One (Characters) Trash is Another (Actors) Treasure

Boy oh boy oh boy, what a class! I love receiving new tools to put in my belt!

While I've done streaming before, these "updated" classes/exercises are opening doors to such fascinating and useful pathways to connect us more deeply to The Work.

Brief purge of general notes: tonight we worked on "dipping"

• the job is to get into private places (drawers, keepsake boxes, closet shelves, purses, etc.)
  
• for anyone that wasn't in class, Jon had us go find a box or drawer that was full of junk. Place it before you and put a towel/covering over it.
  
• the first step is to actively fool your cognitive mind. Take three deep breaths, on final exhale "reveal" the box.
  
• you then begin 90 seconds of 100mph scatting...using your pointer fingers you gibberish your way through the box.  OUT RACE YOUR MIND. This should EXHAUST you! You move as fast as possible, you spew crazy sounds/jargon as fast as possible, and you use alllll of your energy as fast as possible. You should be out of breath by the end of the 90 seconds.
  
• once done, take some deep breaths, and approach the box with unfocused vision. You now very gently and slowly "paint" what's in the box, tracing all the general shapes and colors.
  
• as you do this, you will notice and allow three to four "anchors" to make themselves be known. You do not cognitively decide what are your anchors, you will naturally become aware of them.
  
• we remove the box, putting it to the side. Jon works with us individually, having us breathe, then tap the side of our heads, has us ask "I wonder what I see" (referring to the anchors), then we begin to stream what we saw as if it's still right there in front of this.
  
• using words like "I see" and "I feel" we walk Jon through our box, anchor to anchor. He occasionally had us dive into individual objects ("open the envelope, what's in there?" "what is the year on the penny?") as well as explore all the stuff in the box in-between the anchors.  
  

My own harvest...for one, I learned a "bonus" lesson by going last. We have to hold what we saw/worked on when the box was in front of us, but it might be almost an hour before you're called to do your work on it. I had to find that happy medium between "I need to remember what I saw/experienced" (dangerous because continuous remembering of a memory allows our brains to add/change things) and "I need to not hang on, just let it go" (dangerous because then we have little to nothing to work with!). I described it as turning my body into a safe: I swallowed the image/moment/memory and knew it was just hangin' out behind my rib cage. When it was finally my turn to work, I took my deep breaths and exhaled it out of my body and brought it back to being in front of me. Jon so lovingly called me a "fridge", holding the image/moment/memory in my crisper drawer. Whatever works!

Once I did work, it was very easy to see why this exercise is so brilliant and important. One of my anchors was an old phone cord, nothing special about it. Another was a small punch card with writing on it I couldn't even read. Basically, everything is "junk". Every human out there has junk...items that are seen as useless. But this junk isn't junk at all...it's GOLD. As I was streaming on the charging cord, I noticed little nicks out of it, and torn up bumps. I surprised myself when I realized they were bite marks. The cord had been chewed on. With the punch card, as I streamed on it and ran my fingers over its surface, I discovered all the holes had been punched. It was completely used up.

Why was the cord so heavily chewed on? Does this person suffer from anxiety?

If all the holes were punched on this worn-down card, why are they still keeping it? What makes it so special to hold on to when it's used up?

These doors are such fantastic discoveries...we all are constantly searching for answers. We OBSESS over finding answers. But y'all, the real treasures are the questions. I'd rather find question after question than answer after answer. Because an answer is an end point. You got the answer, now there's no where left to go. But questions continue the journey, allowing you to learn and explore more and more. Questions allow depth to be achieved. And there's nothing crappier than a shallow character with no depth.

Love this class, love this process, can't wait to obsess over some more junk in the future