Gestures with Freedom

People often ask, “How do I use gestures?” This photo of the marvelous filmmaker, Andrew Silver, is my answer: “Any way that suits you!” In my work, I want my clients to be more free, more themselves, more unexpected in their presence.

Gestures, like walking, standing, and speaking, are behaviors that we never think about until the spotlight is upon us. Then, we forget how! Suddenly, our arms and hands become like loaves of bread, awkward appendages. And we can find ourselves repeating the same gesture again and again. We get stuck.

My job is to help my clients get back to that natural, spontaneous, organic way they use gesture all the time when not in the spotlight.

There are many “rules” about gesture out there, but in my experience, the rules can also keep us stuck. We want our expressive energy to flow.

I found some acting methods advise keeping our arms in “neutral,” hanging at one’s side. When you see this on stage or film, notice that the energy can get caught in the twitchy fingers. Some methods call for putting the hands in front of the waist. The reasoning? So that our arms have less distance to travel to gesture above our waist or below our waist (??). I also heard this is a bad practice as it creates a physical boundary between us and our audience, a symbolic wall.

Toss all of this away. It only serves to keep us stuck and self-conscious. It stops the flow of aliveness.

Instead: (see video here of Kate showing all of the below)

• Notice one particular gesture habit.

• Play with these ways to unstick the pattern:

  • Use our gestures to ILLUSTRATE our words.

    • (For example, counting on fingers, building houses in the air, painting flowing water)

  • Use our gestures to EMPHASIZE our words.

    • (For example, shaking, slicing, pounding)

  • Allow ourselves to do anything BUT that habit.

    • (For example, if we find ourselves “serving the platter,” or plastering our upper arms to our ribs and moving our lower arms at 90 degrees like windshield wipers, allow ourselves to move our arms anywhere EXCEPT serving the platter!)

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!