this is you.
 
 Karen Cubides (05:16.249)
 Yeah.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (05:23.694)
 You know what I'm going, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm just teaching Alexander technique. No, you're not, you know, and you really need to believe in yourself. You need to believe that, that you can do this and you're not just teaching Alexander technique. That's why I brought you in because you're different. And. You know, over the last 16, 18 months, I've had to really grapple with that and really come to terms with.
 
 Yes, this work, Becoming mBODYed, is based in Alexander Technique concepts and is based in body mapping concepts, but it's something more. And yes, it's definitely...
 
 It has Brene's work folded into it, you know, her boundary setting, her bravery work, her compassion work, her daring greatly work, her vulnerability work, and her courage work are all folded into that along with, you know, I say a lot on the website, neuroscience and cognitive science. I want people to know that this isn't just being made up. I'm not sitting here in my living room
 
 you know, pulling this out of nowhere. I'm taking the most current neuroscience and somatic science and psychology and
 
 looking backwards at what we do in body mapping and Alexander technique and saying, okay, these things check, these things work really well, and they're they're backed in science. These things don't. We're not doing this in the most efficient way. We could do this better. We can improve upon this.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (07:09.098)
 And for our field, one of the biggest barriers in learning any kind of somatic work is the amount of time that it takes to do this. And when we work with the body in the way that the body is designed to work, we're not fighting ourselves. The time that it takes to learn something at the somatic level decreases.
 
 So we can really benefit from that in this work particularly because it usually takes, you know, to do a traditional training program takes about three years to train as an Alexander teacher. It's about 12 to 1600 hours of training over a course of three years. It's a significant investment in time and money, obviously. But. You know, the investment that you're making is an investment in you.
 
 Karen Cubides (08:10.693)
 Mm
 
 Shawn (he/him) (08:10.71)
 And that's what's so great about it. You are getting better at being yourself and at being your whole self and connecting pieces of you that have been exiled for whatever reason. You get to kind of bring those back into the fold and benefit from incorporating all those back together. So.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (08:36.994)
 What I'm now calling becoming embodied is Alexander and body mapping. But it's from the perspective that we are not broken and there is nothing that needs to be fixed.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (09:00.14)
 Now just like sit with that for a minute because we spend so much time as musicians going to lessons week after week after week after week with the idea that the job of my teacher is to fix the things that I'm doing wrong. Like how completely crazy is that? How?
 
 Insane is that in terms of the way that we are thinking about ourselves, like I am some broken bit of something that I need someone else to come in and fix that. Tell me what to do to make that better.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (09:51.576)
 We're doing just fine. And in terms of, let's just take straight up Alexander or straight up body mapping, we traditionally refer to something that's not working well in our body as a body mapping error. We can't have an error in our bodies. It's not possible.
 
 because we make those choices based on our safety. It was the best choice available to us. That's why we did it. It solved a problem and it worked. Otherwise we wouldn't have done it. And even at the, know, at that, we're gonna kind of loop everything back together at the most basic level of belonging.
 
 we're making a choice to assimilate to the rules of our tribe, the posture, the behavior, the breathing, those things that we assimilate to as we become artists, these are the rules of our community. Our safety and our belonging is contingent upon that. And those are inseparable. We can't.
 
 We can't exist without that. And we certainly can't exist as creative, curious learners and artists without safety being the most important thing in the room that we're addressing that. And so.
 
 Karen Cubides (11:36.261)
 Hmm.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (11:40.95)
 So for me, becoming embodied is centered in safety and belonging. It's looking at what you're already doing and saying, OK, that's working well for you. Let's just make it a little bit better. And how do I know that it's working well for you? Because you got here. You got up today.
 
 It's working just fine. How many people come to me for breathing lessons? I have probably had hundreds of people come in. I just need a breathing lesson. Can you teach me to breathe? OK, well, you're alive. You're breathing just fine. Done. You you popped out. You popped out a mom some way. And some doctor went, slap. And you did two things. You inhaled.
 
