ABSTRACT
Bond brings attention to many methods used in playing character that are not as simple as putting on or taking off a role. Concerns are shared from scientists around the emotional and psychological risks within common drama practices for connecting with a character when using emotional substitutions, personal histories, and imagination to evoke the emotions required of a role. Bond addresses that using such pathways into emotional states can create an inherent tendency for trauma in drama. Bond introduces the Emotional Body® method as an alternative approach to embodying character, while gaining tools for the self-regulation of emotion, increased somatic awareness, and cultivating new patterns of emotional fluency and resiliency. The method utilizes emotional effector patterns discovered in long-term research. Bond explains how learners using the patterns develop somatic sensing capabilities, access and modulate the expression of emotions, release emotional states, and clear back to a physically calm state. Considering trauma expert advice, for healing to occur, individuals must first learn how to feel and identify bodily sensations before they learn how to release trauma of the past. Bond shares throughout how the method can be used by practitioners, potentially within the field of dramatherapy, and for individual therapeutic benefits.
