“Don’t act. You’re performing. Just speak the lines.”
I stop mid-scene, mid-line, and shoot the acting coach a bewildered glance.
“Relax. Don’t act.”
Relax. Don’t act. She gifts me a note that travels far beyond the scene.
“Let me have this.” The acting coach lifts up and then jiggles my right arm. She releases. The arm stays up.
“See, you’re doing this for me.” I see what she means, but I keep my eyes closed, breathe slowly in and slowly out. There’s still a thin coating of tension hugging my muscles, safeguarding me.
Relinquish the tension. Surrender the trying. Empty the holding.
This total body relaxation exercise begins our acting session. The breath facilitates an openness, rejuvenates a vivid presence needed to step forward into character.
We must be embodied, we must feel, we must be real in our response to be believable.
We must be real.
And the way to be real is to be present and courageously allowing of the moment, and of our honest response to this moment.
This exercise leaves me quietly questioning if I am ever truly relaxed in my waking life, and if I am ever bravely real with how I am feeling. I am authentic (I know no other way to be), but I wonder if I am relaxed in my realness.
“Be a noodle,” she directs. I envision a noodle. She lifts my arm and I let her have my arm, let her gently sway my arm back and forth.
“Better,” she concludes.
Baby steps, I think.
I practice presence on the wings of the improv stage. In the far corner, behind a curtain, I listen to the audience laugh at the scene. I pay attention. I gather in a full breath, feel my feet, my posture, standing tall and attentive. The last scene that I was in I acknowledge, and then lovingly release. I recycle the energy forward into this moment.
Relax into the body. Recycle the experience. Receive the now. Respond.
Repeat.
I adore listening. I adore being vibrantly present to their stories and their pure-hearted, playful ways. I adore children. I know that I am on this planet to protect, nurture, empower them.
I am not a parent, though people now ask me if I have children, a question that throws me, and then I realize I could be a mother. I could easily have a toddler or a child in elementary school. That’s not my path now, but I am reading "The Conscious Parent" by Shefali Tsabary because I intend to be an advocate, a champion for the children in my life. And to be a consciousness advocate for children, I need the language and the tools to practice presence while teaching children.
Children challenge me to grow up.
They are brilliant, all-knowing spirits who feel all the emotions adults feel and are keenly aware of the shifting moods of their parents, teachers, families, and recognize and intelligently perceive the underlying dynamics of situations and experiences at home.
Children are real in their emotional honesty. They simply don’t have the fullness of language yet to express, the self-control to work with themselves and others, and the reasoning abilities to consider consequences of behavior and actions. And most adults struggle with these very ways of navigating being human, too.
I intend to treat children as my spiritual equals. And as I am continually awed and commit Shefali Tsabary's brilliant parenting guidance to memory, I practice being very real, and very present with children when I teach.
I practice a presence that allows me to notice when I am being triggered, when I am reacting out of fear (when a child misbehaves I internalize this as my own failure to discipline and establish helpful boundaries, and my reaction to the breakdown becomes a curious exploration to see how I need the remedy of my own conscious healing).
The children are my teachers, and the practice is presence, an acceptance of what-is, an allowing that leads me to be back to being real, because kids demand real, and as we play and make up rhymes, I let go a bit more to be present with all of them.
The comment is loud and showy, a parade of a put-down.
I flash back to my middle school crush, a blue-eyed boy who wore a pink polo and was teased for wearing that shade of pink. I wondered if he would that shirt again. And he did. Several times. (And yes, I noticed, he was my crush. I appreciated his style.)
The cattiness disguised with a grin slingshots into my confidence, because I personalize the words bubbling from this person’s gaping wound.
I do rumble in a reaction. I do reel in hurt. I do dwell in victim-mode.
And then I get curious.
The reaction is mine to claim. The puncture reveals where I am in my personal practice of remaining centered in my power.
I recognize this energy. This is bullying. And acknowledging the behavior frees me.
This person is a multitude of dreams, talents, kindnesses, hurts, insecurities. A full-fledged human being testing me to be myself.
I am learning to not easily give away the power of my mental energy to rehashing the incident, to angrily analyzing. I am learning that my ego reacts in devastation. I am learning that my body purges the hurt through a cough that barks out the whimpering hurt.
I tell my cough, “I hear you.”
I soften into feeling the discomfort, into honoring my sensitivity, and then pray to be like water.
Let this river out. Recycle the energy. Keep me here in this moment of my life, centered and reigning and safe in my body and safe in my expression, my real expression of me.
Perhaps this is why I hold that tension. I don’t feel safe in being myself. So let this break me even more open and let the breaking open carry me onward.
And as I flow forward, when I brush against people who discharge their discomfort in passive aggressiveness, I know to double-down in my realness, in feeling the hurt without reacting or resisting, and staying bright in myself. And walking forward and away.
I like myself, right here and right now.
As I walk to the coffee shop down from the theater.
I like how I feel in this black leather jacket (faux, for sure), and pale jeans, and the glitter-infused sunglasses painting an apricot glow on the passing cars, the taco spot, the moody sky.
I feel like the woman I want to be.
I take purposeful strides and my heart brews in joy.
I like myself, right here and right now, even though my right here and right now balances in a constant reconstructing scene of a life in Austin that is consistent change. I evolve through multiple iterations, a string of jobs, tones and textures of days that keep shifting in rhythm. And I yearn for ritual, the grounding of routine, but I’m learning to not react to change in the rhythm, because I trust the redirects to place me where I am destined to be.
I like myself, right here and right now, because I know who I am, and I trust myself to swim and float with the tides.
And the tide pulling me forward takes me to the coffee shop, where there is the cappuccino, the spacious time to write. And after, I’ll retrace these steps back to the theater, back to the stage, back to people who make improvising a wild thrill of my life.
“Stop.” I pause, mid-scene, mid-sentence, and shoot a wide-eyed glance to the acting coach.
“You’re doing it. You’re being natural. You’re not acting. Do you feel it?”
Yes. I do.