 And you screamed. You don't need a breathing lesson, and you don't need a voice lesson. Your body is built to do those things. My job is not to tell you how to do that. You already know how to do it, and you know how to do it really well. You're 20 -something years old, or 30 -something years old, or 40 - or 50 -something years old, and you're breathing just fine.
 
 We're just here to undo some of the layering that's on top of that, that's interfering with what your body already knows. And that's a very, very different place to come from, and a very important place to come from when you're working with,
 
 It's the first week of classes this week for lots of colleges and universities. There's lots of fresh 18 -year -olds, 18 - to 19 -year -olds who are having their very first lesson of their undergraduate career. Imagine if their teacher said, you're doing great. Our work together is just about improving everything that you're already doing.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (13:55.074)
 Just what would that be like?
 
 Karen Cubides (13:58.853)
 Amazing. Yeah.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (14:00.566)
 Right? Like, could we actually teach in a way that fosters creativity, that fosters curiosity, that fosters embodiment, that fosters authenticity?
 
 You ask me, why does this matter? Because we can do that. We can teach our art in a way that makes people happier and healthier artists by teaching through the body and teaching in a way that acknowledges that.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (14:47.554)
 they're okay, that there's nothing that needs to be fixed. you might say, you could say, lots of people are probably listening and going, yeah, well, you know, sometimes posture needs to be fixed or, you know, your embouchure is completely backwards or, sure, but it was good enough to get you in.
 
 It got you all the way through high school and it got you through that audition and you got accepted with that embouchure. So it was good enough. Now we're just gonna take it and make it better. We're just gonna improve upon it. Sure, it might be a whole different philosophy, but we're gonna build on what you already know rather than tear that all apart.
 
 that sets a whole different realm for learning. Let me pause. How am I? How are you doing?
 
 Karen Cubides (15:48.687)
 Good, good. I'm thinking I want to go back to the safety security piece though, because that was huge. And I think like, I want it like everybody like rewind the podcast because that piece, think like freed up a lot of shame and guilt, which I know is also big part of Brené's work around trauma and around failure and all of these things that we experience as creatives and
 
 I really love how she talks about how, you know, when perfectionism is the driver, shame is riding shotgun. And I feel like you kind of freed all of that up because a lot of the, the negativity or the things that the, the maps that need to be tweaked, were survival pieces. And then they were the part that kept you safe and it served you. then once you know better, you do better. And I think that that's, that's really exciting and really encouraging. And, and I'm curious to hear.
 
 perhaps like maybe more stories from the clients you work with around how this safety piece is such a turning point for their trust in their body perhaps or their development as individuals on this journey that is a life thing I imagine.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (17:08.994)
 I think the starting place for that is I have my own kind of definition of perfectionism and I'm not sure if this is from Brene or not. I can't remember. I'm making a face that if you're listening right now you can't see but I'm making that face of like.
 
 So I'm not sure that this is my own or if I'm borrowing it from someone else. But I have this idea in my mind that perfectionism is about having a seat at the table. And of course it's external. It's being concerned with what other people think of you.
 
 For me, it's always been about like, so that I can have a seat at the table with all the other professionals. And the interesting piece of that is that, and something that no one really ever tells you is that no one's going to invite you to that table. If you want to sit at that table, walk up to the table and pull out the chair and sit down at the table. But.
 
 in doing so that comes with all the rights and responsibilities of being at that table. That's the thing. You know, that's the hard part about it. And it was a couple of years ago that I was teaching a former student of mine and the former college student had come back for, you know, like an online lesson. And we were talking about perfectionism.
 
 And we were also talking about imposter syndrome because you say shame is writing shotgun. Well, imposter syndrome in the backseat or in the trunk. we realized in the process of this conversation and this lesson that we were working on at the time that
 
 Karen Cubides (18:56.665)
 Mm
 
 Shawn (he/him) (19:12.123)
 Our mindset around being continual learners as artists is what creates the imposter syndrome. It's the same coin. It's just different sides of the same coin.
 
