Sunday, February 28, 2010

The Art of Power Yoga and Acting

So as a theatre major at my school, I'm required to take Power Yoga as one of my courses. We won't be taking any movement classes until our sophomore year, so Power Yoga serves as a kind of introduction to the kinds of things that we might be doing next semester. Having been in the class for about two months now, I have seen multiple parallels between what I'm doing in acting class, and what I'm doing in Power Yoga.

The very first day of class, our yoga instructor told us that to pass the course it was not necessary to be able to fold and twist perfectly into all kinds of odd shapes and forms. Instead, there were only two things required to do well: breathe, and stay in the present moment. I cannot say how many times I have heard these two directions throughout my theatre training.

I remember sitting in chorus class in elementary school, and having my teacher tell us that when we breathe in, our stomachs should go in, and when we breathe out, our stomachs should go out. For many years, I had gotten it into my head that this was true. It wasn't until my first year in a high school drama class that I learned about the diaphragm. After many years of breathing with my diaphragm, it has become second-nature. It's just how I breathe now. Many people call this "deep breathing", or taking in air with the diaphragm so that the stomach expands and the chest does not rise, and then exhaling so that the stomach returns to its initial state.

This kind of breathing allows for much deeper relaxation, and it helps immensely when performing on the stage. It is very easy to run out of breath in the middle of a show when your adrenaline is going through the roof and the lights are causing you to sweat and hundreds of strangers are staring at you. Without noticing, you'll realize that your breath has become short and choppy, or "shallow". This isn't because you are necessarily nervous or anything like that, but simply because the tasks that an actor is expected to undertake sometimes require a much more controlled and efficient method of breathing. These yoga classes force me to pay attention and "listen" to my breathing, so that diaphragmatic breathing is becoming more and more of an involuntary thing.

Now about the whole staying in the present moment thing. I just got out of rehearsal with my scene partner a few hours ago, and one of the things that came up at one point was a certain disconnect between us at specific points in the scene. It is so easy to let your mind wander during a scene and just recite your lines without thinking about it. It can happen for a number of reasons. Maybe a cellphone went off in the audience, or maybe my eye just caught my mother sitting in the audience, or maybe I'm worried about an upcoming event in the scene, or maybe my scene partner did something that they have never done before. Whatever the reason, it is never a good thing. As I act more and more, getting distracted is becoming less and less of a problem. But still, the importance of living in the present moment cannot be underestimated.

In yoga class, the moment you look around the room to see how well you are bending or balancing or twisting compared to the other students, is the moment you fall on your ass. I have come to learn that I should never judge myself in that class. Nothing good will ever come out of it. There will always be somebody more flexible than me, and there will always be somebody less flexible than me. In the end, it does not matter. The only way to succeed, is to focus on what you are doing at that exact moment.

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