How Ideas From Taoism Can Help Your Craft
How an ancient philosophy centered my mind and made me more creative
Taoism. That old philosophy you may have heard of in an “world religions” class. Or maybe you were in the bookstore and passed by a copy of “Tao and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” Or “Tao and the Art of Standup Comedy.” Or even one of my personal favorites that relate to this topic, “The Tao of Show Business.” If you’re an actor, which I assume that you are considering what this article is about, and HAVEN’T read this book, I can’t recommend it highly enough to get your career on the right track. But today, we’re going to be going over a few things that I’ve learned from Taoism and how it’s helped my career as an actor through the principles of yin and yang, wu wei, mediation, and flow.
Yin and Yang
Regardless of whether you’ve heard of Taoism or not, I’m sure most if not all of you have at least seen this symbol before. This is the Yin and Yang and one of the core symbols and beliefs of Taoism. It’s the principle that in all darkness there is light. In all evil, there is some good. That the world is in a constant back and forth struggle between calm and chaos. Between order and disorder, and that all conflicting forces are actually connected. That they naturally complement one another. If you’re a fan of Avatar the Last Airbender, you’d already have been introduced to Yin and Yang, most notably shown at the end of season one “The Siege to the North.” And if you’re a Legend of Korra fan as well, you would’ve seen it quite clearly throughout Book Two, “Spirits,” with Raava and Vaatu. Both of these shows do such a wonderful job to encapsulate eastern spirituality practices like Buddhiusm, Shintoism, and Taoism.
The idea of yin and yang can help in multiple ways throughout your life and your work. As I mentioned, yin and yang is the concept that within all of us is everything. Good, bad, male, female, positive, negative. When you’re building a character for the stage, screen, or voiceover, you must willingly accept all the good and bad things about them without judgement; using things within yourself that you might not get to express in “polite society.” You must look into your own self and draw what you can from the inside first, building out this wholly new, not yet realized being using imagination, past experience, and movement work.
Take a look at the outstanding performance Heath Ledger did for The Dark Knight. Heath locked himself in a hotel room for weeks, digging out and investigating the many, many parts of himself that he had inside of him. That’s why we gravitate to actors and performances such as this one. They are raw, unbridled, and slightly dangerous. Unfortunately, Heath lost himself in the process which always reminds me of a quote from a former acting teacher I had who said
“You must be 90% the character. The other 10% is making sure you don’t jump off the stage and kill someone” (or in this case, yourself).
These are the performances we can get by accepting everything inside ourselves. Both the yin and yang.
Wu Wei
Another core principle of Taoism is that of “wu wei,” which translates to “effortless action” or the “doing of not doing.” Not to be confused with doing nothing, wu wei is the belief that the more that you let things flow naturally, the better off life will be. It is letting the universe take the lead instead of trying to constantly control what is happening inside and outside of yourself.
Acting as a career is such a fickle job. The performance life in general, especially when you’re just starting out, is on such shaky ground. You’re never 100% sure of where your next paycheck is or when it’s going to come, you don’t know who you’ll have to work with on the next project, and if you’re not in a union, you don’t have many rights or regulations protecting you at work.
If you’re in film and television you’re probably used to having to self tape for just about everything you do. You have now become the actor, director, and cinematographer in charge of decent enough sound, lighting, and camera quality to book the big role that’ll make mom proud. Maybe it goes through your agent, maybe it goes directly through Actors Access, Backstage, or one of the many other different casting websites we feel obligated to pay for. Never getting to see the casting director, rarely getting notes, and never knowing if you did a good job or not.
This is where I have found Taoism plays a crucial role in my life. Wu wei teaches you not to care, or at least… not to hold on tight to whether you booked the role or didn’t. To clarify, this does not mean to neglect the work you have to do for that audition. Do not walk into the casting office unprepared, not memorized, touting “doing of non-doing.” Rather, that by applying the method of wu wei or effortless action, you walk out of the casting office or send your self tape and immediately after, let it go. Forget it. Throw your sides in the garbage. Whether you get it or not, is now completely out of your control. If you get the callback or book the role, how absolutely wonderful. If you don’t, how great it was to perform for those two to three minutes, and then ask yourself what is on the horizon.
I had another teacher who said something very similar.
“Once you leave the audition, in the elevator ride down, ask yourself ‘what worked, what didn’t.’ By the time you leave the building, forget the audition and move on to the next one.”
