Qigong for acting
Ch’i kung for acting
Chi kung for acting
 
An Exercise for Actors
 
We begin with you. No tricks, no visualizations, nothing that you learned in acting school. Just be you, plain old you.
 
Move about, straighten your desk, water the plants, pet your cat. You get the idea. Do a few simple, easy tasks.
 
If there is another person in your space say something to them--but not about this Art Energy Exercise. The purpose is to have them notice you. If you are alone, go to a mirror and take a good look.
 
Now go away from the other person—or the mirror.
Breathe deeply ten times into the lower abdomen.
 
Keeping your attention there, breathe ten more times. Be aware of the lower abdomen filling up with creative energy, with Chi.
 
Continue this breathing. Allow your shoulders to relax and drop slightly. Move your head to the left and right. The looseness goes to your neck. Your face grows more relaxed.
 
Continue this breathing. Growing even more mentally aware and awake, your entire being fills with energy. You become like a lotus blossom open and radiating a powerful but subtle presence of light. If you don’t perceive this, then just imagine it is happening--that your entire body is filling and radiating this chi-power.
 
 (This emanating energy might be perceived as a comforting warmth.)
 
 (If you are an advanced in this work it may appear as an electromagnetic--even phosphorescent--radiant sparkling presence.)
 
Now find that other person and ask, “Notice anything different about me?”
 
They will. It should be totally obvious.
 
If they don’t, keep practicing the exercise until they do—or find someone else to look at you.
 
After you have assimilated this technique (which by the way is a great one to use on first dates, job interviews, and flirting) go to:
 
Adding various colors to the projected chi-energy. Conceptually you may think of this as emanating green, red, blue, yellow. (For me blue creates the expansiveness and spiritual power of the sky, or the ocean.)
 
Again, see the effect on your feed-back person (although by now they may be wise to this game).
 
This exercise should not be difficult for an actor because it works even if you do no more than imagine that you are radiating the light/color/energy.  (But trust me, in actuality you are radiating what is called chi.)
 
After gaining the basic technique, you can expand it by changing the shades of the colors, and their intensities.
 
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For Acting: First choose a color for your character.  As you act, allow the color by itself to shine from your face, body and movements.
 
The process is analogous to this:
The life vitality, the Chi-Energy, coming from you is like a spotlight. The chosen color is like a colored gel put in front of that spotlight.
 
For this Art-Energy technique it is acceptable to use only one color for a character. However it’s fun to use color modulations. Hamlet’s introspective, over-thinking character could be an intense watery grayish-yellow. But as he changes during Shakespeare’s drama you possibly could take on the following colors for your radiating chi-energy.
 
Depression – Gray
Shock – Yellowish Green
Suspicion - Violet
Affected Madness – Orange Red
Confusion – Yellow and Green zig-zagging in and out.
Reluctance to kill Claudius – Emanate a colorless weak energy.
Enraged to kill Claudius  - Deep red.
 
After you have firmly mastered the whole process for a performance, then let it go from your conscious mind. Put it on automatic and just do it. No need to think about it.  Just become it.
 
And whenever you want to use it in the future, at that time focus your intention-awareness, breathe in and radiate.
 
I suggest this as an answer to the question Stanislavski sought to answer:  How does one perform time after time in a situation and still have the illusion of immediacy?
 
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