Be a Tree
Posted on | May 9, 2010 | 6 Comments
There is an exercise that is often taught in acting classes, and most actors hate it. They not only hate it, they deride it and spend countless years after their initial training parodying it and using it as an example of why it’s completely useless to study acting. That exercise is to “Be a Tree.”
It’s an exercise that I actually like, although I teach it slightly differently, I think, than some do.
- Stand or sit. Standing is probably better, but it isn’t really important.
- Shut your eyes or keep them open. Actually, keeping them open might work better for various reasons, but again, it isn’t really important.
- Feel your roots. Here’s where it gets squidgy for some actors. “I don’t have any roots,” they think. Feel them anyway. Feel them spreading out into the ground beneath you. Feel them pulling water and nutrients from the soil. Feel the moisture moving up them into your trunk.
- Feel your trunk. Same as above. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have one. Feel the rough bark on your surface, the more spongy interior that is pulling the water from your roots and sending it up to your branches and leaves, that is taking the energy from your leaves down to your roots so they can grow further out into the soil.
- Feel your branches and leaves. Feel the warm sunlight shining on your leaves and the energy you pull from it and send down your trunk to your roots.
- Feel the breeze moving your leaves, your branches. The gentle sway it causes.
- Notice the squirrel running up your trunk and down your branches. Notice the family of birds there. Hear the chicks begging the parents for food.
- Stay with this for a while.
Why do I like this exercise? Besides that I’m odd and think it’s fun (I once pretended to be a salmon swimming upstream to spawn), it also opens up your ability to imagine, to experience that which is, by definition, foreign to you. As a writer, you will often require of yourself that you develop and make real something you haven’t and couldn’t experience. Your ability to imagine it fully and viscerally is vital. The more you practice this, the easier it is when you need it.
So, be a tree.
~Geoff Hoff
Co-author of the how-to guide On Writing a Short Story.
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Photo by Dave Eadie – copyrighted but licensed for further reuse
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May 9th, 2010 @ 9:10 am
B-R-A-V-O. Masterful exercise and right to the point for writers. The only place I’d differ: How different are we from trees really? Perhaps they are foreign, but other people can be foreign to us also. Maybe I’m getting too metaphysical. Ah well. I’m including a link to this in one of my last two #blog30 posts, along with a link to your “sense detail” post. Thanks Geoff.
Bobbye Middendorf
The Write Synergies Guru
.-= Bobbye Middendorf´s last blog ..Write Synergies: What It Means — Blog Challenge Post 25 =-.
May 9th, 2010 @ 9:28 am
[...] in full blooms, some blossoms spent, the sweet peonies to come, still tight in their closed layers, leaves vibrating in the excitement of a breeze, the maple seeds helicoptering [...]
May 9th, 2010 @ 11:00 am
I did it, I did it. I imagined my roots squirming their way through the slightly chilled earth and I reeeeally felt it like it was squishing up between my toes. The breeze came along and I swayed gently to and fro, but doncha just hate it when the squirrel runs up your trunk without cutting his toenails first? Gggrin! OOOuch! LOL! Thanks for again another great blog post.
.-= Kate´s last blog ..Conversion Architecture — The Art of Visually Identifying Your Company’s Primary Sales Funnels =-.
May 9th, 2010 @ 12:00 pm
Bobbye – That is the point, to make something foreign to us familiar, so we can, as they all tell us, write what we know.
Kate – thank you again!
May 14th, 2010 @ 12:15 pm
Thanks, Geoff — I love this! As a screenwriter, I’ve heard of this exercise and seen the mocking of it here and there, but I never thought of trying it myself. You gave a great step-by-step “How to” and I really enjoyed the process. Wow, very nice.
your happiness guru,
Evelyn
.-= Evelyn Roberts Brooks´s last blog ..Weekend Be-Happier Tip#20 =-.
May 14th, 2010 @ 2:12 pm
Evelyn,
Thanks! I’ve always loved this one, but, then again, I’ve always been a bit odd!