Healthy Animal May 10/11 notes

A good day in the studio
So hard to get started…
Trying to find rigour while being gentle and tender with myself and really listening to my body

I managed two sessions… one about 1.5 hrs and another about 1:15
No singing yet today, sounding though and more integrated that before… still a million miles to go on that front

Longest yet in one day
But really able to stay with the listening
I also find I can get back in (today anyway) really easily after a distraction
(running out of power on ipod or bathroom break…)

there were people next door that I could hear so I decided to work with the ipod on
then the battery started to die so I put the music on quietly

music:
first session Sigur Ros (can’t use things with text)
second ‘creature’ playlist… text mostly compatible

once I was in the work I was finding less explosive nervous system twitching- not sure why
maybe cause I am going so slowly
breath is VERY deep… it has to be
it all feels like WORK… although comes naturally
there are many moments of pain- but feels like good massage pain
and always has lots of breath, relaxed face or HUNGRY face
lots of mouth open, stretching
feels like I am really in the yawning work
fully, like never before
again- it does feel like if I were to keep doing this it would lead to a very healthy body
just really slow- as I am so out of shape- BUT feels… deep and permanent
and healing/healthy- we shall just have to be patient and see, this is not the quick fix route!
It is hard work
after the first session I laid in Cranial Sacral still point pose… with balls and legs elevated and prayed… this was perfect… and I must remember how animals stop and really rest and what I see in my students- that they MUST stop and really have moments with gravity or it gets pushed, dead ends, etc… what does it get exactly? Good question

WATCH STUDENTS WHEN THEY DO NOT DROP INTO GRAVITY

I know that when they do have a good relationship with gravity- it goes deeper, stays real and affects the observer more
And more range of emotion… I can still feel how gravity is tough for me… skin ok, breath, yes, muscular skeletal yes, blood- varies… when I do feel it – it can be very intense- almost too much (heart especially) capillaries in upper body fairly accessible

So much tension in my body- what I am feeling feels accurate and real- like I am really in me- so not always easy… at times I can feel the knowledge in my body from the movement history… other times I feel my present dead body zone- both hard
Former feels lost and long away and never fully recoverable with this new healthier perspective, the other feels so real and insurmountable… but these are just my ‘mind ‘reflecting/responding to the felt sense
really inside this place when I do not look at myself externally with minds eye or real eyes
I feel like an animal- alive, healthy, even beautiful-
It is disorienting to come back to my view of myself… which is ‘old, fat, ugly’
Because internally it does not feel that way
Although I can feel the fat- it feels like – too many sweaters on my body that get in the way…
Hard to not get goal oriented… less of it today though
Not sure if this is good or bad- but trying to stay in the moment with the felt sense

Questions from today:

How does breathing really affect adrenaline- the details – I know it slows production of- but how?

back in studio April s 2011 notes

What I am doing

Start by listening… just breath and blood and whatever else
No ‘exercises’ unless body/animal wants them

I find not so much pain
As blocks

Then yawn and stretch takes me through them
Then I hit back of neck big time
Some pain, mostly heat and block feeling and power center feeling

Today got very feral very fast… distractions:

When I realize I have to pee… the animal just wants to pee right then and there
But have to get up and go to bathroom… nuisance
(do I set up a potty?) NO
I want to have to be human and maintain what I can on the way to the bathroom

I can hold a lot of thought while in it
I can have music but cannot change a lot- keep on repeat
Feel like I land in my own asanas.. places that feel like healing stretches and they are organically full of breath… rich and satisfying

Other distraction

This-
Wanting to write about it as I am doing it… not wanting to lose the info/process/discoveries

This feels so right… and scriptural Writings come, they just pour in…
In the animal place… 'realm of being' somehow so close… and yet so feral…

It seems inevitable that this work would make me fit in an animal way… but it will be so slow as I am so out of shape but hopefully
Real and long lasting- time will tell

As I walk to bathroom I notice already my posture has shifted- wide open chest (rare for me)
And I cannot quite figure out how to walk… like something has shifted my weight, my pelvis so I can’t walk in the old way…

So hard for me to keep gravity awareness in head/neck/eyes

Still getting explosive left head turn
Sometimes I follow and sometimes I release
With breath
Not sure which way to go
Can take the impulse and follow it, tends to go same physical pattern every time and end up dropped over extended legs

Not feeling exhausting but now that I am done I do feel throbbing in back of neck
And heat

Wish I could find out about this…
Cranial sacral people?
Alexander?

