We danced in temples

Last year, I headed off to my motherland, Kerala, India, to study human emotions and their expression through the eyes, facial muscles and body with my teacher, Koodiyattam (an ancient dance form from Kerala) exponent, Guru Venu G. The course is based on a collection of 2000+ verses written by a sage, Bharata, between 500 BC and 500 AD, called the Natyashastra.

I thought this was “just” another acting workshop. And I did become a much better actor. But after 45 days of rigorous practice and study, I was swearing up and down to everyone who would listen that this was THE path to awakening. Or enlightenment. Or if that scares you, it was the way to go beyond the chatter of our minds, the echo chambers that we are born into, stories that we are given by our families - good or bad, and experience first-hand something real, true, unchanging.

Each phase of the workshop was 15 days long and I did three phases back to back. Each phase of the course primarily dealt with the “nava” nine “rasas” emotional states that every person experiences, namely:

• Shringara: Love or beauty

• Hasya: Laughter or joy

• Karuna: Compassion or sorrow

• Raudra: Anger

• Veera: Courage or heroism

• Bhayanaka: Fear or terror

• Bibhatsa: Disgust

• Adbutha: Surprise or wonder

• Shanta: Peace or tranquility

“Shringaram”

We evoked these emotions through mythological stories (like how a demon king lifted a gigantic mountain to prove his might and courage), choreography from Koodiyattam and improvisation based on themes (such as poverty, physical sickness, death of a loved one and so on). We practiced intense eye and facial muscle exercises to ensure we relied on these more than words to emote.

I wish I could write about every single insight I had over this period. I wish I could capture every moment when things around me seemed right and everything fell into place, where this insane and intense roller coaster called life finally seemed like it had a point and purpose. But that would take pages and years. I’ll stick to my main one. Everything is a story.

After a decade of doing impro, I’m a little ashamed that this didn’t click earlier. After being in multiple shows a week, playing characters so different from one another, picking stories up out of the universal group consciousness, playing them with careful reverence, only to let go of it and then doing it all over again - this muscle of holding and dropping stories is pretty well worked out now.

Once the Navarasa practice started to take hold, after summoning emotions on command for weeks, I thought about all those times when I was overwhelmed by emotions. At the time, it seemed like there was no other way to respond to the situation. Tears, hurtful words or burning bridges was the only way - but a new possibility had emerged. A two-step process: drop the emotional charge of the story, and then drop the story.

The net result of this was a pleasant falling away of how solid my own stories seemed. Who I thought I was and wanted others to see me as, my history, fears and achievements, traumas, screw-ups, dreams, aspirations, Balasree Viswanathan. POOF.

This is not to say there’s no mind chatter - it's always going to be there I think. But I feel like I’ve found the remote. And the mind chatter television is simply not my thing anymore. Click.