The more auditions that I went to, the more tapes that I self submitted, and the more I made a conscious choice to just let it go immediately after the audition, the easier it happened automatically and the happier I became. Auditions began to feel more like a mini performances rather than a chore that I had to do to survive. The work improved and I quickly began to book more frequently and take bigger steps in my career. One film led to the next, more connections were made, I landed representation, then I booked more work. With that money, I paid for the equipment for a voice over booth, and the cycle repeated itself. But everything truly began to snowball the more I put into practice the simple idea of wu wei.
This practice obviously isn’t limited to acting or performers but also job interviews, sports, and most importantly, daily life. Tony Robbins said it best when he said
“The habits we perform in private are what we are rewarded for in public.”
Meditation
Another key element of Taoism and most eastern practices is that of meditation. Meditation is at times still stigmatized. It’s sometimes believed that you must follow a certain religion or dogma to have a healthy meditation practice. This is simply not true. It can and most often is a large part of those religions or philosophies, but meditation is just a tool to center yourself, clear your mind, and become a healthier you. Now more than ever, our minds are bombarded with stimuli. Politics, coronavirus, and global warming are just a few things that can affect our moods on a global scale. Then we have all of our own individual issues. Relationships, family troubles, financial struggles… If we think of our minds like the ocean, when problems arise and thoughts come up, the waves grow many feet tall. Crashing upon the shores with such power that you are simply acting on impulse rather than breathing through it, thinking clearly, and responding to life.
To this, some of you might say “Acting is acting on impulse! If I meditate, I’m going to lose my edge! My spark! I’m just going to want to sit around and do nothing!”
To which I’ll say as actors, we must have a clear head before going into an audition, self taping, working on stage, on set, or on mic. “Acting is the ability to live truthfully under given imaginary circumstances” is how Sanford Meisner defined it. So how can we truthfully bring words to life if our minds are as the seas during a violent storm, thinking about 10,000 things that do not pertain to the work or the acting partner in front of us. We can’t. Or at least, it’s far more difficult to do than if we were to have some practice that brings our minds to ease on a daily basis. The impulses that you’re talking about must come from the person you’re playing across from, the environment, or the given circumstances of the project, not what our politicians are doing, not how our neighbor has wronged us, and not the weather. Again, “the habits we perform in private are what we are rewarded for in public.” Meditation is just just another habit we can add to aid us in our acting careers. If our bodies are our instruments, then our minds must be taken care of both on camera and off. Both our conscious and subconscious minds must be tended to. We speak of warm ups and warm downs for the work, but mainly for the body, the voice, and the articulators. But what of the mind?
When I learned how to meditate back in 2018 it was another monumental step in both my career and life. Life felt more like a game, and not one that I had to “win” but one that was just fun to play. Just like dancing, we don’t do it to get something or get somewhere, we just do it for the journey. And when you realize that’s what all of life is about, the journey, acting becomes a lot less stressful. The concept of wu wei and letting go becomes easier.
There are so many different styles of meditation that have been gone over so many times and ways I won’t get too much into that. There are tons of great channels and videos on YouTube to help you. I personally learned Transcendental Meditation which for me works the best, but whether it be vipassana or zen or one of the many other types, as an actor, I urge you to take the time to build this habit. Your mind and career will thank you.
Flow
The last idea from Taoism I’d like to go over here is flow. I mentioned it a bit before, but flow is that wonderful, blissful state we get in when we lose ourselves in whatever we’re doing and suddenly, hours have passed. Taoism is largely based on the idea of water, that simply adapting to your environment instead of hanging onto things is the Way. As actors we are constantly pressured to get into the flow state. Especially on camera, if you are not in the zone, the camera will see it in your eyes immediately. If you’re familiar with the Meisner technique then you know all about flow. That awesome moment when you and your partner are bouncing off each other, not focused on anyone watching, not looking at anything else except your partner’s behavior. You are vibing. You are riffing. This is flow. If you’re not familiar with the Meisner technique, don’t worry. If you’ve been on stage or on camera with your partner and felt super connected, then you were probably experiencing flow.
The opposite is also true. You very much know when you’re NOT in the flow state. You’re more focused on the audience or crew members than your partner. You’re so focused on doing the scene how you rehearsed it at home by yourself, that when you show up on set you don’t respond to your partner doing something different. You might not realize when you’re in flow all the time. But boy, do you know it when you’re not.
Training your attention and calming your mind through meditation can really help get you into the flow state quicker and easier for whatever purpose. Life, as I said, becomes more of a game. A fun adventure. A play.
May the Tao be with you, always.
