Full disclosure and disclaimer: The teacher/facilitators are not clinical psychologists or therapists. This course is meant to be explained, experienced, and received in the spirit of self-help for personal use and as a performing arts related skill set and not as a tool of therapy.
After taking EmoVerity’s Beginning Emotional Regulation course students will be able to:
gain an understanding of emotion theory/affect science and EmoVerity’s somatic emotion principles
recognize and express the six Effector Patterns of primary emotion categories.
identify and experience at least one recognizable feeling/subjective emotion concept through the process of engaging the Effector Patterns
harness the ability to release emotional states at will through the Zero/0 breath and Step-Out processs.
more fully embrace the emotional challenges of performing safely, sustainably and with greater confidence.
What can I expect from an EmoVerity course?
Courses are taught in three ways:
An 8-week synchronous online course through Zoom through the Thinkific Platform.
A 2 weekend in person intensive*
A 6-day (one week) in person intensive)*
*access to the Thinkific course and up to two synchronous Zoom follow-up sessions are included with all in person intensives.
We seek to make this coursework fully accessible; virtually anyone can acquire these skills.
The work is always student led, and consent-based at all times.
No physical or psychological manipulation by the instructor is required in learning the technique.
Respect for physical and emotional well-being is intrinsic to this work.
The central focus of the course is exploring, activating, and releasing a somatic, embodied experience of emotions in the body, not on emotional memories or “as if” scenarios.
Participants will never be required to share your psychological history or personal life circumstances.
Enables participants to recognize the muscular contractions and breathing patterns of specific emotion categories, e.g., Sadness, Happiness, Fear, Anger, etc.
Assists participants to identify and disentangle habituated tensions and emotional blocks.
Ultimately frees participants to create and express genuine emotion communication easily on command.
Develops participants ability to accurately identify the emotion communication of others.
What are the benefits of training to the Performer?
Creates a physical literacy of emotion
Performers will better understand how behavioral expressions of an emotional state may be perceived by an observer (favorably or unfavorably, or viewed as genuine or ingenuine).
They will be able to cultivate the ability to clearly and immediately shift from one emotional state to another, and clear oneself from any emotional expression at will.
Allows performers to safely play emotions very close to their own experience, with technical precision.
Performers will be better able to convincingly play emotions, emotional mixes, and levels of emotional intensity outside of their lived experience.
Creates an embodied understanding of emotion activation, emotional regulation, and emotional intelligence
Participants learn how to identify their own emotional states and the emotion behavior/communication of others.
Participants are given a clear pathway to physically regulate emotional states within themselves.
Acquisition of these skill sets allows for an expanded choice in communication behaviors with others, and helps to develop a greater response ability in daily life.
Cultivates autonomy of body and mind.
Through this methodology performers become aware of their own emotional states, their specifics needs, and response ability to requests from others.
This sense of autonomy allows for greater bravery and clearer boundaries when auditioning, receiving direction and feedback, and creating sustainable performance practices.
Addresses various cultural/societal emotion ‘expectations’ pertaining to Gender, Sexual Orientation, Race
By understanding the biological/physical drives of emotion (as first proposed by Charles Darwin), e.g., Anger and Fear are preservation strategies, Joy and Sadness create social bonding, etc., we can learn about the universal beneficial nature behind all emotions.
We can disentangle societal expectations of emotional expression to fully access a fuller and richer emotional life, e.g., male identified people “should never show sadness, grief, tears”; female identified people “should never show anger, rage”.
We can embrace a greater tolerance for emotional discomfort when experiencing an unwanted emotional state (in ourselves or in others) and move from a dysregulated state to a regulated one.
Release from the burden of a “one to one” emotional ratio in characterization
The performer does not have to be limited by their personal repertoire of lived feelings and experiences in this work. The access and use of personal memories is not required or needed in this work; it remains a personal choice and is entirely optional.
The performer does not need to personally “live the emotional journey” of the character/piece at the same level of internal emotional intensity of the character.
Harnessing the ability to recognize a physiological/body centered sensation of an emotion, e.g., the affect of experiencing high muscle tonus, an intense breath, contracted facial expression, rapid heart rate, etc., but experiencing little to no corresponding cognitive/subjective anger as a feeling is a central goal of advanced acquisition.
This allows the performer to be present for the emotional storytelling while being completely available for fight choreography, a healthy vocal performance of intense emotion, and remain in full control of their instrument and actions at all times. “The body is in the oven, but the head is in the fridge.”
What are some performance related benefits of this training?
Developing reliable, sustainable, and repeatable consistency in performances
Completion of the full coursework gives the practitioner a complete toolkit of emotion expression which can generate myriad possibilities for performance including emotional mixes and the ability to scale emotions to any level of intensity required.
These skills leads to nuanced, reliable, repeatable, and sustainable performances in any medium from an Extreme Close-Up (ECU) on camera to arena-sized venues.
This methodology is a reliable alternative to the use of Emotional Memory/Recall
When a memory is used repeatedly it may no longer hold enough power to activate the emotional behavior needed for the performance.
Emotional memory is never required in this methodology.
When an unpleasant memory from performer’s past lived experience is used for rehearsal/performance it takes the focus away from the character’s journey and places it upon the lived experience of the performer. This may also activate and compound personal pain and/or trauma, which could result in PTSD.
In this methodology we use technical body-centered, self-directed, consent-based principles in acquiring these skills so that when emotional discomfort inevitably occurs, there is a reliable, clear and healthy pathway from dysregulation back to a centered state.
A healthy process for ‘De-roling’ or leaving the performance at the stage.
Drug/alcohol use is the frequent “go to” to get into or out of “performance mode” by many. This methodology offers a clean, healthy, reliable, and repeatable alternative
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