How to take care of yourself in these uncertain times?

“What would be your advice for an emerging songwriter-producer?
To never stop evolving and to always seek out the best environment and conditions for its development.”
Mariama, mentor of the season 1 of Slash program

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has brought its share of pro­found changes and uncer­tain­ties in the music sec­tor, espe­cially for musi­cians. Everything has been turned upside down between the post­poned release of albums, cre­ation dur­ing the lock­down, can­cel­la­tion of live shows, etc.

How to deal with stress and uncer­tainty dur­ing this peri­od? How to struc­ture your daily life to give your­self the means to feel good and to work under good conditions?

Before Cov­id-19, musi­cians were already not doing very well in terms of men­tal health.

This san­it­ary crisis does not help. It is, more than ever, import­ant to use tools to take care of your­self and to over­come this par­tic­u­lar peri­od, both pro­fes­sion­ally and personally.

HOW TO LIVE IN UNCERTAINTY?

There are 3 key con­cepts that you should keep in mind in dif­fi­cult times, such as this san­it­ary crisis:

• Being able to seek HELP (it can be ask­ing someone for help but it can also mean get­ting more inform­a­tion on some­thing, go and search the inform­a­tion to the roots).
• Let­ting down self-pres­sure and have FUN, make space for it — search for what is fun for you to do and give you time to do that.
• Build­ing a FRAMEWORK to struc­ture your daily life.

Here is a small exer­cise you can do: 
You can cre­ate a copy of the fol­low­ing table and fill it up with your object­ives regard­ing the key con­cepts above.

Table exer­cise — how to live in uncertainty

HOW TO FIGHT ANXIETY AND STRESS

When you’re on tour, before you go on stage, when you’re going through a peri­od of uncer­tainty, you’re anxious and stressed.

Take advant­age of this peri­od to set up and tame new relax­a­tion routines.

Sev­er­al tools are at your dis­pos­al for try­ing to cre­ate a daily routine, such as Yoga, breath­ing exer­cises or med­it­a­tion. Here are examples of videos that you can try:

• Yoga

Yoga with Adriene (slow, all-levels yoga) https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=yoga+with+adriene

• Med­it­a­tion 

• Breath­ing exer­cises to fight the stress
  

LET’S FOCUS ON A KEY ASPECT OF YOUR DAILY LIFE: NUTRITION

Food plays a fun­da­ment­al role in our per­son­al bal­ance. When you are a musi­cian, this bal­ance is put to the test:
How to eat on tour? How to take the time to eat when you have staggered sched­ules? What to eat before going on stage? How to eat health­ily without wast­ing time?

Here are 3 very easy recipes to make at home con­cocted by Ber­trand Lacroix on the advice of Sandrine Bileci.

- Flavored water: Ginger Mint Lemon -

Here is an ener­giz­ing mix­ture to be in good shape all day long. Also helps lim­it the effects of excess alco­hol or junk food by stim­u­lat­ing the liv­er. Used to make throat secre­tions more flu­id for sing­ers and wind instru­ment players.

Ingredi­ents:

• 1 piece of fresh organ­ic ginger
• 1 L of water
• ¹⁄₂ untreated lemon 
• A few mint leaves

Pre­par­a­tion:

1. Peel and cut the ginger into pieces.
2. Wash and cut the lem­on into slices.
3. Put the pieces of ginger and lem­on in a carafe, add the washed mint leaves and cov­er with water.
4. Leave to infuse overnight in the refrigerator.

To taste cool & fresh!

- Golden mix — 

Very ener­giz­ing, warm­ing, this mix­ture stim­u­lates liv­er and digestion!

Ingredi­ents:

• 45 g of fresh organ­ic turmeric
• 45 g of fresh organ­ic ginger
• ¹⁄₂ tea­spoon of cinnamon
• ¹⁄₂ tea­spoon of ground fenugreek
• ¹⁄₂ tea­spoon of black or pink pepper
• 1 pinch of powdered green cardamom
• 1 pinch of powdered star anise
• 1 pinch of nutmeg

Pre­par­a­tion:

1. Roughly chop the tur­mer­ic and ginger (no need to peel them).
2. In a small blender, col­lect all the ingredi­ents and add 50mL of water.
3. Mix until the dough is as smooth as possible.
4. Here lightly returned in an oil, prefer­ably rich in omega3, in order to make a Dahl with cor­al len­tils, this paste is more gen­er­ally used with a veget­able milk, the fam­ous milk of gold!
5. To do this, heat 300 mL of fatty veget­able milk (almond or coconut) with 1 tea­spoon of golden mix and a little maple syr­up or unre­fined sug­ar accord­ing to your taste.
6. Store the rest in a glass jar for 20 days in the refrigerator.

- Energy Balls -

THE anti-stress snack, rich in mag­nesi­um, iron, cal­ci­um and omega 3. Con­veni­ent, deli­cious and satiating!

Ingredi­ents:

• 150 g of a mix­ture of oleagin­ous seeds (wal­nuts, almonds, cashews, pista­chios, hazel­nuts, Brazil nuts, coconut, pump­kin seeds, flax seeds…).
• 30 g of chocol­ate with at least 75% cocoa.
• 30 g of pit­ted dried prunes or dates.
• 1 tea­spoon of coconut oil.
• And for the coat­ing: 1 table­spoon of chia seed, golden ses­ame seeds and grated coconut.

Pre­par­a­tion:

1. First, using a small blender, chop the seed mixture.
2. Then, add the coconut oil, chocol­ate and the prunes to finish.
3. Using the palms of your hands, form balls about one table­spoon capa­city of dough.
4. If you find the mix­ture too sticky, add seeds. If the mix­ture does­n’t hold, add a prune or two.
5. Roll these energy balls in one of the 3 top­pings for a nice coating.
6. You can keep them for 3 days in the refri­ger­at­or… if they are not eaten in the fol­low­ing minutes!