Acting for good health

Could acting, pretending, or just plain using your imagination be a key to resolving some of our health problems? Children with tumours seem good at this, with research showing how they can control the effectiveness of chemotherapy and radiotherapy by imagining that the treatment entering their small bodies also contains tiny robots or space ships to knock out killer cancer cells.

What these brave kids do pays tribute to the French moralist and essayist Montaigne who wrote in 1580: ‘…children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious minded activity’.

Of course children are often better than adults at using their imagination; that is until grown-ups convince them otherwise.

But when imagination is translated into acting, kids seem to fare even better. Wasn’t it the 1930s actor W.C.Fields who said ‘never act with children or animals’ because they will out-perform you?

Yet there’s no reason why adults shouldn’t get on the bandwagon – especially if we can learn to use our imagination and a bit of acting to improve our health – and sometimes even to save our lives.

And possibly the imperative is greater than ever. Despite our highly technical, and clever world, with all its supposed advances in mainstream medicine, we humans continue to be a sickly lot. Cancer is but one example of a disease on the increase; diabetes and heart disease are others.

In fact it’s surprising that no one questions this aberration: the more we spend on health and health research, the more advanced the technology, the more we become sick, causing massive and uncontrollable blow-outs to government health budgets.

Maybe we can’t do anything about this, but then maybe we can too. Could it be that some beneficial approaches to health and recovery lie deep in the recesses of our minds – waiting to be called to the fore by using imagination and the very art of acting itself?

Nineteenth Century French chemist Emile Coue was on to this with his theory that involved training the subconscious mind through the use of affirmations. Coue was most famous for promoting the statement: ‘Every day in every way, I am getting better and better’.

Apparently he helped cure thousands of people of diverse diseases in the late 1800s by teaching them to repeat affirmations for two minutes twice daily - most importantly upon waking and just before wafting off to sleep at night. These are the times when the subconscious mind is most receptive and impressionable.

A little over half a Century later Beatles songwriter John Lennon, paid tribute to our innate ability to control outcomes in his song Mind Games:

‘We are playing our mind games …

Creating the future out of the now…’

But perhaps Coue’s methods can be taken a step further, and emulate what Russian method actor, Michael Chekhov (1891-1955), achieved by acting methods to alter his body’s physiology.

Chekhov, the nephew of playwright Anton Chekhov, became one of the most outstanding figures in 20th Century theatre. An enlightened teacher of method acting as well as an accomplished actor (he received an Oscar nomination for his role in Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound in 1945) and coached Marilyn Monroe, Gregory Peck, Gary Cooper, Clint Eastwood, Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Quinn, and Yul Brynner among others.

A small, rather dowdy, hunched up and shy man, you might not notice Chekhov in a crowd. But he could transform himself when on stage, so that he could appear tall, handsome, and project a powerful personality – anything he wanted to be. In effect he could change his physique to suit the role.

Yet it was not always so. Chekhov learned the hard way, almost dying in the process. As a young man full of new ideas about acting, he was often ostracized in Russia. Then his life fell completely apart when he became ill, his career went on the rocks, and his wife left him taking with her their only child.

In a state of spiritual crisis and considering suicide, Chekhov was introduced to Rudolph Steiner and anthroposophy – a philosophy that was attracting the interest of a number of Russian artists. This enabled Chekhov to gain a distance on his personal troubles and liberate himself from what he viewed as his self-indulgent and destructive tendencies.

Chekhov’s fascination with the imagination remained for the rest of his life. He recovered fully from his illnesses and blossomed as an actor, achieving major acting triumphs in Russia between 1921 and 1927.

But when Stalin clamped down on experimental theatre, his work was discredited and Chekhov had moved to Paris and put together a group of Russian actors that later toured America.

Once in the USA he decided to stay and set up the Chekhov Theatre and was soon in demand as an actor as well.

He coached his students with exercises that increased the body’s flexibility and responsiveness, and he showed how an understanding of acting could free a person from the slavery of accidents, personal moods, disappointments and nervous impatience - conditions that can lead to ill health.

Australian actor, Ernie Bourne, now in his eighties, bears testimony to what you can achieve with mind power and mind control.

"When I was playing the role of Sancho in the Australian production of Man of La Mancha I developed an inner ear infection that threw me off balance," he relates.

"But the show, as always, had to go on and although part of my role involved climbing high upon a ladder, I used to make myself do it – and I did.

"You can do much more than you think you can, " he says. "And I have proved it time and again, and have seen my colleagues do it many times."

"I’ve always believed thought and thought energy is a powerful thing," Bourne said and reflects on one colleague who was so ill and bent over that he walked in to the theatre with a walking stick. "But when he was about to go on stage, he promptly threw the stick away and went on to perform his role impeccably."

"The audience never knew how ill he was, but when he left the theatre, he did it hobbling and again using his walking stick.

"Despite illnesses and set-backs, actors mostly have to play their parts, however they might be feeling, unless there’s a stand-in lined up."

He also gives the example of Dame Sybil Thorndike, an actor who believed in the power of the mind. "She said the mind is just like a muscle and needs to be exercised, and she did this by learning a page of dialogue off by heart – every day," he says. "No mean feat at any age."

But Bourne says an actor must also make sure he is fit at all times Today, even at 80, he walks long distances and practices Tai Chi, a discipline that he claims is immensely helpful for actors in achieving coordination and concentration.

It doesn’t take much to see how imagination and acting ‘well’ might benefit us when we are ill. Maybe we could all join an amateur theatre group to help us along. Even moving the props around is good for the exercise – and a laugh.