The way to becoming successful at the art of improv is that you always have to build on what the last person gave you. If you take away from it you stop the flow. The same goes with acting, you cannot play a negative emotion — you have to play an action.
You can't play depressed, you play an action that would make you depressed. You can’t play drunk, you have to play trying to be sober in order for you to be alive inside.
I was thinking about this a lot yesterday while I was sweating my ass off at a Bikram Yoga class.
I was thinking about athletes as well.
I was thinking about with all of these things, your body needs to be open and loose.
Yoga teaches you to be strong and flexible at the same time.
You have to be ready for anything in life, because anything can happen at any time and it's the way that you respond to it that dictates how you feel inside.
You need to be open and ready for a fight, a hug, sex, peace, confusion, success. It seems scary, but the truth is that it can be invigorating if you are solid inside. Yoga also teaches you to pause and to push through uncomfortable feelings.
The theory is, if you can do it on your mat, you can take it into the rest of the world.
You can do it with meditation as well. If you can sit still and let all the self destructive impulses pass, the truth will come to you. The negative will pass and the right action will come.
Thus you will be adding to the Improv of life instead of depleting it.
But man, sometimes it's hard to sit through those feelings.
For me, sometimes I get triggered and it's so hard for me to remember that first of all, it's not reality, and secondly, the feelings will not last forever.
The feelings are so acute at times that I feel like I could die.
But I don't die and by holding on to myself I don't hurt anyone else either. In fact I used my words and let people know how I feel.
They don't always care and that's OK too. I wish they wanted to play Improv with me and build on it and keep communicating because I know it would free them but therein lies the key to life.
Acceptance that the only thing I can control is myself.
And who's to say that I know that everyone wants to be free? Sometimes danger and pain feel very safe.