Abramovic method: How Lady Gaga deals with stress by separating rice from beans

Whelp, ARTPOP is now released, and various critics have banged various gongs about it (click here for a digest of critical reactions.) Since her single “Applause” came out Gaga has made it clear that she doesn’t care what critics think. Maybe she’s gotten to a zen place about critics because of a relaxation technique called the Abramovic method.

This summer (around the time when all the “Applause” stuff happened) she came to Marina Abramovic and asked to try her method because she thought she was losing her center. According to Vulture:

She doesn’t believe in doctors and therapists, so she reached out to an artist to help her.” They embarked on a four-day workshop, practicing a variety of exercises, each for four hours at a time. It was “really hardcore,” Abramovic says. “She integrates what I’ve taught her into her work now. Yesterday at the rave, she did the slow-motion walk with the breathing exercises.” But that’s not the most out-there thing they practiced, not by far.

Here’s what the Abramovic method entails:

1. Separating two pounds of rice and lentils for four hours. “It looks like a stupid thing full of repetition, but it has everything to do with self-control, with concentration, with state of mind. It’s to see if you can focus on one matter for a long period of time. It says everything about you — what is your patience level and so on.”

2. Drinking water slowly and consciously.

3. Walking with your eyes closed.

4. Sitting in nature and listening to the sound of water.

5. Hugging a tree and complaining to it for fifteen minutes.