Cara Winterbottom

[This article is part of a series about how to craft an intentional life using ideas and tools from Constantin Stanislavski’s acting system for working on our inner motive forces. Previous article: Intellect ] The previous article was about intellect as one of Stanislavski’s inner motive forces that drive us to action. Here, I describe observation, one of the tools of intellect. It may seem strange to claim observation as one of Stanislavski’s tools and devote an article to it, as it’s a broad, well-understood concept; Stanislavski certainly can’t be credited for being the first to note its value. We naturally observe the world around us, and observation is a core method in psychology, the sciences, the arts, and in meditation practices like mindfulness. Stanislavski found observation to be of primary importance in understanding ourselves and the world around us. He described its use extensively, and I have already shared some of his teachings in this series of articles. The practice o...

[This article is part of a series about how to craft an intentional life using ideas and tools from Constantin Stanislavski’s acting system for working on our inner motive forces. Introduction: The Triumvirate of Consciousness ] Intellect is one of the three inner motive forces that drive us to action, the other two being emotion and will. If we want to act positively, effectively and intentionally, then we need to work on strengthening our understanding of and influence over each of the three motive forces. Here, I consider intellect. Our intellect is the part of us that thinks, learns, understands, dreams, imagines, plans and forms beliefs. It is both the seat of our rationality and the source of our wildest fantasies. This ability to operate with logic and coherence, and imagine wonderful prospects makes the intellect a powerful engine. However, it is also the part of us that becomes deluded, ruminates, paralyses us with indecision, and takes shortcuts in thinking which result in bi...

[This article is part of a series about how to craft an intentional life using ideas and tools from Constantin Stanislavski’s acting system for working on our inner motive forces. Previous article: Tempo & Rhythm Part 1: Awareness ] In the previous article, I described movement as a sensory activity. For Stanislavski, tempo-rhythm is the mechanism through which movement affects our emotions. He considered it to have a direct effect on our feelings and vice versa. He showed that we have both external tempo-rhythms, relating to the movement of our limbs and the quality of our interactions, and internal tempo-rhythms, which relate to the agitation of our feelings and thoughts. The observation exercise described in that article is about increasing our awareness of our own inner and outer tempo-rhythms, and those of others. The breathing exercise showed how just changing the tempo-rhythm of breathing could effect one’s emotional state. In this article, I describe a few exercises taken f...

[This article is part of a series about how to craft an intentional life using ideas and tools from Constantin Stanislavski’s acting system for working on our inner motive forces. Previous article: Emotion Memory Part 2: Shaping ] In previous articles, I discussed our senses and how they bring to life our emotions. Here, I explore how movement and action do the same. Movement has sensory components. Many theorists consider kinaesthesia and equilibrioception as additional senses to hearing, vision, smell, taste and touch. Kinaesthetic or proprioceptive sense is how we feel our bodies: the position and movement of our limbs and muscles, our sense of effort or force applied in any action. Equilibrioception is our sense of balance and spatial orientation, so is a combination of a sense of ourselves and our environment. Stanislavski felt strongly that movement and action were crucial tools in accessing and shaping emotions and other psychological experiences. He spoke of tempo-rhythm as the...

[This article is part of a series about how to craft an intentional life using ideas and tools from Constantin Stanislavski’s acting system for working on our inner motive forces. Previous article: Emotion Memory Part 1: Exploration ] I have discussed emotions and described emotion memory and sense memory in previous articles. These included exercises to explore one’s emotions and emotion memory, and exercises on how our senses of touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight affect us emotionally and trigger memories. Here, I discuss how we can shape our memories over time. I also describe an exercise that uses your senses to shape your mood. While some memories and the emotions they generate seem carved in stone, they can change over time. We can work to nudge this change in a positive direction through deliberate reflection. Stanislavski shows us a way of working with and crafting our memories in this excerpt about the experience of witnessing an accident: “[Immediately after viewing an ac...

[This article is part of a series about how to craft an intentional life using ideas and tools from Constantin Stanislavski’s acting system for working on our inner motive forces. Previous article: Emotion ] The previous article was about emotions as one of Stanislavski’s inner motive forces that drive us to action. Here, I describe emotion memory and related sense memory.  When we remember events and people that meant a lot to us, we feel an echo of the emotions that we felt about them. This is emotion memory, also called affective memory. As Stanislavski put it: “ Just as your visual memory can reconstruct an inner image of some forgotten thing, place or person, your emotion memory can bring back feelings you have already experienced. They may seem to be beyond recall, when suddenly a suggestion, a thought, a familiar object will bring them back in full force. Sometimes the emotions are as strong as ever, sometimes weaker, sometimes the same strong feelings will come back but in ...