An Actor Prepares and Yoga

An Actor Prepares and Yoga

I am reading a book called, An Actor Prepares by a man named Constantin Stanislavski. It is a book I am told is fairly well known in the acting field as a seminal text from one of the major approaches to acting. One of the things that interest me about this work is that the process that this man is presenting is really not different than what a yoga practice is. Some people who know me think I have a loose grip on reality and interpret everything in relation to yoga. :) Perhaps this is true but An Actor Prepares presents a well organized approach to getting inside and having a connection to an underlying experience of a kind of consciousness that, in our ordinary lives we might not have access to.

The techniques might be different but the goals and results are related.

My experience as a musician and my experiences as a professional in-line skater tell me that artistic expression can lead to deep experiences of self at a “higher” level of consciousness where your conscious mind has bridged a gap from the conscious to things underneath, behind or perhaps above consciousness; what Stanislavski refers to in An Actor Prepares as the “subconscious”.

In the Yoga Sutras a distinction is made between the STATE OF YOGA and the process of trying to achieve that state. The process of trying to achieve the state could be referred to as PRACTICE. The Yoga Sutras defines the state of Yoga as a completely clear, fully focused, fully absorbed state of being: a state where there are no unnecessary fluctuations or activities of the mind (YS 1.2). The Sutras defines practice in terms of qualities. It says that the action or process of bringing oneself towards the state of Yoga is made up of three mental frameworks (YS 2.1):

(1) The discipline to engage in this process consistently over time; this process may cause a certain amount of inspiration, mental fervor, heat, and certain moments of lucidity, awareness and realization or ah ha moments as I like to call them.
(2) Self-observation and self-awareness during this disciplined process. And
(3) The understanding that there are things that are beyond your control, and so an attitude of openness and availability to that which is currently occurring, and a sense of humility when faced with the enormity of what is occurring right now: this inexpressible, ultimate reality.

The techniques that are mentioned in the Yoga Sutras, and there are many, are really a small sampling. The scope and breadth of what could possibly be used as a technique for the purpose of practice is hinted at in Sutra 1.39: yatah bimadat dhyanadva: any inquiry that captives the interest of the practitioner could, potentially, be used for the purpose of achieving the state of Yoga.

The techniques are not something to get stuck on. They are tools to help you achieve the state of Yoga. This is a key factor that is worth understanding. It is not the tools and techniques themselves that are important, it is whether they are useful for YOU; whether they help you move towards or into this state of Yoga, even if only for a brief amount of time. If the techniques work for you, then you use them. If the techniques do not work for you, then they are not currently the right techniques for your purposes. Interestingly, the techniques that work at one point in your practice may, at a future time, no longer produce results. Similarly, techniques that did not work at some point in the past might somehow be more useful and produce the desired results today. Just like with practice in general, which is at least in part, about helping you be free so you don’t get stuck in ruts, one should not get too attached to specific techniques. As you change the affects of a technique on your system might change and become more or less effective or useful.

In An Actor Prepares, Stanislavski describes three elements that are essential to the actor performing a role in a dramatic work:
(1) Inner Grasp.
(2) The Through Line of Action.
(3) The Super-Objective.
Inner Grasp is the internal understanding of the particular role or character and how that character fits into the work being performed as a whole. So the character’s motives and internal machinations are what are at play here.

The Through Line of Action is a concept to help the actor to understand ways of getting his or her actions and motives to move with the whole work of art towards the ultimate goal of the dramatic piece. Stanislavski refers to this ultimate goal of the dramatic piece as the super-objective.

Part of the objective of this acting system is to set the ground for a creative state that is organic and in some sense actual, where the actor is not pretending to feel emotions or presenting a cartoon-like external impression of the emotions his/her character is supposed to feel. Pretending to present emotions without feeling them is characterized as creating habits an actor would do well not to cultivate and this tendency leads the actor to bring his/her attention off the stage into the audience which Stanislavski is trying to help the acting student to avoid. When the actor can keep his attention fully on the action on the stage and on the character’s intentions and the action of the other characters, the actor may actually fall completely into the role in such a way where he/she really believes his/her own acts as having a reality, that the actor falls into living his/her part, and feels the actual emotions, and so in a sense is not acting but taking on the role. The actor becomes one with the role and the action of the performed piece.

The techniques presented are explained as tools to help create this state, which, in An Actor Prepares, is referred to as the “subconscious” state where the creative impulse is, in a sense unleashed; where the actor does not, for the time that this state lasts, realize that there is any difference or distance between the actor’s life and the life of the character he/she is playing; where the actor has merged with the part.

