Fight or Flight – your amygdala, anxiety and your acting.

We all know that feeling – frozen in a moment, unable to move – muscles go tight and eyes wide. It can feel like everything freezes – or you suddenly get the impulse of a ninja cat and hot foot it out of there or catch that falling object.

Either way, it’s pretty hard to do anything else in either of these scenarios – have you tried to remember your own phone number (or your lines for a scene) whilst a tiger is standing in the corner?  It’s unlikely, I know. It’s also unlikely there’s a tiger in the corner, but you get my drift.

We have the limbic system and amygdala to thank for this primal brain function. The Amygdala is an almond shaped set of Neurons, located in the brain’s medial temporal lobe. Think of it as being in the centre of your skull, between your ears and nestled each side of the brain stem. It’s part of your limbic system and it’s hard-wired from creation.

The Amygdala plays a key role in the processing of memory and emotions – rational as well as the other, murky, illogical emotional responses we have to certain stimuli, for seemingly unexplained reasons. It is primal and instinctive as opposed to our cortex (the part of the brain we use for thinking).

Often referred to as the fear or stress centre of our brain, it’s where our fear response is controlled. An overactive amygdala puts your brain and body into a fear response – fight/flight/freeze/survival. Leading to feelings of stress and anxiety. It is present in every mammal on Earth.

Does the thought of standing in front of an audience or audition panel fill you with fear? Your life may not be in danger, but to your limbic system, it doesn’t know the difference. Your heart rate raises, you may be short of breath, dry mouth, rigid body – all signs of fight or flight engagement in the brain, taking it out on our body and nervous system.

The feeling of anxiety is our body’s response to perceived threat, putting your nervous system into ‘high alert”. People can become so used to being on high alert from real or imagined threat, that stress hormones (adrenaline and cortisol) flood into your system. They wind up feeling emotional, irritable and exhausted with a body and brain that thinks it’s always in danger, at risk of inflammation and disease.

For actors, perhaps you can see the link between the potential dangers of the use of emotional memory and the real (and imagined) stress and anxiety this then places on your mind and body. You may also see the link between stress, anxiety, emotion and memory – hence why we can find it so difficult to master learning lines quickly.

Kinesiology’s innate intelligence to get to the root of an issue – be it a deeply-rooted unconscious emotional response, nutritional stress, pathogen or spiritual block, can relieve the stress on your nervous system and switch that Amygdala response from fight or flight back to safety.

A mind, body and spirit in balance allows the space for growth, happiness and overall wellbeing.

As well as being our Melbourne Meisner and Acting With Passion teacher, Erica is also a qualified life coach, Kinesiologist and Sekhem Energy healer. You can read more about her by clicking the link below.

Reposted with permission from www.livingtruthfully.com.au