exercise 1

I am sending a series of text exercises out to a list of people on e mail

I want to see what the results are for different people...

here is the first exercise...
let me know if you try it, what happens for you

Lie down
Feel breath and blood and gravity till you are really able to hold all three
(even if it means juggling somewhat- but as much simultaneously as you can)

then engage muscularly…

1) engage around the spine in some way
2) engage from the hands

1) If you are ab;e to maintain blood/breath/gravity and muscular skeletal awareness (even if it becomes more juggling than simultaneous) tell me what happens or what you feel… in general

2) when you engage around the spine, versus the hands
is it the same? different

3) if different- can you describe it?

4) what difficulties did you encounter?

-at the level of the primary action of holding breath, gravity and blood
- at the level of adding muscular awareness
-
5) what other things do you think may have influenced the results?

notes to an actor Mar 26th/2011

A student asked me some things she can do over the summer:

-yoga classes or walking in which you are actively work on awareness work without worrying about emotional connection (relates to the awareness work in the emotional connection work I teach)

- as you are reading plays and playing with possible monologues for Theatre Ontario, play with character bodies, animals you can research... in fact
go to some zoos and really study some animals that you feel could stretch your range/and or serve your hit

-play with gesture... get to know your own, copy your parents, go for walks or go to parties and watch gestures... give yourself a goal to come home with 10 gestures that you can copy

-do some emotional culture homework... how do your parents handle anger? tears? joy? get what they want?
what does this tell you about yourself? your brothers? Your more distant relatives? any mentors/guardians in your life? people you grew up emulating?

-watch movies intelligently- watch several movies with the same actor - what character body choices did they make? how much did they rely on costume? accent? text? time period? status? watch a movie MANY TIMES... stop it at certain moments, rewind and watch a section again and again

notes to a depressed actor Feb 23/2011

I would say write a lot of unfinished poems, draw some faceless self portraits
and maybe there is something deeper or different, rather than nothing there
maybe you don't want to finish it the way you used to... and don't know what's next...
that's GOOD! and hard...

take a step back and take some time in the studio (somewhere private) to
a) have fun
b) be truly alone and do whatever you need to do

out of the studio...
c) go walk in a cemetery... what is really important to do before you die... talk out loud to yourself, to some dead people...
Abe Lincoln did it... you'd be in good company
d) take yourself somewhere you have never been before (a Korean grocery store, a Chinese herb store, a Hindu temple... ask some good questions, put your foot in your mouth)
e) watch some really funny movies... stupid ones... Bill and Ted's big adventure, amazon women on the moon... something so bad it's good
f) read a biography of a great artist/scientist/activist who was persecuted and also got it wrong at times... Van Gogh is always a good one
but look for someone new for you

sounds like you are hitting that normal place as an artist that we all hit
over and over again... if you can get through it once
congrats... it will be back
bigger and badder every time
and the pay off?

a new you, a new form, a new adventure... moving forward, death of the old self, birth of the new
death is not easy
but it happens every year- go look at the trees now- in the cold... touch them...

healthy animal, physical/emotional connection Dec 13/2010

A short session after a long time of no work like this

gorgeous... just stretching and committing to staying in the physiological moment. I released so much pain and tension. Often always in virtually a yawn... long ones, imperceptible ones... but lots of release in my tongue and breath when I do this with
sounds like animals. It is so simple and yet takes real discipline to keep in the real physiological moment and move through as much of the body as I can feel. The pain and pleasure as guides as to what to follow, gravity is so easy to lose. I didn't feel much of blood today- mostly trying to stay balanced in gravity and muscular skeletal and pain release- going to just the beginning of sensation where there is pain and then breathing through until my right hip (I think gluteus minimus and medius -didn't want to get the anatomy book out today- not enough time and didn't want thought) which I was able to release- I should watch how long it stays released- it is so chronic- can't believe I have 'fixed it'. IF I were to do this regularly- as I will in April - June (can't wait !!!!!!!!!) it might really stay open... but it has been that way for years... but to know that if I chose I can go to sensation and breath/stretch it out...
why do I not do this every day - even for 10 minutes - that is the real mystery to solve!

