 Hey there um so there's so many people out for uh so where's my my camera? I want to look at you. Okay um so there's so many people who are out for interviews and who are working on their storytelling skills and what I notice when I'm rehearsing with people who are looking at their who are working on their on their storytelling skills is they're very stiff so they're very stiff um in their bodies um and it might be because we're spending sorry my dog's trying to get in um because we're spending so much time um just talking to screens that we have forgotten how to use our bodies um but I'm finding people are really quite stiff and when I say you know when you're when you're getting ready for the job interview practice saying things out loud like practice saying it out loud um and when I when I say that then the way that they're practicing out loud is to like grab their piece of paper and just stand into it um the very like a big part of storytelling is yeah the story and the elements of story but when you actually have to speak it when you are saying it to someone so much is about how you're using your body right it's about like the pauses and you know the voices that you use and all of that but a big part of it is using your body so if you're telling um several like in a job interview if you're telling several stories about yourself and you're just a screen um when you don't mix it up a little bit with some bodied language um by expressing yourself in in different ways it can start to really feel like the one tone and I think we've all seen that so I would like to teach you an exercise today on how we can start to develop some of the skills that help us to express you know develop the way that we express ourselves so that we can develop creativity so that we can develop bounce um some spontaneity and be okay in trusting our bodies right yeah and yeah absolutely awareness is so huge um so the practice that I'm teaching today is a mindfulness practice and so often in mindfulness people think it's you know we sit with our eyes closed and we meditate and that's absolutely a big part of mindfulness but another mindfulness practice that was used only by like a small group of monks would do would do this practice and it's called uh yeah spontaneous body beautiful yeah it's called auto move so we're going to try this exercise the cool thing is is that you can try auto move you can try it um it doesn't need to be a 10 minute practice it could be you're sitting at your computer and you go okay for one minute I'm just going to let my body move how it wants to and be open to that experience and you can allow that to happen so it doesn't need to be a long a long time we're going to do a short like five minute practice so maybe to first just warm up um and again you and you can do this practice I'm doing it standing up if you're sitting you can do it sitting down if you happen to be lying down like you can do it lying down too um yeah we're sitting standing um on the floor whatever works for you um but first let's just practice tuning into our bodies I'm being intentional about our movement so with your body can you make your can you make your body as small as it can get what does that look like make your body as small as it can get I'm going to kind of hunch on up on the stool but can you make your body as small as it can get and just hold it and just hold it and then you can come out so the cool thing about that is that we had the intention so we knew that we wanted to make our bodies small that was our intention we told our body like I'm going to get small and we smooshed in however whatever small looked like for each of us it would look different and when we did it we may not have had an idea of what it was going to look like when I got small I was surprised because my my toes started to um I got a squish down on the stool and then my toes kind of curled in and that was like my body was like we can go even smaller I didn't think oh I have to make my toes even smaller so our bodies are doing things spontaneously even being aware of it we're aware it's doing so anyhow and we can trust that it's doing that and we can have the intention and and we're safe and and also everybody each one of you if you actually physically got small you would all all our smalls would look different right so if you're in a classroom together all being small we would all be we would all look different and nobody would be doing it wrong so our bodies can also express themselves in unique ways and we can honor that that's wonderful okay let's try the opposite of that can you make your body as big as it possibly can make it as big I'm gonna back up how big your body right and again we had the intention right so we had the intention of I'm gonna make my body as big as it can be um and though we did not know what it was gonna look like and all our bigs would look different some of you might have been like this like you know like big and heavy whereas I was going light and and trying to stretch out so again we can we can take on unique shapes and we can tell our bodies and we may not know what it ends up looking like if we are always telling our bodies what to do so if in a day you're not doing anything unusual with your body you wake up the same you do the same kind of stretch when you wake up and go to the washroom um you know the way that you make cook like the way that you make coffee or tea in the morning the way that you sit and meditate the way you sit at your office chair the way you watch tv if the way that you are always walking around your day to day is the same movements and it's just like a little bit of stretch um you know crossing your arms probably a lot maybe slumping then these then these this is all your your body knows how to do and when you're trying to tell an interesting story and trying to connect if you only have the small limit you're limiting your abilities as a storyteller so we're going to do we're now going to try this thing called auto move um it looks really silly i'll just start with that with you're gonna see it and anyone who didn't hear this introduction might go what is Harry doing but what i'm doing is just going okay so how about i just let my body just practice trusting it and practice letting it express itself and let's see what it does when i stop being um the person who has to control the movement and i just allow movement to go through me and the more i do a practice like this the more comfortable i get when i am speaking to people in the way that i might express myself and the way that my body moves that helps people get interested in the stories that i'm telling and the more comfortable i feel in my body because you know you know we trust each other so here's how it works we are simply going to start from a neutral spot you can close your eyes if you want or have them open and what you're paying attention to is any sort of any sort of urge you have like a bubbling up that your body wants to move and it and it's not you're not going oh i'm going to raise my hand it's more your your noticing an urge from within your body that's saying like i want to do this and the question i like to ask is just how do you want to move right now and then you just allow and there's no judgment see it's great we're all working from home right there's no judgment and how it expresses you're just allowing it and seeing hey if you were in charge how might you move and if you find yourself judging the movement just come back try come back to neutral and just wait for that urge and your movements might be really small they might be micro if you're sitting it might just be a little movement with your finger or it might be huge movements or fast movements mine are very mine are slow today so we're just paying attention and allowing our bodies to move in a way that they want to and just being open to allowing it and this is very low stakes right we don't have a camera on you but it's low stakes and moving in an unusual way might open something up for us we'll make us more expressive people but there's no job on the line we're gonna lose anything by doing this and you might be using more of the room i'm kind of missing looks in one spot if you are at a desk or at work and you're like here i can't display all around you might just to give permission for everything from the shoulders up to move how it wants to but how are we going to express ourselves in new ways and unique ways if we never even listen to our bodies we'll never play you get distracted by the movement you can just go yeah come back to that urge how does my body want to move and then we're gonna slowly bring it back slowly come back to our bodies and now is a good time at the end of an auto move practice is a good time to chill in and just go how did that feel do i feel happy here and do i feel like i have more energy and bounce and it's not that you're going to you know it's not that i did this movement and that's going to become part of the way that i tell a story but i know that when i do tell a story that i am more open in my body to express myself and make it better a better experience for me and a better experience for the person i'm telling it to so i like to do this practice short usually you know one to five minutes a couple times a week just to make sure that i'm staying in touch with my body and helping to do practices that nurture my creativity and my expression and my energy and allow that bounce in my life right so thank you for joining me for this short practice i hope it was enjoyable for you yeah and happy happy auto moving and happy storytelling beautiful to see you okay bye