Expanding our possibilities through the lens of improv: How improv lessons/tenets can upgrade our perception of ourselves and the way we show up in the world and for ourselves.
Do you always feel like you’re on the brink of being more than you are? You have value, you might even consider yourself successful or accomplished and you generally like yourself and appreciate your life. Still, you hold back, you second-guess yourself. Maybe you are hovering at the edge of your spotlight on your own stage, not quite trusting yourself to step into it.
Here’s a notion: Try improv. Not performing, not making people laugh (although that can be natural side effect), but using the tools and tenets of improv to work (play) through what’s holding you back. Exploring how communication works and your own in parlicular, how we can say yes to ourselves and become more powerful versions of ourselves when we learn to trust.
I call this “finding your light” because in the theater, improv or otherwise, it is the phrase used to make sure you’re seen. If we perform in the shadows we can’t be seen. This is an obvious metaphor for life, of course: some of us shy away from the light (expressing our real-est selves) for numerous valid yet irrelevant reasons (that’s a question for therapy!), but life hovering at the edges of the light or deep in the shadows keeps us from being our best selves — all we have bubbling inside us — in the world. This is not to say we all want or even need to perform in the actual limelight — heaven forfend! No, if there is a need at all it is in allowing our authentic, open, brilliant and curious self to exist unburdened by our own judgements and recriminations, wherever we are and whatever we do.
Improv led me to discover a richer version of myself that I’d always suspected I had in me but didn’t know how to access. It was a path that susprised me and if I knew then what I know now, this is what I would have asked myself:
What are you afraid of that holds you back? (exposure) What if you acted as though you had nothing to expose? How can owning your vulnerability give you more confidence and personal power? How can you overcome these blocks?
My answer is deceptively simple: play games and laugh.
Find Your Light Sessons include:
Conversation and discovery of who you are and who you know you can be, what holds you back, what you “think” is missing and how to reframe it
Improv play to experientially understand why your behavior, presence and communication styles reap what they do
Group learning option to explore the tools and your emerging self in a safe, supportive, playful group Zoom environment
Over time you can hone the skills that make improv work successfully and even brilliantly, applying them to your own life, interactions with others, how you present in the world, and how you perceive yourself.
Optional text.
Our first session will begin with a discussion on where you are, how you feel about yourself and what you perceive as “lacking” (which, frankly isn’t lacking, merely undiscovered or underexplored)
We’ll then delve into various improv games and exercises to see where you show up easily and what feels challenging. You’ll begin to make connections between these games and your life and relationships, how you communicate and how others may perceive you. You may want to have just one or two sessions to see what it’s about and what comes up, or you may wish to have weekly sessions for a period of time. There are no “shoulds” here but naturally the more you do, the more you’ll feel the shifts.
Optional Addition: You may wish to participate in weekly group play Zoom sessions in order to practice what you’re learning in a group setting.