On Action – Checking in with your body and letting go

Check in with your body.

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We live too much up in our heads. So check in with your body every once in a while. Here’s (one way) how:

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When it comes to breathing exercises, every acting studio ever will (supposedly) start you out on the floor. Why? Because you don’t have to do shit when you’re on the floor, except be there. And stay awake, of course.

I recommend a beautiful hardwood floor, and white walls and ceiling to help w/the imaginative process, but it’s not really that important. Any floor will do.

Now, normally when we breathe, we breathe w/our chests, simply because it’s immediately available. Chest breath is easy to draw. But it’s shallow. That’s why you always hear that spiel (from choir directors, band teachers, etc) about breathing from the diaphragm, from the belly. You should really be able to feel your belly expand when you breathe in.

And it’s true – breathing from the diaphragm is immensely more powerful, and just plain better for you. And guess what? Babies do it naturally. (And a lot of the time they’re a lot wiser than us older people)

But to get back on track: You’re on the floor, supine (that’s back to the floor, facing upwards towards the ceiling). Now, what you’re trying to do is,

Surrender to the floor.



That’s right, surrender. Give up on trying to control everything, on trying to control your body. Release your tension. Let go.

And first, just pay attention. Try to locate spots of tension, where you feel tight and tense and anally controlling. Feel your breath moving in and through and out of your body.

Each breath that you draw from the room – that breath is yours. You own it.

Think about that.

Each breath really belongs to you. So give it a personality, in your mind. Imagine your breath as having character to it. Give it a color if you want. Do whatever you need to do accomplish this.

As you feel each breath traveling through your body, imagine it cleansing you of tension. Imagine this very specifically. Breathing from your diaphragm, feel and imagine it rising up to fill your chest cavity, all the way up to your shoulders and beyond.

As you slowly exhale, feel your breath course through each part of you body. Feel it run through individual muscles. Feel it run through your right bicep, down your right forearm, all the way to your fingertips in your right hand, and beyond. Feel it do the same for the left side of your body.

Feel it flow through your lower body. If you truly breathe from your diaphragm, you should be able to feel it in your pelvic floor. You can actually feel it in your crotch. Feel it caress your hip sockets as it passes through, softening the very bones it touches. Feel it run through your quads, your calves, your ankles, all the way to your feet. And beyond.

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Do you see what I’m getting at? There are so many directions you can go with this, but the important thing is to find what works for you.

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Imagine it freely. Experience it exquisitely.



Check in with your body.

Let go.



-David

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On Action – Intro (Part II Hold a baby)

Hold a baby.

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My brother is 14 years younger than me.

The first time I babysat him alone, when he was just a few years old, he cried for hours.

There was nothing I could do to console him, so I just held him against my chest.

He was so close, I could feel him cry, could feel his body writhe up and down against my chest as he sobbed, and if I held him away from my body for a little, I could see the ugly contortions of his face.

When I say to “hold a baby,” I don’t mean take your favorite toddler niece into your arms, sigh at how cute she is, then hand her off to the nearest adult.

The thing about actions – there can be so much more to them, below the surface.

When Daniel Day-Lewis wields a blade in Gangs of New York, he’s not acting. It’s real.



He took lessons as an apprentice butcher. He dressed as a butcher would, and refused to wear warmer clothing or take medicine after being diagnosed with pneumonia during filming. I imagine he let himself and pushed himself to become a butcher for months and months before they started filming. By the time we get to see him hold a knife on screen, he’s holding it not as an actor, but as Bill the Butcher in the 1800s. He’s considered every possible circumstance in order to understand why he’s holding that knife.

When I say to “hold a baby,” I’m asking you to do the same.

Look at the baby, not as if it were a cute “thing,” but as if he or she were a human. As if he or she could one day be the future President of the United States of America.

In my mind, when I see young children, when I hold a baby – that’s the kind of thought that runs through my mind.

There is no single human being, dead or alive, that inspires me more than my six-year-old brother.

Because he represents the future, and to me that is greater than anything that exists now, or that ever existed before.

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I am a very ambitious person. To the point of lunacy, even.

Sometimes, when I look at my current situation – I have no money, no credentials, no real set path to follow that will lead me to success – I briefly remember that all my visions for my future are in my head, and my head only.