 And let me unpack that a little bit, because there was a lot. This realization happened about 90 minutes into a very long lesson. And I'm giving you the real quick, you know, cliff notes of it. But if you think about an artist, we're constantly.
 
 you know, it's like that project's done, on to the next. You know, I remember, I remember, you know, every August I would set out a big pile of all the music that I had to perform in the next season. And it was just like, okay, those pieces are done. What's next? There's no real like, know, woohoo, I did it. I get to coast for the next three months. It's like, nope.
 
 You know, as soon as someone finishes a role, they're preparing the next role and they're on stage, you know, in rehearsals for that. So there's no real time to celebrate. We're trained and taught the value of this continual learning, being on the razor's edge of our development, pushing ourselves, learning the new thing, the new skill, the new role, you know, and...
 
 We're never really resting on our laurels, as they would say, or we're resting on our successes, which means we're always on the edge of our ability.
 
 Karen Cubides (20:52.741)
 Okay.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (20:55.308)
 That means that we're always creating in the moment. We're always going, well, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do this.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (21:08.078)
 which is what breeds that imposter syndrome. Like, maybe I'm not good enough to do this because I'm on the very front edge of what I'm doing. If all I did was teach what my teacher taught me to do and perform the pieces that my teacher taught me to perform, why would I have imposter syndrome? I know I can do that.
 
 Karen Cubides (21:33.317)
 Mmm.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (21:35.362)
 Does that make sense? it's that academic type, continual learning, pushing the envelope, being on our razor's edge, that the flip side of that, the sort of in shadow around that is imposter syndrome. They're always lurking in the back closet waiting to come out and say, you don't know what you're doing. No, I don't.
 
 Karen Cubides (21:37.935)
 does.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (22:03.98)
 Because I'm on the edge of it. I'm creating it as we're doing it. By definition, I don't know what I'm doing. Because it's happening in the moment. I'm developing it right now.
 
 You know, this is the first time I've been on stage singing this particular role or dancing this particular character in, you know, whatever production I'm doing or, you know, that kind of thing. So I remember being so grateful for this particular student as we were working through this of realizing like imposter syndrome and lifelong continual learner. It's like the yin and the yang.
 
 And
 
 Shawn (he/him) (23:16.034)
 Yeah, I'm doing the new work. I'm pushing myself. I'm growing. I'm continually growing. Like that's, that's how we talk ourselves out of that imposter syndrome.
 
 Karen Cubides (23:33.391)
 love that you just said that because it absolutely, I mean, besides it being like mind blowing and we should of course like sit and think about it, but it almost gives us the not permission, but like the, sense of urgency when it comes to personal development and when it comes to not just focusing on mastering the craft, but like being a person and how that's just equally important. know, that's why we're such huge advocates for therapy, you know, private lessons for your life. Same thing as you would for your instrument or your, you know, discipline.
 
 And I think that's fascinating because I also feel like there's a there's a spectrum to the imposter syndrome. And I feel like this just fits that missing piece of if you don't have this foundation of being embodied and knowing myself and being connected to your body, this could absolutely hijack the situation. And then perhaps again, I don't have the science for this, but perhaps it leads into the performance anxiety piece or it leads into the negative self -talk into these cycles of.
 
 trash that sometimes we can't seem to get out of. I'm curious. sorry. Go ahead.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (24:34.476)
 Yeah, it feeds those self -fulfilling prophecies of the negative self -talk. Absolutely. Yeah. Keep going.
 
 Karen Cubides (24:44.035)
 Yeah. Cause it also, made me think of like, what's then that I'm going to get super meta, but like that fine line between, cause I feel like imposter syndrome is a spectrum. think similar to procrastination, there's a positive side to it there's a negative, based on your perception and, what is that intersection perhaps with mastery and imposter syndrome? Cause I feel like
 
 you know, once you're in perhaps the middle of your career, there's a certain degree of confidence that comes with the work that you do. There's also a certain standard of excellence that is expected. There's also, I mean, it's the beauty of aging where you just like, you know, your stuff. but then that health, that imposter syndrome can be healthy and making sure you don't like sit on your laurels. Like we were saying, what is that fine line between the mastery piece and the imposter syndrome or like, you know, your stuff, but you also know that you're just human.
 
