Your brain’s not in charge. Your body is
Without wishing to be weighed down too much in ‘acting specific’ teachings – the revolutionary premise for me was that my brain no longer had bragging rites as the most sophisticated organ I had. Rather, I my body did, and by that I included my limbs, my spine, my skin, my tongue, my breath - oh yes my breath, my lungs, my stomach, my feet – all had the ability to dictate ‘mood’ to my mind. Try this…
Take in three very rapid breaths through your mouth. Observe how you feel and any thoughts that come into your head.
Now – on one breath only, blow out the breath in three efforts.
I’ll guess you felt calm on the later and tense of the first, possibly even distressed and tearful.
What happened then? You didn’t think a sad thought, nor did you take your mind to a zen filled scene like a beach. But the action of breathing, the organs that are your lungs conjured emotion in your mind.
Presentation skills courses often promote things like ‘power poses’ or ‘grounding your feet’. But for me, too often, the focus is on controlling movement. Or adopting a pose to prevent the body from moving. For example, to prevent fidgeting with your hands in an interview, they propose putting your hands on your thighs to keep them still. Do this on a zoom call – where most interviews are conducted, and your framing is likely to be such that you’ll only be seen from the top of our shoulders up – so no part of the body is visibly moving at all. What a waste. Knowing as we do that so much is communicated through our body language. Restricting movement in this way diminishes our ability to influence our audience dramatically.
If we actively work to control our bodies movement, we limit our ability to influence. Our words may still be heard, but their influence not felt. And it is the feelings that are evoked that make connections between us and our audience powerful.