All I have are my hopes and my ideas. And a few cloudy notions of how I can put them into action.

And yet I intend to do extraordinary things with my life. Revolutionary things.

There's a good chance I "fail." But even if all of my deepest hopes and desires, and a lifetime of sweat and guts and pure unrelenting work – even if all that comes to bear fruit, they will never compare with the hopes, and promise, and possibility of future generations.



I hope with all my heart that my brother surpasses me in every possible way.

And that future generations surpass him.

There’s an eternal comfort I take in knowing how truly small I am in the scheme of things. In knowing that one day not too far from now I’ll clear out to make way for the new – that I’ll pass on the torch.

“I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”



-George Bernard Shaw



We hold the splendid torch for only a moment, and no matter what we do with it – whether we sweat or bleed or even die for it, or whether we sit back, relax, and take it for granted – we still hand it off in the end.

All this reminds me that any failure is temporary, as is any success. In the end, the world moves on.

So don’t impart any sort of cosmic significance to your situation, no matter how dire it is (or how fabulous).

Remember that no matter how much pain you face, you can and must endure, and having endured, you will one day pass the torch on to the young.

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When my brother finally ceased crying that night – ceased from pure exhaustion – I experienced a momentous calm in the room.

I was changed.

Changed in the subtlest of ways, so subtle that there was no way I ever could have articulated it back then, years ago.

But this powerful memory stuck with me until this day, and it helped me to appreciate the gravity and the beauty and the sacred promise of the young, and to put things into perspective in light of that appreciation.

Hold a baby, and approach the task as if every moment in history has culminated to lead up to the action you are about to take.

Let it change you.

-David

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On Action – Intro (Part I)

At the heart of our social venture is the belief that action is the key to overcoming depression.

I love words and the incredible transformative power they hold, but in my heart I truly appreciate that no words I can put down on paper or say out loud will ever match the right action, taken at the right time, with the right intentions behind it.

At risk of sounding like a broken record, I’m going to repeat Leonard Schlesinger’s prescient words:



You can act your way into new ways of thinking.

Just to be clear, we do not at all condone the sort of condescension that says, “Get up off the couch, you bum.” No, that is not at all what we advocate. In fact, being that sort of a disciplinarian to yourself often backfires, though it may work for some people.

But before you can take meaningful action, you must believe in yourself.

This belief can be flimsy and tenuous and utterly pathetic, but it must be there, at least to some degree. Otherwise you’ll just be moving muscles, and expending ATP (energy). You’ll just be going through meaningless motions.

But so long as this spark of belief exists, you must begin to take concrete action to uplift yourself.

And you must take this action with the right thought and intention behind it.

It is thought and preparation and intention that lend action its power.

If done with the proper mindset, your action should help you believe in yourself, and that should inspire further action, and stronger belief, and so on, in a powerful positive feedback loop.

It doesn’t matter if the action you took “failed” or didn’t achieve the exact desired effect. As long as you took action with the right mindset, and having put in significant thought and preparation and intention, it will move you forward.

With all of this in mind, I’ve decided to start a series of posts on Action, of which this is the introductory post, where I will give you ideas for concrete actions you can take to overcome depression, and more broadly to change yourself .

This will be perhaps the most important category of this blog, at least from the perspective of taking action to overcome depression.

Some of my ideas may sound ridiculous. Know that they are just that – ideas.

Whether or not you try them is up to you. Whether or not they work is also up to you.

Whether or not you can overcome depression, or whatever other difficulties you may face in the course of your life, is ultimately up to you.



Ideas hold powerful potential, but they are useless unless someone uses them – puts them into action.



Just keep in mind that even if a particular idea sounds stupid or doesn’t work for you, that’s perfectly okay. Don’t get discouraged.

But it’s crucial that you keep an open mind and be willing to try things out, because you never know what might work. Keep on trying, and keep on keeping on. And if something doesn’t achieve its desired effect, I guarantee you’ll still learn from it if you pay attention.

I wish you all the best as you take action to overcome the important challenges that face you, and come out stronger and better for it.

Read the continuation post for my first idea. It will be an unusual one – it comes from a memory of an important experience of mine.

-David

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