 And that perfection is an illusion.
 
 or control.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (25:44.14)
 Mmm.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (25:50.126)
 That's where I think.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (25:54.263)
 That's where I think the therapy is so important or the coaching is so important. That opportunity to have someone reflect back to you. Asking the really tough questions.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (26:17.326)
 Wow, this is a tough question. You want me to solve the world's problems all in 45 minutes? Okay, challenge accepted. Goodness,
 
 Karen Cubides (26:22.915)
 No.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (26:34.594)
 This is also the same kind of question of like, well, what is happiness in terms of your career? And how do you know that you've arrived? What are the things that are measuring? How are you measuring your success? And what are the measures of your success?
 
 Shawn (he/him) (26:58.998)
 And I think that compassion and honesty towards the self are real key components to this.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (27:16.526)
 And there's also a healthy bit of self -check in there. Those really dark moments where I can't play anything, I don't know why I'm doing this. And then for a clarinetist, we pull out Rose. The Rose 32 etudes. You're a saxophone, so you play Fairling etudes, right?
 
 So, know, those, you go back and you're like, right, you know, or a dancer goes back to the bar. Like we go back to our fundamentals. We remind ourselves of what we can do. All of the fundamental basis that's there that we built. And then we remind ourselves of, yeah. And again, I'm on the edge of it. I'm pushing.
 
 while I can. And then to your point, there's a certain point where, you know, I'm at that age where I don't want to play the newest concerto anymore. I don't need to. I did that work. You know, I now want to just play the recitals of the music that I love and that I want to play because I've earned the right to be able to do that.
 
 That make sense? So I think there's a balance with that.
 
 Karen Cubides (28:54.009)
 mean, I'm just gonna push you because you told me to. Because I feel like you're the perfect encapsulation of what I'm talking about. Like I would argue that the work that you do is masterful, but it requires you to check yourself so much to the point where sometimes it is hard to even explain what it is that you do. Or, you know, it's so nuanced and so complex, like the work that the company is doing embodied that I think, you know, answering these questions around like,
 
 Shawn (he/him) (28:55.778)
 Yeah, go for it, go for it, go for it, yeah.
 
 Karen Cubides (29:22.937)
 what part of this is imposter syndrome or what part of this is mastery? Like the work itself almost like prevents you from making those hard lines and having it be binary. Like there's just such a wide spectrum for that. So I'm curious, like as you're working with your clients from all walks of life, how do you empower them to like embody their mastery and who they are and more than anything just own it?
 
 Shawn (he/him) (29:52.322)
 Hmm.
 
 Karen Cubides (29:52.631)
 I feel like you have to feel it on a cellular level to like truly own it.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (30:03.18)
 I think that I'm just going to talk you through my process. I think that's the only way I can answer this question.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (30:16.326)
 I believe in the power of this work. I believe fundamentally that every creature on this planet that has a spine moves with a coordinating principle that if we can get our ego out of the way,
 
 that coordinating principle takes over and we are capable of truly beautiful things.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (30:53.134)
 You've got an 18 month old, 14 months. So he's up and moving around a lot. you know, and every day it's like, whoa, you're running a lot faster today. Like you're watching what I'm talking about every day is a whole new, wow, you know.
 
 Karen Cubides (30:55.877)
 14 months.
 
 Karen Cubides (31:00.815)
 Mm
 
 Shawn (he/him) (31:12.984)
 How did we get from two months ago, you were still in the crib and now you're you've gone from rolling over to crawling to walking to running and off you go like now you're on a tricycle, you know. So it's it's marvelous what we can do. So I know that. You understand what I'm saying, like I know that that's there and I truly believe in the power of the design of our bodies. Now.
 
 What that gives me the ability to do is when I'm in a client session and someone brings something unknown to me, which I have to say, regardless of whether or not I've seen what comes in the room before, tendonitis is tendonitis, but each person's journey into tendonitis is different.
 
