10 acting practices that will teach you how to masterfully express your emotions

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Do you want to make it easier for you to communicate with people? Learn to express your emotions and energize those around you. The coach suggests taking an example from professional actors. How exactly - read in this article.

1. Learn the technique of anchoring

This technique comes from neurolinguistic programming, but it has taken root in the acting world, because it easily helps to enter the desired emotional state. Its essence is in the performance of certain ritual actions.

Remember a time in the past when you experienced this or that emotion. Close your eyes, immerse yourself in the memory and find the necessary feeling within yourself. When the emotion is strong enough, do something: cross your fingers or stamp.

To consolidate the effect, this exercise must be done several times. Now you can easily enter the emotional state you need when you need it.

2. Think about the other person

This is necessary in order to better feel him, to understand how he breathes. By reading the emotional state of another, assuming what he is feeling, you will understand where you are close. And that inner closeness with another will allow you to better define your emotions.

3. Interact

Express your emotions by involving your environment. Do not be afraid to be bright, noticeable, sparkle with colors. Your emotions come alive as you interact with your surroundings.

4. Develop body plasticity

Poses, gait, facial expressions, gestures - all this has a meaning and should correspond to the emotions that you show. And this is not only about those cases when we do not have enough words or words are not needed. The body is the first to react to what we feel, and responds with a look, any movement.

Try to say something without words, using only your body. This may be the most common story about how you got to work today. Do your counterparts understand your body movements? Do you feel a bunch of eyes, lips, posture? Where are your hands? What are you talking about with foot movements?

5. Experiment with a palette of emotions

The basic emotions identified by Paul Ekman are joy, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, contempt. Don't be limited to them: Express shock, boredom, aggression, awe, forgiveness, envy, sympathy, hope, enthusiasm, relief, tenderness, and so on.

Try to list 10 varieties of each basic emotion. Have fun distinguishing shades

6. Observe others

See how others tell stories, deliver bad news, and speak to an audience. Try to guess what emotions they are experiencing at the same time, what their gestures and facial expressions indicate.

Observing others will increase your emotional competence dramatically. And watching a video where you are in the lead role will allow you to catch what you are missing.

7. Select a text from a book and retell it to different people

These should be people from your environment: mom, daughter, friend, colleague. Tell it as if the story really happened to you. It is important that your interlocutors do not guess that this is an excerpt from a book.

For more immersion, you can change the names of the characters to the names of your friends. You can complete the story. If you suddenly remember with surprise that there is also a real author, then you are on the right track.

8. Use counterpoint - contrast between sound and image

When you talk funny about sad or, on the contrary, sad about funny, you begin to feel thinner, your inner emotional ear becomes more receptive. Use the classics of drama: look for evil in good, and in evil - good. Try to tell an ordinary story with emotions that are opposite or far from the meaning of the text.

9. Listen to music. Especially without words

Music helps to develop imaginative thinking and find meanings that cannot be expressed in words. Music interacts with emotions directly without affecting our mind.

It is useful not only to listen to music, but also to play it. If you don't own a musical instrument, sing it! Sing boldly and with inspiration, without words, completely surrendering yourself to this activity, as if there is no other way to convey the meaning but to sing.

10. Breathe Right

Breathing is closely related to how we feel. With the help of certain breathing exercises, one or another emotion can be evoked. There are a large number of breathing practices today, but the basis of any is inhalation and exhalation.

Achieving a peaceful state is possible through slow deep breaths and exhalations. And with the help of quickened or, on the contrary, bated breath, you will be able to enter the expressive-emotional state you need.

Of course, these are not the only techniques for managing emotions. Try, train, look for what is right for you, and most importantly - enjoy the conscious manifestation of your multifaceted personality!