Relaxation: Voice 1

Relaxation
-Lying on the floor eyes closed
-Breathing just raising tummy, not chest
-Imagining lying on a favourite beach (Nahoon South Africa)
-Tensing pairs of muscles from feet upward, tense x3 then relax
-Music playing in the background
-Imagining holes in heels filling you up with water from the feet up
-Imagining the water draining out again from the head down

Helps voice:
It gets rid of tension around the core muscles and torso, where the organs and muscles you use and control your voice are,. This ridding of tension allows you to use them to its full potential, also decreasing the risk of damaging your voice as you should then be using it properly.

Helps body:
Releases unnecessary tension, mine particularly in my shoulders and upper back. By focusing on parts of the body instead of all at once allows you to focus in on specific muscles to relax them, taking this extra time shall be far more worthwhile, and is a more thorough relaxation technique than speeding through to save time. It also lets you become as neutral as possible, really being a blank canvas for new characters, who shall hold tension in other parts of their body that are different from yours. As well as this, if you are aching anywhere, it should ease that and your muscles should hurt far less or even not at all afterwards.

Alignment:
Task 1
In a pair, watching how the other person stands, where they hold tension, where they lead from, how they place their feet and how the body stacks on top of it etc. Analysing is lots of detail. Then we had to stand as that person.
Mandi: Feet are always turned out, knees slightly outwards also, torso is slightly forwards at an angle, making her shoulders lead and curve in. This makes her chest sink inwards, and makes her torso look smaller than it is.
How I stand:
Feet in parallel with knees unlocked. My shoulders are back but my arms are quite far forwards, my hands fall in front of my body instead of hanging down the sides of my body. I stand with my bum very much tucked underneath my body, so my core is usually always engaged so that my bum isn't stuck out overly arching my back.
Task 2
When we changed each others alignment, my lower torso was lengthened and my head from my shoulders, which let my arms fall back down the sides of my body instead of in front of it.

Flop and drop:
-Flop down, swooping from side to side to rid tension out of the arms and let the head fall heavy
-Someone stands behind and runs their fingers up your vertebrae on your back, as they do you uncurl up to standing, trying to uncurl each vertebrae as your partners fingers pass them. the head the last thing to come up as it is the heaviest. It allows you to focus on how the body uncurls to standing by going through each vertebrae instead of going straight to standing, which can sometimes be damaging to your back. It also can contribute to alignment, with letting your shoulders slide down your back and not be raised.

Pulling shoulders:
-In pairs, one takes the arm of their partner and stretches it by pulling slowly, as to release tension from their shoulder. Choosing the one that is higher than the other until they are equal
Mandi's shoulders:
As they are curled inwards, it curves the vertebrae at the top of her spine, making her look slightly smaller than she is, so trying to get them pushed back out so the shoulder blades are forwards but down the back was challenging! It wasn't so much the releasing tension of the shoulders, it was trying to get the top of the spine lengthened so her shoulders fell down properly, opening out the chest, making her broader which made her look taller.
My shoulders:
With carrying a heavy bag on my shoulders most of the time, my left shoulder was far higher than the right. As it was pulled, I could feel the tension out from my shoulders across and up my neck, and it was a lot of relief! Then my right was higher and the exercise had to be repeated on both shoulders twice before they were even. It showed there's a lot of tension in both shoulders, and getting someone to do that exercise for me releases. It opened up the gap between my shoulders to my head, again letting me appear taller.