Feel length in my arms as when Kate/Jessica worked with Jennifer Scanlon

Feel arch (god one) on back a la Denise Clarke

‘sense of a tail’, that opens my chest that I have felt before

feel like I can get back to a certain awareness much faster than I expected or in the past
and can come and go in and out more easily

notes to an actor Feb 21/2011

I break things down- in fact all of your classes do- in order to deepen, practice, understand

but dissection is not life... like is integration and full of it all

so allow your practice to be at times dissected and at times FULL
and full can feel very different... and when you are no longer training in the same way
or when you get older and have more experience in the WHOLE of the DOING of theatre
it will be easier to break it down from time to time to deepen, analyze, uncover a problem, understand

but we have to break it down... dissect it at times
even though
dissected things are typically...
dead!

and necessarily so-

or have no chemistry yet
(the cake before you mix it all together and it gets messy and bubbly...)


life
is full of throbbing, interrelated everything

and you cannot often see the detail/feel the detail within it
as you are experiencing it as a whole

as an artist you are often moving back and forth between these two worlds and sometimes it isn't even clear... which is which!

they are both part of the WORK!

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...

not pushing

I managed to find an hour in the studio and I was able to really move from a deep visceral place. I was also able to see how much I push from the muscular system. It is an old habit that is hard to break. I wrote some notes to another faculty member about an older- very mature actor, who is afraid of confronting old patterns, and what I wrote could easily be a prescription for myself. I want to make real change, but i can see how deep the old patterns are. It takes a great deal of vigilance to begin from a new place. I also realized, however, the advantage of age... there are less big bogs of emotional muck to get through as I feel my internal viscera... i do not seem to run in to as much cathartic emotional release (unless that is because I am working so rarely- but I don;t think so.) It feels like when i manage to work authentically and follow the real 'guts' of my impulses they lead me to:

-releasing physical pain and stiffness (although I have to be careful not to head for pain, but sit just before sensation and feel through the blood/breath etc... inside the muscles etc)... the healing aspect of the work

-a real desire to move towards 'God' and all that that means... no good words for this... 'the realm of being' versus 'heedlessness' (BUT I have to be careful here to sit in 'powerlessness' as this can lead to an INTENSE desire to ACT- which is GREAT!!! but I can then get hooked into superficial responses to this that still feel old... so I must be patient and go deeper... but this is SO useful and can spur me on to great things... IF I can maintain faith and purpose... that is the tough part... the follow through

- the simple pleasure of oneness ... where the two things above come together...

I very much look forward to daily practice- which will not start again until end of April... tomorrow I will check out a studio space on Toronto Island where I hope to work for 6 weeks almost daily and I cannot wait!!!

MAr 5

Had a 25 minute session
Began on floor- under blanket- music on

Started really easily into the work… continuously finding that I was hungry to engage muscles- but as typical for me- not balanced with releasing into gravity
So kept moving back and forth- gravity… muscles… blood… gravity

TONS of pleasure… all round

Almost hit ecstasy immediately … sang occasionally- very aware of typical tension in back of neck… slowly was able to release some of it- singing improved…
Awareness of prayer- but only vaguely
Then checked time and saw I had more than I thought
- collapsed- more full release into gravity
- (lying with head/chest on coach, knees on floor- good position for me
really released, sank into right hip… lots of pain… but tolerable
stayed there and decided to try and move it…
felt that slightly nautious feeling that tells me lots of nervous system/emotion/history
simply started there in muscular engagement and tried to move it with nervous system (or whatever I mean by that!) up and out towards my hands… lots of tension
but moving/stretching tension… released into gravity- did this several times and then end with HUGE scream… new sounds for me and then released into BIG breath, holy spirit stuff and release and submission…

felt right, felt healing- not much emotion at all… mostly physiological- even the scream- which certainly had a call the police energy!

Must now remember to watch the hip

I did not have typical shaking after this… (good sign? Bad sign?) I think good sign- as I think I really released more fully than when I shake and I used gravity and breath well to ground the energy…

I now feel so much better and as usual wonder… why I don’t do this every day

I feel alert, ‘cleared’, happy…
And this really only took 20 minutes

Jan 29th private work

Jan 29th- did 25 mins

So lovely… lots of stuff in my left hip… found a glorious moment with arms pinned- found real length and opening in my chest (the way kate can lengthen those arms I think)
In this I found some real tension in my wrists and forearms that I hung out with and was so rich

The gems images I am using in class I think is accurate- that those tense places- those places of pain hold info- hold truth… so hanging in them

I was trying to examine the idea of flowing thru impulses versus staying with them- wondering how that relates to Denise’s idea ‘don’t choreograph’- hanging out there does feel different but if one keeps moving it also feels like the healthy animal does not feel fully heard- that somehow IN the listening… you have to stop and BE in those moments

So rich… I really can’t wait to spend more time with this… it does feel like what I want versus ‘classes’ and yet I am not sure about that- if that is just inertia… but perhaps the thing to do is to do this- which I DO feel hunger for and then see if desire for classes (even at home- on video or what ever) become something I hunger for…