Acting Poetry and Hypnosis An Entry into the Subconscious Mind
[Applause]
[Music]
as an actor
i can’t reach to play characters on the
big screen
but i have a thin body and a small face
not enough masculine grace you’re not
manlina
they say but today my feelings will see
the light of day
no no we’re not foes here it goes
i have some questions some apprehensions
such as why should he see a shrink if he
likes the color pink
and why should she do if she likes the
color clue
who decided these molds who made these
gender roles
what gives them their hold no there’s
nothing bored about calling someone tiny
about calling someone fat your ego
isn’t shiny and your morality is a death
your body is shaming which is just
blaming your own inadequacies on another
person’s
build no there’s nothing skilled you’re
just
wrong yes there’s no rhyme there but i
don’t really care i know i’m a poet and
i don’t need to show it
but here’s something you need to know
the size of your brain
it needs to grow
using poetry to tell my story feels
extremely cathartic
catharsis is when an open expression of
emotions
provides mental relief and
maybe the reason why we find art so
cathartic
is because it allows an open expression
of emotions
and today i’m going to talk about how
hypnosis
acting and poetry provide an entry to
the subconscious mind
clinical hypnosis is a technique that
allows us to access
the subconscious mind i
before i became an actor i studied
psychology
and i specialize as a clinical
hypnotherapist and past life regression
therapist
and i started treating patients using
clinical hypnosis
now in clinical hypnosis there are
multiple things that can be done
and it’s basically a technique that is
used to access
that hidden part of your mind that is
usually beyond our awareness
called the subconscious mind
there are multiple techniques of
inducing a hypnotic trance
and there are multiple things that can
be done once a trance is induced
memories can be accessed from a present
or past life
you can heal an inner child which is a
younger version of yourself
that may have experienced a trauma but
how is the subconscious mind related to
art and cinema
content can be called successful based
on the number of hearts it touches
in industry language content that
resonates with the majority
is called masi content
cinema and art simply represent the
collective fantasies
of the masses in literature we call
these
collective mental elements psychic
archetypes or the universal themes
present
across humankind which when effectively
embodied in literature
evoke a profound response from the
audience because we
share the same psychic archetypes
expressed by the author
psychoanalyst renowned psychoanalyst
carl jung
called these collective mental elements
the psychic
residue of repeated patterns of
experience
that survive in the collective
unconscious of the human race
and are expressed in dreams literature
fantasies and cinema
and when i look at my own work i think
this makes sense
my poems are based on my life
experiences with issues such as
gender roles body shaming and human
rights
and when i started sharing my story
through poetry
it seemed to resonate with the masses
thousands of people began liking and
sharing my poems
i remember a female son to be married
messaged me
about how her fiance wasn’t masculine
enough
but how my poem on gender roles made her
realize
that not his masculinity but his heart
is what is going to stay with them
my story resonated with her story the
content of my subconscious mind
resonated with the content of her
subconscious mind and it is
the shared mental feelings that strike a
chord
between audience and artists
in order to create content that
resonates with my audience’s
suffering or celebration i must first
explore
my own suffering or celebration and my
acting course was basically a deep dive
into self-exploration every day i had to
unlearn and confront
aspects of myself that i didn’t even
know existed
and then i had to channelize my emotions
into scenes characters and scripts
initially i kept getting feedback that
the audience couldn’t see the real
me in a scene that i was playing
my version of a character rather than
the character my acting coach told me to
just be myself in the scene
he told me to just bring myself and my
version of the character into the scene
rather than a super imposed version of
the character into the scene
and one day i was tired of trying to get
it right so i just brought myself into
the scene and tried being myself
that was the day that my scene got
applaused because it looked believable
organic and natural acting was no longer
about pretending
to be a character it was about becoming
the character
i started channelizing these new
versions of myself into male and female
characters
that i created for my content on
that’s tanya an exotic french diva
who doesn’t understand indian culture
but lives in mumbai
that’s tanya promoting a bollywood film
interviewing
actors rajkumar and others as part of
the movie promotion
another main character i create is
chacha chaturvedi
an old school man who grew up on a farm
in a village
he doesn’t understand millennials or
social media culture
but he only speaks in hindi another
female character i created is tiakabul
she is an interesting character with an
interesting backstory
the reason i love creating and acting
characters
is because when i get to act i get to
create the inner world of a new
individual
and operate from a new mental space
which is a refreshing feeling
and now my characters have developed an
audience of admirers
not to mention some awkward requests
such as wanting to tackle tanya’s
autograph
on their body can you imagine that the
same person who had been bullied
for not being masculine enough was now
being celebrated for his female
characters
this tells us something interesting
about stereotypes and biases
they limit us from accessing sides of
our own self that we suppress
and hide because we don’t really find
acceptance in society
and then we create characters and films
to live the drives that we didn’t allow
ourselves to live
but it’s the year 2020. it’s the
beginning of
a new decade and i believe it’s time to
start telling real stories that are a
departure from stereotypical content
because the more reality finds
representation online and in cinema
the more everyone’s collective anxiety
will be reduced
because we no longer need to pursue the
unrealistic ideals of beauty
and romance that we see in cinema
we’re all different and the more we
accept people for being original and
don’t condemn them
for being different the more freshness
we will start seeing
in society we need to learn to celebrate
art for what it is without forcing
people
into boxes or as the french say art
or art for the sake of art because
you’re not weird you’re original
my study of myself began
when i started attending the discourses
of spiritual leader puja gurudev
and it is his discourses that helped me
better understand
and nourish myself i believe
that if you can convert your scars into
your stars
then you’re an artist for example
growing up
i had acne this gave me scars across
my face many call them a disgrace
someone once told me every morning
through
splash your face with piss this is the
secret
to clear skin bliss a stranger once
pointed to my acne covered face and said
do you have chickenpox what are these
spots on your head
defeated i said no sorry this is my skin
and sorry it doesn’t grow
but about natural processes and hormones
who is expected to know
either i’m too fat or too thin or i have
a double chin
or i need to go to the gym to build my
mastic like
body society i am sorry that i am
scrawny
but it is your brain that needs a
workout not my body and for her double
chin do not make her feel sorry for
every food that someone holds carries
the story to be told
let’s be done with these more than these
narrow-minded worlds
because darling we are gold this is our
story
and it will be told because darling we
are
gold this is our story and it will be
told