The techniques are obviously easy to correspond to the techniques used in a yoga practice. In fact many of them are extremely similar in how they get the actors focused on what they are doing by using the interests of the actor to get them to go deeper into the work and achieve a sustained, focused state. Even many of the body practices described in An Actor Prepares are described with the same terms that Patanjali uses in the Yoga Sutras to describe the way to perform the postures. There is a whole chapter on creating relaxed, effortless, organic postures where there is no unnecessary tension in the actor’s movements, gestures, actions or postural positioning. This is exactly how the Yoga Sutras defines asana (YS 2.46, YS 2.47 also see my post titled Sthira Sukham Asana: The Postures Should Be Strong and Soft).

Inner Grasp would be comparable to a yoga practitioner understanding the inner depth of the particular poses or techniques being used, and useful motivating forces to help him/her achieve the benefits of the individual postures or breathing techniques in a way that was useful for him/her and also how the postures or other kinds of techniques can be fit together to create different results, in a sense an organizing principle for the practitioner to help him get into the role of practicing and to mentally bring his/her focused attention into each of different aspects of practice (postures, breathing exercises, visualization techniques and meditative techniques) fully and organically. Although alignment techniques in asana practice can be extremely useful, mechanical performance of the details of alignment for a pose is not a substitute for really, organically feeling your way inside the pose for yourself.

The Through Line of Action would be like the direction of action and attention that would be created by the goals and intentions of the practitioner. These goals and intentions motivate the practitioner throughout all of the techniques used in a cohesive practice and would create a connection between a particular practice and the development of practice in general over a long period of time, as those goals and intentions grow and become more refined. It would be what keeps a practitioner going from beginning to end in the practice and over time, keep the practitioner coming back with a consistent direction. So just like The Through Line of Action and the Super-Objective in Stanislavski’s presentation, the direction of action a practitioner takes cannot be fully discussed without reference to the practitioner’s overall goals.

What is being referred to as the Super-Objective is like the overall goal of the yoga practitioner, that the practitioner is always moving towards which is the organizing principle of all the other, smaller motives and intentions, and goals; this is the ultimate direction in which the practice is leading the practitioner.

In traditional Indian culture a standard final goal for an ascetic or a yogi was enlightenment, muksha, freedom from the karmic cycle of being and becoming. The way yoga is practiced in the west currently, there are many overriding goals that can be observed depending on who is teaching and who is practicing. There are systems that focus mainly on physical benefits like overall fitness, strength or flexibility. There are systems that approach practice as an eastern form of physical therapy. There are other systems that see practice as psychological, spiritual or even metaphysical “therapy”. There are also modern systems that remain true to that traditional Indian mindset of using this kind of practice to move towards some sort of spiritual enlightenment, which might be seen as different than “spiritual” therapy depending on your outlook even if it may have some similar results.

There are really innumerable overall goals that a practitioner could have as a guiding principle in practice. Just like in Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares, in the end, it is most important for the practitioner to choose one for him/herself so those goals can truly be a guiding principle for the practitioner.

In terms of “Super-Objective” or overall goal, a major difference between Yoga and Acting would be that, for the actor, the Super-Objective has to be in line with the actual piece being performed and the author’s intentions in the piece. In Yoga the overall goal of practice is ultimately up to the practitioner; there is no story line that it has to fit in with other than the practitioner’s own life. A teacher or any number of other things might influence the practitioner, but, in the end, the practitioner decides the goals for him/herself.

Stanislavki presents the process and the state that he is trying to create, where what he calls a subconscious principle takes over so that the actor actually lives the part and feels the emotions for real and in a sense is not acting but going through the emotional processes that the character he/she is playing would actually go through if it were a real life situation. This shift in consciousness which Stanislavski refers to as accessing the “subconscious” might instead be called super-conscious, above conscious or even simply a heightened state of consciousness, where the actor’s psyche seems to merge with the character being played and lives the part instead of faking the emotions, is very much related to that state that naturally occurs in a yoga practice as the practice is done in a deeper way, where the Yoga practitioner’s state of mind and consciousness shifts from a normal, distracted state of mind, to a hyper aware and vivid kind of consciousness where you seem to be transported to a different dimension.

This being said, I guess my experience has been that all the artistic endeavors I have participated in have lead to this kind of experience in one way or another. I remember times when I was playing music and the audience disappeared, technique disappeared, I remember the sensation of watching myself playing and I wasn’t doing anything, the playing was happening of its own accord. Effortlessly, everything fell into place just so as I watched from what felt like a great distance behind myself. It was magical. When I performed on in-line skates for Ringling Brothers, I had similar kinds of experiences many times as well. That state where you are connected and moving from something far deeper inside yourself than your rational mind and conscious will is well worth accessing regardless of what activity you are performing.