Neurofeedback activates the brain so it's easy to get a vivid picture of the ideal performance. It's then easier to solidify the picture, to store it in the body so the performer can return to it later. Dunleavy returns to the mental imagery so her brain can tell her body how she wishes to perform. She'll be repeating the same part in her upcoming performance of "The Tales of Hoffmann" in Dallas, TX. This time, she says, will be different.
"I'm actually enjoying performing so much more," Dunleavy said. "I have a technique I can depend on for the role this time around. The challenges are the same but now, I can correct myself quickly and refocus. I know I can make myself centered and calm. And this calmness and joy is translated to the audience."
Tattenbaum uses a fourth tool called "Open Focus," originally developed in 1975 by Dr. Lester Fehmi, a psychologist and co-founder of the Biofeedback Society of America, which she adapts especially for singers. Open Focus is an attention-training technique that engages both hemispheres of the brain during a performance. Singers focus on the space within the body and expand their attention to what is going on around them while performing. This flexibility of attention makes it easier to synchronize the voice box, pelvic and diaphragm muscles needed to sing. "Open focus removes the distractions and creates a calmness that transcends the situation, the opera house and who's in the audience," Dunleavy said.
Tattenbaum's expertise in coaching makes up the fifth component of her program. After attaining her social work degree from Columbia University, Tattenbaum worked as an adviser and coach at Northern Telecom. Her performance work extends back to the 1970s when she started the Long Island Promenade Theater. This peak performance work is a melding of her expertise. "The coaching is about managing the noise inside the performer," Tattenbaum said. "It's not enough to sing beautiful notes. The mind is a critical component of singing that many people haven't focused on. To sing well, you must quiet the noise in your brain."
Quieting the noise might not sound like the intuitive answer to an opera singer. Yet while some voice teachers were initially skeptical of the idea before seeing it, they say Tattenbaum's ability to quiet the noise in the brain actually enhances the sound on stage. A big sound is critical-- opera singers must project their voices over a 1,500 to 3,000 person audience and 60-piece orchestra without amplification. "I've seen immediate changes to a deeper, more beautiful, more resonant sound," said Mitchell Piper, chairman of Voice and Theater at the Hart School of Music in Connecticut. "In golf, the second you take the club away from the ball, there's so many small things you can do to ruin the shot--" performers have a calm place in their psyche that's zoned into everything that must come together for success.
Tattenbaum's work diminishes anxiety so singers can be centered onstage." While a recent article in The New York Times focused on the end of the "big American voice," Tattenbaum works to synchronize the voice with other critical aspects of opera. "John Cheek, for example, has a really big voice that he owns and controls," Tattenbaum said. "My work helps him band together the voice with all the emotionality and inner aspects of the character."
A survey on biofeedback published by Grove Press in 2000 called A Symphony in the Brain by Jim Robbins, a science writer for The New York Times, featured Tattenbaum as the biofeedback practitioner specializing in opera singers. Biofeedback has been used extensively since the 1970s for disorders ranging from epilepsy to ADD, yet before the book, biofeedback was relatively unknown to the performance world. Biofeedback was known for mitigating disorders rather than enhancing talents.
Since then, Tattenbaum has expanded her practice, teaching others her techniques since she cannot work with more than 40 clients simultaneously. Universities have sought her out for workshops, from UCLA to Switzerland's Tonhalle Orchestra. Last December she became Chair of a section of the Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, a biofeedback association of over 2000 health care professionals.
Thomas Budzynski PhD, a psychologist in Washington and one of the association's founders in 1969, is editing the second edition of "An Introduction to Quantitative EEG and Neurofeedback." He decided the second edition must include peak performance, and chose Tattenbaum to co-author the chapter. "Peak performance, the idea of using neurofeedback to enhance normal brains rather than just treat disorders, is getting to be a much more important area of application, and Tattenbaum is the best known name in this area." Budzynski said. "She's also the only one so far who's specialized in using neurofeedback with opera singers."
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