 Compression and C345 of your neck is the same in each person, but how they got there, the story behind that is different for each person. So every teaching instance is brand new. It has to be. I have to enter into that state of curiosity so that I'm bringing in and I'm making space for the story. Why is this coming up for you?
 
 What are the behaviors that are attached to this particular thing that's happening in your body? What are the beliefs behind that? Where do we, know, because that helps us determine where it is that we need to work. But there's always this moment of, can I do this?
 
 Am I the right person for this? Can I bring any kind of light into this? Can I help or am I going to make it worse? You know, there's my imposter syndrome getting revved up. And usually the lesson goes like, OK, well.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (33:28.588)
 I'm going to set aside all of that and we're going to move into the unknown. Are you willing to move into the unknown with me? Let's see what we can do here together because I'm not alone. I'm with the other person and we're going to do this together. And there's going to be a lot of questions. Try this, see what happens, give me some feedback and then we edit. We keep going.
 
 We back up and try it again and it told different direction. No, that's not working. Whoa, know, you know caution caution caution that usually doesn't happen but there's so either you know, but there's always this this moment of okay, we're standing on the cliff let's dive do we dive into the unknown or do we do what just works and In order to do this work that requires you to set aside
 
 what you know works, because each person is different, and dive into their unknown. You might come out in the same place, but how you're going to get there is going to be their discovery and their process. Which...
 
 Now we're going to get a little technical. That's the means whereby in Alexander work. That's that's setting aside my diet, my desire to reach a goal. And holding that goal in a place, but saying I'm going to pay attention to the process of how I reach that goal. And how the goal today is.
 
 reaching someplace with my client, with my student, that we get to together that ends up being a discovery that they make. And I say that because that's very important and that's a very integral part of my teaching.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (35:35.498)
 If I tell you something, that will be cool for you. But if I guide you into a discovery that you make, that's something you never forget.
 
 when you learn it through your own experience of your own self, that's something that you own that is truly yours. That's where the empowering comes from. That's where the agency comes from. You do that a couple of times as a student. You do that a couple of times. And now there's a habit around that. And there's the belief of, I can do this on my own.
 
 I am the creator of my own destiny. I have my own agency around myself, my body, my career, my life. That's where this work becomes so life -changing, because we're making changes at that level. I feel like I've stopped answering your question and I've gone into a whole other realm.
 
 Karen Cubides (36:39.461)
 No, I love it so much because I think also I like as you're talking about, you know, your own imposter syndrome and all of that. And, know, you open up with like, find the story behind what happened like that immediately sets you apart and that screams mastery to me. But then also just such a good reminder for all of us to like that the body is just so important. And I think it's so easy to just not and to be like, we're just going to operate.
 
 self preservation mode, go, go, go. And, you know, all the things that you're sharing also is making me think about the hurriedness that is such a part of our society. And how can we go back to, you know, belonging to ourselves and really embracing that embodiedness with our body, ourselves, our soul, all of that in such a fast paced space? Like when you work with your clients, how do you support them in not rushing the process? Because when you're...
 
 in the trenches, that's like all you want to do. So how do you hold space for all of this without being like, yeah, yeah, that's great for you, Shawn, but like, actually, I need to be able to play and do this thing. Like, how do I work through that?
 
 Shawn (he/him) (37:47.502)
 Well, you know, there's plenty of that. There's plenty of lessons that are like, look, I got an audition on Friday. I need you to help me get into the best mind space that I can be in. So we're not going to dive into that kind of deep work. We're going to talk about strategies of things like.
 
 OK, I want you to go run up and down the stairs three times and get your heart rate up so that you're really nervous and then sit down and play your excerpts for your orchestral audition on Friday. Like we're going to talk about we're going to talk about real practical applications. I need you to drink three cups, no, three pots of coffee and get your nervous system flying high and really kinetic and excited and try and focus.
 
 You know, let's let's actually do create scenarios around what you've got to do. You know, and then. When it comes time to do the deep work and we have the time to do the deep work. Those doors open.
 
