Change Your Life Through Laban Movements

“Why, then, ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.”

Shakespeare Act II, Scene II “Hamlet”

We’ve talked a lot in the past about how your physical body can inform your mind. It’s a fact that changes in your use of the physical body can result in chemical changes that affect your moods. We’ve discussed how deep breathing and a relaxing of your posture can result in increased happiness. So knowing how the study of movement can cause a reevaluation in the brain, perhaps it isn’t such a far fetched idea that something like Laban technique could cause the same reevaluation. But it isn’t simply the moods that Laban can change, it is your perception of the world and how you live in it.

The first portion of the technique, created by Rudolph Laban, deals with qualifying and quantifying statements about four categories of effort. By choosing one of two choices under the categories of Weight, Space, Time and Flow, and actor can begin to narrow the scope of a movement and gain an understanding of how and why they move. I love Laban because I find it to be a wonderful brainstorming technique when you are first beginning the physical explorations of a character. It’s a great method to play with just to get your creative juices flowing. By far the best things about Laban, however, is it’s usefulness in your everyday life without being restricted only to the actor or the dancer.

The choices of effort categories go like this:

Weight:

Strong – or – Light

Space:

Direct – or – Indirect

Time:

Urgent – or – Sustained

Flow:

Free – or – Bound

So we see that at this phase of Laban we are relatively limited in our choices, but they are no less extraordinary in their potential. These choices qualify your use of your body, or mind even. Any movement your make has either a strong or light weight effort. Each use of space is direct or indirect efforts. Your use of time is either an urgent or a sustained effort and the flow of your energy expended is free or bound.

In your life off of the stage do you ever find yourself efforting so much that you’re in pain for no apparent reason? Many people feel this way behind the wheel of a car when they hunch forward and grip the steering wheel, or bite their tongue while concentrating. I myself find that a tensing of the neck happens quite frequently while sitting in front of my computer. But is it really necessary to put that much effort into either of those tasks? Couldn’t I drive just as effectively with a relaxed grip and my head against the head rest, or read my screen sitting back in my chair? Why do people feel such a compulsive need to place so much effort into tasks that do not require it? Why do we like to choose a strong weight effort? The answer is that we generally feel that if we are not tensed with effort we are not being productive.

As you walk through your day do you find that your actions are direct, or indirect? The answer probably depends on what that particular action is. If you were to, say, get up from your desk to grab a cup of coffee in your office one morning, you would probably not choose a direct effort. You would wander very slowly to the coffee machine, poor your coffee and then take the long way back to your desk in the hopes of killing some time to avoid work you don’t want to do right now. If, however, you were to arrive home with a severe need to for a restroom, you’d probably take the most direct route possible; heading straight for the bathroom without the slightest glance to either side. Ask yourself right now, how much more time would you have in your day and how much more could you achieve in that time, if you completed all of your tasks in the most direct way possible?

When people think about time we tend to focus on our lack of time rather than our abundance of time. Any success coach will tell you that focusing on lack rather than abundance will only result in more lack. We go through our lives convinced that we don’t have enough time in the day to get done all that is required of us. But Laban gives us the choice of how to view our use of time. Is our usage sustained, or urgent? Better put: Do you see one hour remaining on a timer and say that’s a long time, or say that’s not very long at all? The difference is all the difference. We tend to rush and make mistakes when we believe that we have very little time, whereas we find ourselves relaxed and steadily productive when we have all the time in the world.

What if we were to shift our perception of time in our everyday lives and begin to believe that one hour is an incredibly long time? Could we get more done? In my experience we can. It is that group which says that one hour is a short amount time, for whom hours seem to fly by without accomplishment. Those who view one hour as an eternity can get quite a bit done. What would happen if you would take just one day out of your life to try believing that you have more than enough time to complete all of your daily tasks and still have free time left over? You will find that your prophecy comes true and that somehow you have completed everything you set out to do in record time. Remember what Henry Ford said: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you are right.”

Most people don’t realize that life is all in how you perceive it. Life’s restrictions are merely a series of qualifying statements that you believe are true. Did you know that it has been discovered that the more your brain is told it is bad at certain tasks, the worse it actually becomes at said task? Your brain literally begins to change shape to fulfill your prophecy. Belief is everything. So what if we began using Laban’s choices to change your beliefs about your daily routines?

If you begin to believe that you don’t need to expend such a strong weight effort to drive your car, you’ll find yourself becoming more energetic and less stressed throughout your day because of all of the work you’re no longer doing. If you believe that your use of space is always direct you find you get more done, simply because you are cutting out all of the dead time you once used to procrastinate. Start telling yourself that you have more than enough time and you’ll find that you never feel rushed and you can tend to do more, and better, work. Tell yourself that everything about you flows freely and you’ll begin to find that life begins to unfold before you with ease and creative ideas simply come into your head without the slightest effort.

Remember as you go through life that nothing in this universe is forced, everything happens at a natural and steady pace. Grass doesn’t effort to grow, rain doesn’t strain to fall. The tasks that you think are difficult, or time consuming are only so because you believe they are. Use these Laban choices to expand not only your physical characterizations onstage, but your use of your body and mind offstage.

Sin Boldly!

Want to Share? Bookmark this Post to: