The Inner Artist

How I discovered that letting go of control is a learnable skill

Emo kid

Listening to music was always my refuge. So supreme was my nerdiness as a kid that I lost myself in Beethoven and Mahler symphonies while my classmates listened to INXS and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I wasn’t immune to pop music, but when there was some major emotion to process, which was every other day as a teenager, I reached for the big guns, the romantics: Brahms, Schumann, Chopin, Rachmaninoff. They taught me I wasn’t alone, even if I was separated from my co-sufferers by a century or two. This planet had once been inhabited by humans who understood the depth and magnitude of my adolescent emotional life.

Then I became a professional musician myself. Sounds perfect, right? I would be able to pour all that emotion and sensitivity into my own playing.

Let your own inner artist lead:

As in all things, however, the distance between being an amateur—literally a lover of something—and a professional—someone who delivers a skill on demand—was considerable.

It’s true that I had been on stages all my life, starting at 7 or 8 years old. Back then, though, I was playing at senior care homes and in children’s concerts; the stakes were pretty low. The pressure began to mount during my teen years as I competed for a precious handful of spots in a coveted school or festival, a single scholarship available to hundreds of students, or a first prize in a competition. I worked toward these exceptional events for weeks or months and it usually took me days or weeks to recover from them. The adrenaline was intense but manageable in brief spurts.

When Performance Anxiety Took Over

When I became principal cellist of the German Opera Orchestra of Berlin at 23, all at once I no longer had weeks or even days to prepare for the big moments, the cello solos that so often accompany some of the most dramatic moments of an opera. After a performance, I had only hours to recover from them before the next obligation.

In typical repertory theater fashion, we often had a rehearsal for ballet A in the morning, a performance of opera B in the evening, a rehearsal the next morning for opera C, a performance that evening of opera D, and so on, juggling 4 or 5 different productions at once. A 5-hour Strauss opera that contained a huge cello solo in its second act (Die Frau Ohne Schatten) might finish at 10 or 11 PM, and rehearsal for Swan Lake might begin the next morning at 10 AM. There was no time to decompress. I could not sleep after such a performance until 1 or 2 in the morning, and I would have to get up at 7 to fit in all the yoga, stretching, and exercises that kept me functioning.

My body did not like this schedule, not at all. But this was the job, right? I didn’t want to be a diva and demand special treatment, and so I continued to deliver.

Without the preparation and unwinding that I needed to return to baseline, my performance anxiety skyrocketed. I slept poorly or not at all for nights on end; my overactive mind spiraled into scenarios where my inherent incompetence would be revealed, resulting in a public shaming. In these horror fantasies, getting fired was the least of my worries; the shame associated with not measuring up would clearly be the immediate catalyst of permanent banishment from everything I knew and loved.

It didn’t help that, in reality, orchestra members would regularly compliment me for my solos and express the hope that I wouldn’t move on to a better position too soon. Their perception of me as a rising star was unavailable to my spiraling mind at 3 in the morning.

In my mind, the fact that this cost me so much energy and anguish meant that I was not a ‘real’ musician. The fact that I could not effortlessly play a huge solo in the middle of an extremely complex opera as if I had been born doing it was solid proof that I was a charlatan. It was only a matter of time before I would be discovered.

I could not ask for help as a 23-year-old female leader in an organization made up of 90% men, with no other female leadership. I needed a miracle that would allow me to seem as if I were doing it all effortlessly.

While searching for it, I inadvertently discovered a way to truly let go in any situation—something like the surrender Michael Singer talks about.

My Surrender Experiment

Ironically, I arrived there through the tunnel of despair. Despite well over 10,000 hours of practice, I had so little confidence in my technique that I had only two choices: give up entirely or give up all control. And this is how my mind created its own trap.

Performing was more than a job; therefore giving it up would mean abandoning my whole identity. And so, terrifying as it was, I chose to give up control.

There was one solo that I particularly loved, and that terrified me more than most, from Puccini’s Tosca. (A side note: Puccini’s operas are to classical music what romance novels are to literature, which is why some opera fans are snobbish about them and others can’t get enough. I belong to the latter category.)

It begins when Cavaradossi, the tenor lover boy, is composing a last letter to his great love, Tosca, before being executed by a firing squad. The text of his letter, sung out loud to himself and hundreds of opera fans, is interspersed by a gorgeous cello quartet, because what better way to leave this earth than to the accompaniment of four cellos?

After he finishes, the quartet goes on for a good while to underline the romantic drama of the moment, the first cello soaring above the others. I loved this part, and yet every time I played it, it felt like a vertiginous leap that might send me to my death just like Tosca at the end of the opera as she plummets from the parapet of the castle. Yes, this was the pinnacle of operatic melodrama.

The very first time I played this solo was only a few months into my first season. The performance was a special gala event with none other than Luciano Pavarotti as Cavaradossi, who at this late stage in his life was so heavy and immobile that he had to be shot seated in front of a pile of sand sacks so that he wouldn’t have to fall to the floor (from which he would presumably not have been able to get up).

I had not yet learned to let go at this point. I got through the solo, even played it well, but knew that it had nothing to do with the larger-than-life drama of the music. The Tosca solo required an all-in, heart-wrenching devotion to Italian melodrama, a willingness to feel the highest of highs and the most devastating of depths. That could not be done while micromanaging every move I made.

I had learned to ‘control’ my playing as a child by holding my breath and tensing up. Most people do this to varying degrees without realizing it, but when you are trying to play an instrument that requires immense sensitivity, coordination, and small-muscle precision, holding your breath and tensing are generally not good policies.

