The Empowerment Blog
When the environment is really uncertain, we need more recovery time to resource ourselves so that we can then go back out.Â
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I have a border collie and she’s quite exceptional. There’s two kinds of border collies, one that just rounds up all the sheep but doesn’t really care how anxious the shee...
Community matters.
Relationship matters.
The collective matters.
Change on this level is golden.
Community changes & transforms giving us the gift of remembrance.
Remembering together we go deeper and feel our sense of purpose and belonging in the world.
These beautiful human beings lifted each up a...
It has been an absolute joy and privilege over the past 10 weeks to witness the courage, resilience and growth of these beautiful actors coming together from all over the world in person and online.
Mary Cait Kelly @marycaitkellyÂ
Suramira Vos
Avani Rai @avani.raiÂ
David Lynch @david.lynch__Â
Cinthya V...
The only way to the present moment is through the senses.
You can’t get into the present through thinking.
It’s not possible because then you’re thinking about what that is.
Coming into here and now is through the senses of what I see, what I hear, what I touch, what I taste, what I smell.
If you are f...
Actors, stop end-gaming your creative process!
A self take class is not going to teach you about acting. It will teach you how to self-tape.
Playwrights, script writers are going to teach you about acting.
Going to class is going to teach you about acting.
Reading the whole play, and the whole script is...
Actors, resting is really important!
You’re meant to be unemployed.
You’re meant to have periods of time when you’re not working, cause your job is different to everybody else’s.
Who wants all of us be working 365 days a year?
You are artists, you don’t need to do that.
You are using your whole body...
The most powerful way to regulate actors after they come off a film or after they come off a TV series or a being on stage is the natural world and to somehow build that relationship with the natural world in an experiential way.
So many of them have built the relationship by, you know, skydiving an...
Actors, what you’re being asked to do is be vulnerable and sensitive to the story while being put in circumstances that can be very intense, very clinical and very technical, while at the same time as you’re being asked to be the heart of the story, the heart of the experience.
And this can be very...
Courageous, empathetic, dangerous, surprising, moving, vibrant, dynamic and original are but a few of the words I would use to describe this ensemble of actors.
Catherine Dauphin @catdauphinÂ
James Lye @jae_lymesÂ
Maddi Lucas @maddilonglegzÂ
Annette Flynn @annetteflynnstoneÂ
Zoe Bleu Arquette @____zoe_b...
if you are in a state of fear or anxiety in relation to your environment, your eyes will become fixed, you’ll stop hearing stuff, you’ll come out of your body, and now you are in a state of freeze.
Your mind, the meaning channel will start to try to make sense:
“You’re like this because you’re actua...
Actors, you cannot cheat “embodiment”
You can understand it all you like and you can read all the books.
I’ve seen 21 year olds speak to me as if they are Eckhart Tolle in how they explain what it is to be human.
Are they embodied? Nope.
You cannot cheat “Embodiment”
This is why Artificial Intelligence...
Actors, You need to slow down to include the body.
You can go quite fast if you keep “thinking” and “imagining”, and then you get burnt out because you didn’t bring your body with you.
But you have to slow down to include the body.
I want to watch an actor who’s experiencing something, and I will be mo...
You all need to be at the centre and everything else goes around that however the entire career is built around the career being at the centre and then you disappear.
I promise you when you start to get used to putting yourself at the centre, the rest starts to actually come into a greater spiral o...
What a pleasure it has been to be with this wonderfully gifted group of international actors.
Iykechi McCoy @iykechimccoyÂ
Deirdre Dunlea @deirdredunleaÂ
Regina Schneider @reginaschneiderofficialÂ
Lucy Jones @alittleluce22Â
Aliyah Jamerson @soy.aaliyahÂ
Monika Miles @themonikamilesÂ
The beauty and generosi...
Guided Practice for when you are feeling overwhelmed
Rest & Digest
When feeling on edge or overwhelmed, resting and digesting, is a sign something is about to deeply shift and the system which has been used to other ways of doing might move into freeze out of fear of the unknown new experience. This ...
Actors, Your nervous systems are alert and alive to your environments, which is why your nervous systems pick up what's beneath what's being said.
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You sense in a way that other people don't, the vibrations of emotions sensations, a kind of psychic field in a way the implicit, the unconscious
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...If there’s no rest and digest, there’s no originality
Our autonomic nervous system has this Fight, Flight, Freeze, rest and digest. So if we’re constantly in doing mode, there is no rest and digest. So if there’s no rest and digest, there’s no process. If there’s no rest and digest, there’s no origin...
Actors, it’s all about relationships.
And your job is all about relationships and life is about relationships, that’s where intimacy lies.
Your job is intimacy in front of strangers. Intimacy with strangers. That’s what acting is. Public vulnerability.
Most people don’t want to be vulnerable or intimat...
You can do all the work you want on your own as an individual and you might feel really good alone.
But actually we’re designed to be in relationship, to interrelate and that itself is a practice.
And if we’re going to do that, we need people in our lives who we can evolve and grow and change with...
It’s the entire body that we believe.
It’s actually the nonverbal micro movements of the body that let me know this is an authentic expression of another human being, because I believe it in the small micro movements.
The tone and how you use your body, that’s where the authenticity lies.
You want to...