# Your Tribe Is Watching – and that’s actually a good thing

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[![Fluting in the Stephanus Chapel, Your Tribe Is Watching](https://nandinmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Fluting-in-the-Stephanus-Chapel-683x1024.jpg)](https://youtu.be/BSliuNhCE7s)

# Your Tribe Is Watching –   
and that’s actually a good thing.

## Your Tribe.

Last week we held our student recital in a beautiful little Chapel in the forest. Before anyone played a note, I gave everyone the same piece of advice: if something goes wrong, that’s not a mistake — that’s live music. Your only job is to recover.

And they did. One student improvised a new phrase on the spot. Another slipped in an extra note and kept going. A third did a quick retake as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I was genuinely impressed.

We’d prepared for this — recording videos, playing for family members, running through pieces until they felt solid. But the unexpected has a way of showing up anyway. What matters is what you do next.

## When the fear wins.

One student, however, didn’t play at all.

She’d performed at the last recital and done beautifully. But this time, they arrived a little late. The only seats left were at the front — right under everyone’s gaze. That small thing tipped the balance.

I kept the mood light (our recitals are wonderfully informal), but she couldn’t bring herself to perform. Afterwards, over food and drinks, we had a quiet chat. I told her what I tell everyone: the way through performance nerves is _more_ performing — in front of a supportive audience who will applaud you simply for showing up.

## My first night as a street musician.

At first, I was too nervous to eat before going out to play in the streets of Rome.

The first outdoor restaurant took real courage. But by the end of that evening, the fear was gone. Nothing terrible had happened. People had listened. Some had even given me money. I had looked the situation in the eye and realized — it wasn’t dangerous. It just felt that way.

That distinction is everything.

## Meet your amygdala.

When I dug into the science of performance nerves, one thing kept coming up: the amygdala.

It’s the part of the brain that protects you from danger — ancient, fast, and not particularly sophisticated. It’s sometimes called the reptile brain, and for good reason. It doesn’t weigh pros and cons. It simply asks: _could this hurt me?_ And if the answer might be yes, it slams on the brakes.

Here’s the thing. Back when we lived in tribes, social rejection was genuinely life-threatening. Your tribe was your survival. Being cast out meant being alone in a dangerous world. That’s the fear that fires when you step onto a stage: _what if I fail? What if they reject me?_

Your amygdala can’t tell the difference between a recital and a threat to your existence. It treats them as the same.

## Retraining the alarm.

The good news: the amygdala can be retrained.

Meditation helps enormously here. When you’ve practiced staying with difficult feelings, you learn to observe them rather than be swept away by them. That tightness in your chest. The butterflies. The sweaty palms. When you simply _feel_ the feeling — without fighting it or running from it — you often discover it’s not as overwhelming as your brain made it seem.

And then something interesting happens. You notice that the feeling isn’t entirely unpleasant. It’s almost… exciting.

Fear and excitement are closely related — physiologically, they’re nearly identical. The difference is the story we tell about them. Reframe the nervousness as energy, as aliveness, as readiness — and suddenly you’re not fighting your body. You’re working with it.

My guitarist and I used to notice this while busking in Rome: we always made _more_ money when something went wrong. A mistake forced us to be fully present, to find our way back to each other in real time. The audience felt that electricity. It was better than playing it safe.

## A practice for you.

If you’d like to experience this shift for yourself, I’ve recorded a guided meditation to help you find the stillness beneath your feelings:

👉 [Drop Through — a guided meditation](https://mailchi.mp/nandinmusic.com/drop-through)

This is just one of many tools I’ve gathered over the years for working with performance nerves. I’ll be sharing more of them in my **Meditative Music Making** course, starting this autumn. More details coming soon.

Until then — keep on playing !

[View](https://mailchi.mp/nandinmusic.com/drop-through)

[![Having been fluting in the Stephanus Chapel](https://nandinmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/After-Fluting-in-the-Stephanus-Chapel-1024x692.jpeg)](https://youtu.be/BSliuNhCE7s)

Musical Greetings!  
– Nandin

P.S. See and enjoy also my [other blogs](https://nandinmusic.com/blog/)

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