17D. Expressive Walk

• Everybody, line up against the back wall and sfand side by side wifh a little breathing room between you. Imagine a narrow corridor in front of you. Walk forward in a moderately slow, neutral pace down your corridor. With each step, change your inner reality, your mind, and change the expression on your face accordingly.

• Remain relaxed. Let your eyes speak as much as the muscles of your face. The tension of your body may slightly change too; stay in your body. Don't change your posture. Don't think of emotions and then acf them out. Feel your face, the muscles, movement, and tension of it. Respond to what you sense there. The faces and feelings unfold out of each other. Sensation-Feeling-Action.

• Next step: I'm going to clap, fairly rapidly. On each clap step forward and change your mind/face.

The Face

The face is flesh, it's body. It moves. Feelings find their outward expression through the porous, moveable, flesh of the face. Feelings escape from mental entrapment through the face.

The face shapes itself and feelings follow it. Feeling comes bubbling up to meet the face. The face draws memory and imagination out.

It doesn't matter whether the face calls forth feeling or feeling shows itself on the face. It doesn't matter which happens first. Eventually, there's no first. The face and feeling are unified.

Of course, one may choose to keep their face relaxed, or specifically shaped, and still express feeling. The face isn't the only way to express feeling. The body has motion, breath, the expressions of sound or lan­guage work at its command.

If feeling unintentionally stops at the face, the blockage usually comes from fear. We live in fear of being exposed, seen as vulnerable, wrong, out of place, extroverted, rude, romantic, dumb, sweet. Then, tension rises and masks the face with emptiness. The mask may be hardened, or relaxed, with frowns, or smiles. All these masks dull sensibilities. They are a shield against current experience, and they entomb feeling.

Just as a masked face covers feelings, an arbitrarily chosen expression has the potential to call up feeling. For example, right now, smile. Put a big smile on your face and relax. What happens? Doesn't that smile elicit a feeling?

Sometimes, Expressive Walk is done in front of a mirror. Students watch themselves and note whether their internal experience matches up with their facial expression. Or they do this face-to-face with a partner and report their observations to each other.

Imagine that language comes from the entire face, not solely from the mouth. Imagine that the face speaks.

17E. Mirror Language

• Sit on the floor, face to face with a partner. One of you speaks, developing a narration. The other mirrors, speaking also. The leader speaks very slowly so the follower can mirror exactly and simultaneously. Slow enough that it's not evident who is leader and who is follower. You're together, exactly.

• Continue until I say switch, and then, right from where you are, change roles. The narration continues with no time lapse.

• It doesn't matter what you talk about. Start with anything. Listen to yourself, believe it. Get involved with it and follow what you hear and feel.

• Be inside each other's moufhs, in each other's face.

Expression on the leaders face helps the follower to follow. The leaders slowness helps. So does relaxing. The leader follows their text, the follower follows the leader.

Let's continue on. We'll expand the followers choices and ease up on the responsibilities of the leader.