What Happens When You Stop Bracing for Failure

I was literally bracing myself, waiting for something to go wrong. In my first experiments with a new way of playing, I found that I couldn’t let go. The fear was all-powerful, even alone in my practice room.

In the next phase of experimentation, I gave up on the physical tension and focused on the feeling that lived in the music. That was easier; I had been doing that since my emo days as a nerdy kid.

Then I combined the two: I imagined the ideal, emotional version of the music while breathing out, letting go, and allowing my hands and fingers to play without the control tower.

The difference between the imaginary version and the real one was profound at first, almost enough to send me spiraling again. But each time I played, I challenged my muscles to let go a little more and a little more still, to trust the inner arc of the music to carry me.

I allowed the inner vision of the music to grow into a paradise of warmth and emotional freedom. I decorated it with associations and images. When I got to the point of sufficiently releasing my muscular coat of armor, then I began to imagine the heightened adrenaline of playing to a full house in the crowded orchestra pit surrounded by other musicians. I saw the conductor right in front of me in his tuxedo and the black wall of the pit right behind him (yes, they were all men in the early 2000s in that opera house). As I felt my muscles tighten with the pressure to be perfect, I invited them to release again and called up my inner version of the music.

One of the challenges of the Tosca solo was that it went up very high, into the violin register; another was that the first cello should still have enough presence of mind to lead the other three cellists while playing. I had definitely not accomplished that degree of sovereign leadership the first time.

I went back to practicing surrender.

What Happens When You Let Go Completely

All or Nothing, Puccini Style

Then Tosca was scheduled again. It was a regular subscription performance without any intergalactic stars in the cast. We had our usual brief cello quartet rehearsal backstage before the performance. I felt stiff, tight, on edge. I was so used to pretending I had it all together that I didn’t let on I was struggling, even when it was clear from my playing that something was off. I missed the high notes of the solo again and again in front of my colleagues. Shame burned hot on my cheeks, but still I said nothing. I finished the rehearsal and went back to the women’s dressing room to hide until the performance began. I had no idea how I would get through it.

The solo was on page 51 of the score, and on page 49, I started focusing on breathing out and letting go. I recalled the feeling of trust in the music, which I could feel as a column of light entering the crown of my head and blossoming in my heart center. With each exhale, I let my shoulders drop a little further as I played. I felt my presence expand downwards to my root chakra and lift up high above my crown. And then my stand partner turned the page to reveal the four lines of cello parts, that page I had practiced and stared at and visualized for weeks. Cavaradossi sang the opening lines to the scene, unaccompanied.

Suddenly I could not feel my arms or hands. Everything went cold. This is not going to work, some voice in my head was saying. Abort mission, abort mission. Take over, don’t let go.

But there was another voice too, a calmer one. It said, ‘Either you really give this surrender thing a chance or you tense up again and choke the inner artist. All or nothing. No middle ground. Just like Puccini’s music. Just like Tosca, jumping from the castle tower.’

So I let go.

I was only able to do it because I had practiced being this scared and still doing it.

And then, miraculously, something else took over. It wasn’t me.

That Something led effortlessly, it hit all the high notes, it evoked the ecstasy of the whole love affair, it cried despair over the imminent execution.

But it wasn’t me.

I could never have played that way.

I’ve come to think of that Something as the Inner Artist, and I know we all have one.

Even if you don’t think of yourself as an artist, you have one hiding inside you. Creation is our essence; it is breath, it is movement. I use the same techniques of surrender now with coaches, artists, people negotiating grief or career change. The Inner Artist is always ready to take over when we let it.

I’ve learned that we have to be very gentle with the Inner Artist; it can’t be forced or coerced. It has its own agenda, which is always and forever:

Love.

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If you're curious to know more

What is the "inner artist"?

It's the part of you that takes over when you stop trying to control the outcome, not the conscious, effortful self, but a creative director that can lead a performance, a piece of work, or a moment of expression more completely than deliberate effort ever could. Everyone has one, whether or not they think of themselves as an artist, because creation itself is essential to being human.

Why does trying harder make performance anxiety worse?

Gripping tighter—holding your breath, tensing muscles, micromanaging every move—is how most people attempt to control high-stakes moments, and it produces exactly the opposite of what's needed. The physical bracing that feels like safety is what blocks the connection to instinct and expression that actually makes a performance work.

Is letting go of control something you're just born knowing how to do, or can it be learned?

It's a learnable skill, built through repeated, deliberate practice, not a fixed trait some people have and others don't. It requires practicing being frightened and continuing anyway, well before the moment that actually matters.

Why do I fear being "found out" as not good enough, even when others see me as skilled?

That fear can run completely independently of outside perception. Colleagues offering genuine praise can coexist with a private conviction, especially at 3 a.m., that exposure and failure are imminent. The gap between how you're perceived and how safe you feel internally doesn't close on its own; it takes deliberate work with the nervous system underneath it.

Does surrendering control mean giving up discipline or preparation?

No. Surrender comes after the technical work, not instead of it. Letting go only becomes available once the skill exists to be released; the practice of surrender is what allows years of preparation to actually reach an audience or a page, rather than staying locked behind tension.

Does this only apply to musicians and performers, or can it help with any creative or professional situation?

The same surrender skill applies anywhere a nervous system braces against a high-stakes moment: writing, a creative project, a business decision, a career change, grief. Live improvised cello and somatic guidance are how this work now helps people access that letting-go directly, rather than trying to think their way there. You can see how that looks in practice on the Work With Me page.