DAY ONE: Open Wide to Possibility!

What you’ll need for today’s on-line workshop:

  • Timer
  • Journal or tablet
  • Pen

 

Pre-Test Demonstration

Watch the video below for a pre-test demonstration.  Then take the pre-test so that you’ll be able to measure how much you learn from Alligator Bites.

 

Learn to Face Dance

Watch the video below for a face dance demonstration.

 

 

Face Dance Music

Original music created by Alligator Mouth Improv’s Peter Chwazik to inspire your face dance.  Press play, and let your face take it away!


 

Ideas and Inspiration

Here are some ideas to inspire you.  Watch the video.  Print out the 8.5 x 14- inch broadside to hang somewhere you'll see it often!



 

Opening Wide to Possibility

Today’s Alligator Bite asks you to consider where you might be limiting your sense of what’s possible.  If you find yourself saying: Oh, I could never do that! or I’m too old …too poor, …not smart enough, …not brave enough… you are under the spell of a limiting belief. 

Sometimes our limiting beliefs can be sneaky—they come disguised as: That’s stupid. or What’s the point? or I’ll do it when I have more time …when I’m older …when I win the lottery. 

Or maybe they show up as outside dictators: My mother would disown me.  I’d embarrass my husband.  My boss wouldn’t approve.

The fact is, we’re incredibly flexible and adaptable, and most people will continue to love, accept and respect us if we step outside their expectations of us once in awhile.  When we expand our range of what we believe is possible, it heightens our creativity, increases our problem-solving abilities, and allows us to embrace all that life offers us. 

Whatever you believe is impossible, is impossible.

Whatever you believe is possible, is possible.

Beliefs are really just a function of your imagination.  And like any muscle, your imagination needs to be regularly stretched to remain supple and strong.  If your imagination is tight and shrunken, you can start small.  For example, you have already tried two very simple and tangible ways to begin to open to possibility—you’ve stretched the edges of your vocal range in the pre-test and you’ve let yourself play and wake up to more expressiveness by doing a face dance. 

If you practice those two things—talking in silly voices and dancing your face—every day, you’ll be surprised how it will begin to subtly shift your point of view.  So instead of Oh, I could never do that!, you’ll find yourself saying, Why not? and What’s the worst that could happen? and Wow, that was fun!

Aristotle said, "We are what we repeatedly do."  Likewise, the organization InterPlay teaches: “To change your life, change your practice.”  Start noticing all the little habits and routines and ruts in your life and invite yourself to change them up.  Here are some ideas:

  • When you sit down to eat, don’t sit in your “normal” place; choose a different place at the table.
  • Flip to a radio station you don’t usually listen to and play at least one song all the way through.
  • You probably start in a particular position when you brush your teeth (upper right...? lower left…?) and “complete the circuit” in the same way every day.  Consciously choose a different way around your mouth.
  • If you take the same route every time you go for a walk, try turning in the opposite direction as soon as you hit the sidewalk.
  • Do you usually listen to music or turn on the TV when you do chores?  Try doing them in silence.
  • Do you check email a billion times a day?  What would happen if you checked it only once or twice and turned it off in between?
  • Use chopsticks instead of a fork.

Even just bringing your awareness to your patterned choices, unexamined beliefs and habitual practices is a great first step.  When you start to see how many tiny little decisions you make unconsciously every day—you’ll begin to see more clearly the bigger ones, the ones that really effect the quality of your life.  Ask: What limiting beliefs are fencing me in, keeping me from opening wide to possibility?

Fenced in by History

by Michael Czarnecki

Like animals behind electric fencing,
shocked once or twice
while trying to reach out
over the line
we keep well within boundaries.
What's learned the hard way, sticks.
No need to catch that jolt again.

But have you checked lately?
Maybe the charger's run dead.

 

Learn to Free Write

 

 

Resources for Further Research and Exploration

Read The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander.
Watch the documentary DVD Herbie Hancock: Possibilities.
Take an Interplay class.
Check out Daichi’s vocal range as a human beat box.