 You know, but not every lesson, not every session, not every coaching is a deep dive into that level of a discovery. But even then, if I say to you, you want to know what it's like to be nervous in an audition, go outside and run up and down the five flights of stairs.
 
 and then come in and I'm not going to tell you, I'm not going to say, now, your nervous system is really pumping and your heart rate's really high. I'm going to say, what do you notice? I'm going to let you reflect and feel and discover and then go, okay, now play. What do you notice?
 
 Shawn (he/him) (39:46.786)
 you know, eventually it comes out. You are in the process of discovering these things. So instead of of me saying, OK, here's a list of things that you can do and da da da da da da da da, we just do it. And then you make those discoveries, which again, in the end, you go, OK.
 
 So I can play these excerpts when I'm nervous. I can play these excerpts when my nervous system is in a very high anxiety elevated state. I can do it. we are, know, even though that's a very simple thing that you can do three days beforehand, there's still a pretty big discovery in that, which is the belief of I'm gonna be okay.
 
 this audition is not going to kill me. You know, which your consciousness, your prefrontal cortex knows that, but your deep mammalian brain does not know that. A lot's resting on this because your belonging and your safety is in question.
 
 You know, so this has a huge impact on your life.
 
 Karen Cubides (41:06.947)
 What?
 
 Shawn (he/him) (41:09.74)
 So we're doing this recording this episode, and it won't be out for a month. But three days ago, I just did this workshop on performance anxiety, which was very interesting for me. I started the workshop by telling the people who came. I've done hundreds of performance anxiety conversations.
 
 but they always come up like in a class or it's a question that comes up in a presentation. This was the first time, strangely enough, the first time that I knew that I was going to talk about performance anxiety.
 
 and thus had to sit down and think about what did I want to say, what was the order that I wanted to say it in, which of course, you know, engaged my academic brain and guess who was nervous for doing a conversation on performance anxiety. But in the process of doing it, I realized and made a connection that blew my mind. And that is that
 
 Shawn (he/him) (42:17.536)
 Our bodies are doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. When we're having an anxiety response or a panic response, the body is doing what it is designed to do.
 
 It's responding to a threat, a perceived threat. That threat may not be real or it may be very real, but in terms of perception, it is 100 % real to your nervous system. And it's doing that based on the circumstances that are happening right now and doing that on comparing that to pre -existing life experiences, things that have happened before.
 
 and it's deciding I need to respond in this way. And that is exactly what it's designed to do. All of my training that I've received from music teachers around performance anxiety has been around ways to correct it, ways to mitigate it, ways to avoid it.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (43:33.368)
 What if we began from a point of acceptance? What if we began with, OK, body, you're telling me something. I'm going to stop what I'm doing right now, and I'm going to listen to what you're saying. I'm going to accept that you're doing your job.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (43:57.568)
 And I just need to figure out what exactly you're responding to rather than trying to keep you from doing what it is that you're supposed to be doing.
 
 What if we began our journey into this realm, performance anxiety realm, by accepting and thanking our bodies for doing what they're supposed to be doing, for honoring them?
 
 Shawn (he/him) (44:33.41)
 rather than again with this idea of it's broken, I need to fix it. My nervous system is overreacting, over responding.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (44:48.704)
 It's not. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (44:56.642)
 That floored me as I was talking about this and realizing, this came to me in the moment of I said something earlier and was talking about safety and belonging and these are prerequisites for curiosity and for creativity and they're inseparable and that's what your nervous system is responding to.
 
 We need to acknowledge that.
 
 and honor that because it's part of our design. Not fight it, not work against it. We need to learn to leverage it, which we can.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (45:51.672)
 sit with that one for a while. That one, that floored me for the weekend. Like I was, got off of, got off of that and went, whew. I learned a lot through, by doing that. Like that, and that, that just to kind of bring this back around, that's what becoming embodied is about. It's about learning to work within our design so that we can leverage.
 
