Habits

Today's first activity--walking to and standing at the forefront of the circle and extending physical awareness--reminded me of Rodenberg's discussion of "habits." She talks about disempowering vocal habits that are conditioned into us, from "devoicing" and speaking too softly to over-aggression and pushing the voice. She also discusses how these can be linked to posture--slouching, hiding, inward-turning, or over-straightening. What I feel like today really pulled out for me was some of my physical habits--disempowering habits of my non-verbal "voice." I've been working on taming these since I began storytelling, trying to learn to ground and center myself. It surprised me today, though, that even as I was especially conscious of trying to be rooted, I noticed little non-verbal communicative "habits" popping up. Stepping sideways. Putting one foot behind the other to take up less space. Unconscious shifting. Worst of all, tightening throughout the stomach: hard to breathe like that, but it's an absolutely automatic habit when I'm nervous; it takes conscious effort to release. I'm starting to think that in conjunction with the right to speak comes the right to take up space. It's sort of the right to speak non-verbally. And when we feel disenfranchised from it, negative unconscious patterns result that end up limiting and warping our communication. For me, extending awareness to every corner of the room, as well as focusing attention outward on our classmates, helped me regain a bit of a sense of that right.