Being in contact with your partner.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nPrecisely because, by focusing his attention on the other person and trying to be free in the interaction, he comes face to face with his own interactional dynamics, his own areas of avoidance, stemming from trauma.<\/p>\n
And there are several types of trauma. But there’s also education: the conditioning we’ve received, which acts as trauma through repetition. We’ve integrated prohibitions and so on. This creates blind spots in our experience, which could nevertheless emerge physically and emotionally. <\/p>\n
Resensitizing ourselves to our experience therefore necessarily involves paying attention to the body. It’s by paying attention to our body that we come to be aware of it, even when at first there was a blind spot. <\/p>\n
Typically, this is what we do in Vipassana. In a Vipassana meditation retreat, you spend ten hours a day for eleven days observing your sensations from head to toe. From day 4 onwards, you do this very tedious “body scan” all day long. And little by little, you become more aware of the surface of your body, then of your inner self. You get back in touch with your body. <\/p>\n
The Vipassana approach has its advantages and disadvantages for the actor. But clearly, it has the advantage of resensitizing the body. Which, by the way, is not enough to unravel all traumas. But at least it allows you to be in touch with what’s happening physically, and not to be completely dissociated or desensitized. <\/p>\n
Doing Vipassana can have other pitfalls if that’s all you do. But in any case, it’s a step. And it’s a good example of how, by simply putting your attention on it (“here, what do I feel in my body, right now?”) you can resensitize yourself. It could be becoming aware of a blurred area, dissociation, emptiness, tension, a strange tingling sensation, etc. Little by little, by being at peace with this, without forcing or overcoming the blockage, we become naturally resensitized. <\/p>\n
And then, as a second step, telling your partner to his or her face feeds the relationship: “Facing you, right away, I feel like this.” It may or may not be related to him, it may or may not be caused by him, but we invest it in the relationship. And we say it in public too. <\/p>\n
So we go through all these stages that enable us to assume what happens to us and get into the habit of sharing it, without filtering or invalidating it. It’s a very important step. And it’s important to differentiate it from what we call “desensitization”. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\ud83c\udf0a Sensitization vs desensitization: two opposing paths<\/h2>\n <\/p>\n
In cognitive behavioral therapy, we often talk about desensitization: expanding your comfort zone. The idea is that we say to ourselves “something scares me, but if I keep going there, I’ll get used to it.” You go in relaxed, thinking about something else, sometimes anesthetizing yourself (alcohol, relaxation, etc.). Little by little, you need fewer crutches because you’ve desensitized yourself. Stress diminishes. <\/p>\n
The problem is that if you do this, you’re certainly less stressed, but you lose a large part of the experience. By definition, you become desensitized. And you end up with a somewhat anaesthetized relationship to the world. <\/p>\n
So it depends on the individual, because people are more or less traumatized in some areas, more or less clear in others, with different personalities and emotional lives. But overall, everyone has areas that are more tense, opaque or avoided. <\/p>\n
If we have this strategy of desensitization, of expanding our comfort zone by seeking to “get more and more comfortable”, we miss out on what we want to do as an actor. Even on a personal level, we miss out on our human experience. Rather than unfolding what’s happening to us, reintegrating something healthy, we navigate through reality half-anesthetized, controlling without being aware of it, being repressed, dissociated. <\/p>\n
When in fact, with this simple principle, it seems to me that any stressful experience can become liberating. The fact of looking for things a little outside our comfort zone, uncomfortable things, and being aware of what’s happening to us physically, resensitizes us; not only with those areas, but with all the previous ones too. We resensitize ourselves in general. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\ud83d\udddd\ufe0f The discomfort that marks the unconscious<\/h2>\n <\/p>\n
So: seek out discomfort, but not to overcome, control or desensitize it. Rather, to resensitize. This is a very good general model, which is more or less a Gestalt model. Even if Gestalt isn’t always as confrontational as what we do in class. <\/p>\n
Because in class, we still want the actor to be legible, to explore intimate interactions, in a very framed way, with rules. We also want to raise the stakes, because the actor is going to play out situations where the characters have extraordinary stakes. So we want to raise our awareness by doing this. <\/p>\n
Precisely, by getting in touch with these areas of discomfort, without forcing or going too fast. But by really paying attention to what’s happening to us physically. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\ud83d\udd0d Awareness of our avoidance zones<\/h2>\n <\/p>\n
It’s also something you can do in life. Whenever we have a confronting experience, whether very positive or very negative, we can use it. In Gestalt, we’d talk about “healthy aggression” for the negative: conflict, setting limits, getting in touch with your anger. For the positive: intimacy, sexuality, affectivity, etc. <\/p>\n
All the emotions linked to these two major areas of avoidance are a good general disposition for the actor to maintain, in his life. Recognize: “I’ve just been through something difficult.” And instead of trying to resolve it, rationalize it, find a justification, win the interaction, think about something else or distract yourself: take the time to be in touch with what’s happening. <\/p>\n
Including acknowledging, “Here, I catch myself trying to have a debate in my head, trying to solve, thinking about something else…” And asking yourself: “How do I look physically?”<\/p>\n
Pay attention to sensations, breathing, general state. Stay in touch without trying to solve or change. It’s anawareness<\/strong> approach, as in John O’Stevens’ Awareness<\/em>, a great exercise book. Exactly that: staying in touch. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\ud83d\udd75\ufe0f Staying in touch with questions of the body: Letters to a young poet… of the senses<\/h2>\n <\/p>\n
As Rilke says in Letters to a Young Poet<\/em> (also on the reading list): stay in touch with questions, like open doors. Questions to which we don’t yet have the answer, but with which we stay in touch. <\/p>\nThese “questions” can also be physical. You sense something uncomfortable, emotionally unclear, an inner conflict. Rather than rationalizing, choosing, clinging to it as if faced with something intolerable: see it as something physical, which will resolve itself naturally, but whose shape we observe. <\/p>\n
It’s a Gestalt approach: Gestalt means “form”. We’re interested in the form that things take, including a blockage. Staying in touch with that form, rather than trying to fix it, resolve it, overcome it or rush it. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\ud83c\udf93 Conclusion<\/h2>\n <\/p>\n
So there you have it. I don’t know how useful it is, but it seems to me that it’s a general model, both for the actor and for his life. Including when he does writing exercises, journaling, mapping his experience. To see how he is on a daily basis. <\/p>\n
And in all the work we do on stage: rehearsals, improvisations, fantasies… It’s always based on the body, on experience.<\/p>\n
Again, the body can be an impulse to retreat, to leave, or to become aware of dissociation. It’s not necessarily a visible “movement”, but something that happens to us and that we become aware of as taking shape, in the present moment. Rather than having ideas about it, trying to “play a goal”, to solve something. <\/p>\n
The second step (which I haven’t mentioned here yet) is: once you’re readable on stage, see what observable form the behavior that emerges in an improvisation takes. And then, to be able to use that for the subtext of<\/strong> the scenes. <\/p>\nWe have the text imposed by the author. But the way we’re going to say it, we want it to be legible, committed, uncontrolled. Eventually, we’ll be able to direct this behavior. But you can only direct it if you’ve first explored it in an uncontrolled way, really seeing the form it takes in the intermediate exercises. <\/p>\n
Each time, we take the time to unfold the blurred areas, not to cheat.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Transcript of our podcast of the same name, to listen to on our Telegram Channel. By Octave Karalievitch. \ud83d\udd09 It’s been a long time since I’ve [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4907,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,97],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nProgressive desensitization or re-sensitization: a counter-intuitive approach for the actor | Paris Meisner Studio<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n