 Karen Cubides (45:53.806)
 I love that.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (46:22.476)
 to kind of go back to what you said to leverage the superhuman nature of what we can do. When we stop fighting it and learn to trust it, listen to it, follow it. We open up a whole realm of new potential. And we open up this idea that
 
 And this is the one that's kind of taking shape for me, that every time I go to do my work, my artistic work, my artistic work is aligned with my priorities and my boundaries.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (47:11.06)
 such that doing my work helps me become better at being me. And it helps me be a better person to myself, a more authentic person, or a more authentic expression of myself.
 
 So by doing my work, I get better.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (47:37.806)
 Who wouldn't want that?
 
 Karen Cubides (47:40.677)
 Yeah. my God, this is crazy. And insane. I mean, it's amazing. And it almost feels like you have solved all the world's problems with this statement.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (47:52.246)
 Nope. Nope.
 
 Karen Cubides (47:55.535)
 But it's just making me think though, back to again, like to me, the huge win also is just that that personal development piece does matter. And again, I just keep going back to the word healing. Like it's just so healing to know that your body's got you and that you can trust and breathe and you're already equipped. I just appreciate approaching it from that place of enoughness. Like that just feels so counterintuitive to how we were taught to do all of these things. So.
 
 It's just exciting to know that there's room to feel good in your body and artistically. And yeah, there's a lot of unlearning, but it is possible. So I appreciate that of your work.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (48:36.866)
 But it's unlearning from the point of view of honoring what that got you, as opposed to unlearning because it's been harmful for you. It can't have been harmful for you. It got you here. That's the thing.
 
 That's the piece of it that I think is so important to my work right now. It honors the story behind that piece that it's now ready to close the book on that piece and put it on the shelf and say, thank you. That was a great book to read. I'm now ready for part two. But if I need you, I know where to come and get you. You know?
 
 But all of those things that we need to unlearn, absolutely, it's time for updated. I need a new operating system. I just put my computer in the shop, got a new motherboard. It's working great now, you know. But it worked fine until the motherboard became obsolete. Now it's working great. But it got me here.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (49:52.418)
 That's crazy,
 
 Karen Cubides (49:53.677)
 It's amazing. I am so excited for whatever else comes from this, because I think that this is just answering so many of the questions of why does this matter? And I think like we've talked about before recording in general, like about not always being in the mood for the personal development piece or some of this stuff, just like life just doesn't feel like there's time. I think that
 
 as creatives in our perfectionism and also our imposter syndrome, like we were always waiting for the right conditions and the right time and the right situation. And it has to be like, so, and you know, just like mindfulness and anything in the wellness space, like it's, about doing it now and as you are. And I just, I so appreciate the permission in this conversation. and yeah, I almost like for my own self, just reflecting on, on what are those things that I
 
 I'm trying to run away from or, or shift or change, or what thing do I think is going to give me that upgrade without like, like having gratitude perhaps for that story or for that piece that got me to where I am. And, and I think it's just such a good reframe to, to really continue to approach things from the lens of you're not broken and you're inherent enoughness. That's really helpful.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (51:07.214)
 Yeah, yeah. That's a good pausing place, isn't it, for today?
 
 Karen Cubides (51:11.039)
 yeah. I need a drink.
 
 Shawn (he/him) (51:15.946)
 I know, right?
 
 Shawn (he/him) (51:20.526)
 Thank you. Thank you for for again being on this with me today. I just I don't know that I could do this without you. I really appreciate it. It's also nice just to have a friendly face to be talking to and going. Yeah, keep going. Keep going. Keep going.
 
 As always, visit us on socials. You can find us on Instagram, under mBODYed, and Shawn L. Copeland. On Facebook, like us, give us a review, favorite us so that you see new episodes that are coming out the first and third Monday of each month. And if you would like more information about Karen, you can visit her website at www .karencubitusagency .com. She has many programs that she
 
 can offer you and she can be just as amazing in your life as she has been in mine. thank you so much. Yeah.
 
 Karen Cubides (52:18.405)
 Thanks, Shawn