Improve Mindfulness By Working Like an Actor
How many times have you washed your hands, moved on to brush your teeth only to wonder… “Did I wash my hands?”
You wash your hands and go to the towel to dry them only to find it damp…from when you had just washed and dried your hands!
These absent minded occurrences happen to the best of us and aren’t anything to get in a fuss about.
They can become problematic when they happen time and time again.
We can strengthen our capacity to be mindful just like we can strengthen our muscles.
When you want to build strength in your upper body, you gather an arrangement of dumbbell weights and do a series of exercises. These can include bicep curls, tricep kickbacks, and shoulder press. The weight you use for your shoulder press and bicep curls is probably heavier than what you use on your triceps. You meet your body where it is and increase the weight in your dumbbells as you gain strength.
We can train mindfulness similarly…and you may be surprised that you can do it by following a process used by actors when they work on a scene!
An actor’s primary job is to tell a story through ACTION (hence….they are called ACTors).
Every action in a scene has a beginning, middle and end.
The beginning starts with an impulse to do something different than what is currently happening. The middle is the meat of the action. The end is what we call the “button” or the “cap”-- it’s when you know you have completed the action.
It’s important for actors to be very clear on this because they have to note these actions and any movements on stage that happen with them in their script.
For example, let’s put this to work in the final scenes of Romeo and Juliet. Juliet has faked her death and is in the tomb. Romeo has discovered her and laments in this tragedy and (spoiler alert!) drinks a poison to end his life and be with his love in the afterlife. Perfect timing– Juliet rouses from her slumber and sees her love. ROMEO! He’s DEAD! Juliet grieves his death and decides (INTERNAL ACTION) she must end her own life by drinking the poison he drank (EXTERNAL ACTION). The beginning of the action is to find his poison cup. She finds it, drinks from it, but there is none left. She kisses him to see if there is any left on his lips. Doing so, she notices his lips are still warm. Just then, she hears a voice outside the tomb and realizes she must act quickly if she is to join her love. She grabs his dagger and stabs it into her breast.
The action is the umbrella for all the movements and tasks that followed
Action: To end her life so she can be with Romeo
Tasks (and parts of the action):
Beginning– searching for the cup
Middle– drinking from it and then kissing him
End– stabbing herself
—> This is key. The action is not the tiny thing you do bit by bit. Those are tasks or bits. The action is purposeful and you must know when you have completed it. The action happens in a specified timeframe.
When we want to improve our mindfulness, we can consider our intentions with what we do in a particular space and time as action-oriented.
The Scene: I am in the kitchen. I need to make dinner. I have already cooked the rice in my rice cooker, but I need to prepare the chicken breast to bake it.
ACTION– Prepare the chicken for baking
Note– it’s not “Cook the chicken” because the oven does that. But, I have to prepare the chicken for that process so I enjoy how it cooks and tastes when it is done. Specificity is EVERYTHING!
Beginning– Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Beginning– Wash my hands with soap and dry them with a paper towel. Keep the paper towel on the counter next to the sink.
Middle– Place the package of chicken breast in the kitchen sink, but do not open it yet.
Middle– Gather the seasonings I want to place on the chicken and the olive oil. Place on kitchen counter.
Middle– Gather the 9.5 x 11” casserole baking dish and place it by the sink.
End– Open the chicken package and place the chicken breasts in the casserole dish.
End– Wash hands again and dry again with the paper towel by the sink. Use that paper towel to pick up and discard the chicken package into the garbage.
End– Drizzle olive oil on the chicken breasts. Recap olive oil and put in its spot. Sprinkle seasonings on the chicken. Replace caps and put seasonings in their spots.
End– Put chicken in the oven when it has pre-heated.
Notice that every task starts with an active verb. Also notice that every task has a beginning, middle, and end (where something begins, where the bulk of it occurs, how it finishes).
See what happens if you work in this way.
Notice the beginning, middle, and ends to your actions tonight while you prepare dinner.
Do you feel more intentional?
Do you feel more efficient with your movements?
Do you feel more connected to the moment through your senses as you notice textures, sights, smells, and sounds?