Expression Starts with Breath: Training Your Body to Feel Without Tension

As actors, we are in the business of feeling - honestly, deeply, and in real time. But expression doesn't begin in the voice or the face. It begins in the body, with breath. Students hear me say all the time “drop out of the upper quadrant” - meaning let’s get you into your body. One of the greatest challenges we face is learning to allow emotional truth to move through us without tensing up in resistance. This is a physical act more than an intellectual/mental one.

Human instinct tells us to brace against uncomfortable feelings. We tighten our shoulders when we feel exposed. We hold our breath when we're afraid. We shut down when we're overwhelmed. This makes perfect sense in everyday life. But for actors, this instinct can block everything. If we grip against the feeling, we grip against the moment. And suddenly, we’re ‘pretending’  instead of living truthfully. You can sometimes get away with that. I've seen many people on stage performing the play, but I believe, particularly for us, the actors, that it’s so much less rewarding to ‘pretend’ than to ‘live’.

Patsy Rodenburg, one of the leading voices in voice and presence training, speaks to this beautifully. She describes the ideal actor’s body as “a relaxed vessel with a volcano erupting inside.” That’s the goal - not to suppress or manage emotion, but to let it move through a fully available, open body. To let the audience see the storm because the body isn’t in the way.

This takes training. It doesn’t come naturally. Read that again - It DOESN’T come naturally. So why not decide to commit to getting better at it. Start a long term commitment to deepening your physical availability. Learning to breathe into feeling rather than out of it… learning to soften when your instinct is to harden… these are skills. And the more you work them, the more readily you can access truth under pressure - whether in a scene, on set, or in an audition room.

When your body is free, your presence grows. I witness it happening to actors in class on a weekly basis and it’s thrilling to see. You become more available to the moment, more responsive, more alive. You stop “acting” and start being. Breath becomes the bridge between thought and expression.

This is why training - physical, vocal, emotional - is so important. It’s why I launched Mark Evans Studio to begin with - because actors need to be able to practice this. Not to make you perfect, but to help you stay present when everything in you wants to retreat. To help you build a body that says “yes” to feeling instead of “no.”

Let your body be the relaxed, open vessel it was designed to be. And then let the volcano erupt—fully, fearlessly, and without apology.

Keep up the great work, 


Mark :) 

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