Lesson 2 - 10.1.16

Lesson 2 - 10.1.16

In this lesson, we started by doing our version of a cleansing exercise, Misorgi, commonly practiced by Yoshi Oida. The premise of the exercise comes from an old Indian story/myth about a God, who in order to find out about himself, went to live underwater to find himself. The exercise we carried out explores the cleansing of different parts of our body. The eyes, the nose, the mouth, the bellybutton (hara) and the ears. This is usually done after cleaning the room of practice. In all of Yoshi Oida's rehearsals, he would get him and his actors to clean the space they were going to use. This cleanses the space of any pre-existing ideas and acts as a clean slate for a new day. After this, we got to cleansing ourselves. This is so that as actors we can start fresh and all the important parts of us are clean. I found this a useful exercise as I felt totally new and energised to start making work. We especially focused on our Hara (centre). The Japanese consider that the vital spirit resides in the Hara, more specifically at a point just below the navel, known as the "Tan-Den". The Hara describes the quality of a persons energy - one may have a "good hara" or a "bad hara". 

We then looked at Somadhi, which is the exercise of doing just 1 thing at once. In life, it is pretty impossible to do just one thing as our brain is always elsewhere. I found this exercise very difficult as there are always constant distractions. After trying to focus on one thing we did an exercise called the walk into nothingness. We had to walk around the space with our eyes closed. It seems simple but walking around with your eyes closed is a difficult task as with this exercise you have to throw away all worries and focus on your body in the room. Surprisingly I didn't bump into anyone and I believe that other senses become heightened when others are dampened.


Music is a huge part of all our sessions so I made sure to make a note of the music we used during this session: 

Reflection - Brian Eno

In the next exercise we looked at how music can affect us creatively, through movement, drawing and writing. We looked at 4 pieces of music and we had the choice of these three ways of reacting.

Chopin - Etude No.11 in A minor, Op.25 'Winter Wind'

This piece of music is very dynamic and I remember having many different feelings during this piece of music. I chose to draw to this piece. I don't have the actual drawing as they were all collected but I remember I drew a sort of church like building. Throughout the piece, the building got a lot more twisted and distorted. 

Lead Belly - Goodnight Irene 

This piece of music felt raw and natural. I decided to react to this song physically and do a series of movements that reflected my reaction to this piece.

Judy Garland - Somewhere Over The Rainbow

This piece of music is so beautiful and airy. I reacted to this by drawing. I used many different colours and felt almost child-like once again. I drew a large scribble consisting of different colours.

Tom Jones - It's Not Unusual 

When this piece came on, I, and most people, reacted physically by doing the classic Carlton dance, or just by dancing in general.

This exercise/experiment was really useful and insightful into how we react to music instinctively as humans. It was nice to be able to act instinctively without being judged. I felt everyone in the room trusted each other to be 100% committed and honest to the exercise. 

We also went out around Selhurst and around school and had to ask people what song they would listen to to bring them joy. Jimmy and I asked a man serving at the Co-op and he said that his was 'Johnny B. Good' by Chuck Berry.

We also asked Happy at the reception and his was 'Jus' Know' by Partynextdoor.