I was taken as always to scriptural - not words exactly--- no thoughts... images? The seas of loving kindness moving within me... in this place- certain images in scripture are not abstract but 'mystical hard science'...

had music on (Sigur Ros/Album Leaf stuff like that) it helped me

also... really got how so much thought is just idle fancy and vain imagination... and being in the moment and waiting for deeper... again, not sure the word is thought- and image is not right either - and neither is it sensation

something soul ish - but that is hard to name

feels REAL and something I trust...

figures I was able to go to this place today as yesterday I collapsed in tears in a very good friends arms- a woman who I deeply respect and admire... in tears feeling my sadness at being not in the 'good pleasure of Baha'u'llah'

my body and my spiritual emotional blocks are completely linked and one. If one is blocked- so is the other... seems obvious and yet, why then do I keep moving forward when I am numb? why do I not stop and wake myself up?

Numbness, deep, old numbness is the hardest place to stay in this work- because there is so little to go on- so I often just skip it and I am sure there is so much I skip that I am not aware of- as I see my students skipping whole chunks of their body and having no idea that they are doing so and places I have some vague awareness where I manage to stay long enough to find the emotion first and then some sensation
like the tears awaken the nerves, which awaken the sensation in muscle... must study this... the body/neuro science of this...

Mar 14

Big session today
Standing with music to start… really was able to follow- with no warm up- the nerves- got out anatomy book…
Also could feel how out of shape the muscles were- could FEEL that fact- and how sluggish they are…
So clear

Then read Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, then Godfrey’s book on immunity, then Body Stories, then did more work… in hips… slow stretches and BIG deep breath- really feeling the tightness in my hips and how that affects my diaphragm

Tried to get over my prejudices about ‘cellular’ sensation and read more about that via BMC… which made me focus on blood in lungs and marriage of breath… to breath entering blood system- which I cannot feel!!! I can feel tons of sensation from breathing
And I can feel more and more detail in my blood system
But I cannot feel in a specific way air going into blood…

I can IMAGE this and use my imagination about this AS I feel breathing sensations and blood sensations… and marrying the two (something I have been working on for some time) does lead pretty fast to that tingly… oneness feeling of boundaries blurring between skin and air- and some of her language does address this directly- but that feeling still feels pretty global and non specific to me… and I am hesitant to name it… but her language does resonate with that feeling… but am I feeling my cells??? I have no idea!

HEALTHY ANIMAL- from notes to a student April 2010

-follow the path of the blood system... from one pulse you can feel to another

-capillaries feel very different than veins/arteries... so hands and blood feel very different from say- belly and blood...

-and remember ... juggling awareness... more manageable and realistic than real full simultaneous awareness that tends to feel more like... getting high or being intensely alive (if you are familiar with runners high- feels like that)

-Some of the folks in Italy (Pontedaro Grotowski center) say that it is impossible and yet i disagree- it is just really hard and takes many years of practice... and it doesn't last that long. I mention this because it is important to know that it is this hard- because if it is coming easy... likely you are missing pieces (I mean consistently easy and by conscious choice- we all have great performances where grace/awareness visits us!)

-the way i get there is by building specific pieces, one at a time INTO the scoring on my performance work, like picking up one ball, then another, then another... with the foundation specific and clear and the details all choreographed... both the external shape AND the things my mind is holding

-and I usually have one or two places where I am working this way for minutes at most- the rest is more normal acting stuff where I am scoring elements of the work into normal acting scoring

-and sometimes I have a blissful moment or two where i get more than I bargained for OUTSIDE those times where I am consciously trying to juggle way more than the normal joe...

-over the years I am getting better at holding this for longer and longer periods of time- but I am talking minutes versus seconds.. I would say that I can hold it consciously with an audience and memorized text etc... for maybe 3-5 minutes at best and it is REALLY HARD with text! really hard! and also hard with movement that is predominantly muscular (similiar challenge for actors with difficult text as for dancers with intense choreography)

-next show i am going for more! Cause when I am there (and I have done studies with other performers to prove this very thing) the audience feels it! and i want to see how far i can go with this stuff!! So build specifically and slowly with small and realistic objectives.