How Improv Helped Me Deepen My Meditation Practice
“When you’re bending reality, your vision is continuously pulling you forward—but it doesn’t feel like work. It feels like a game, a game you love to play. But at the same time, your happiness does not seem to be tied to that future vision. You’re feeling elated and happy right now, in this moment. You’re happy as you pursue your vision, not only when you attain it. You’re thus grounded in the present.”
The more I teach meditation and answer questions about it, the more I realize that people overthink how to meditate and what meditation is. We all do, including myself at times. I think it’s part of the job, too. In order to teach people how to meditate, I analyze how best to explain it.
As simple as the concept is in my head, I find it tricky to explain without specific context. The words that capture it best are already overused—Empty, Relaxed, Focus, Flow, Peace, Content, etc. They’re perfect, yet almost pointless because they’re so abstract and lack a point of reference. They describe experiences advanced meditators understand, but beginners often misinterpret.
Very unexpectedly, I found myself in a unique (but fun) situation where I was required to be in Flow, which I often regard as a type of meditative state. It led me to a perspective I hadn’t seen before. Ironically, I found it at an improv class.
Of course, I didn’t go to improv to practice meditation. I went because a friend told me about it, and it sounded like fun. What I didn’t expect was how much it required me to relax and let go of control and judgment—the very thing I practice in stillness during meditation. But applying it while performing in front of a vibrant group of people was a different level of surrender, and I was both excited and intimidated.
I’ve always been a believer in the practical application of mindfulness, because without it, there’s not much to transcend. How will we ever learn and grow if we shelter ourselves from everything or everyone who triggers us? So the minute a sense of inadequacy crept up on me in class, I knew I’d found something new to overcome.
I pride myself on being “good” at meditation (whatever that means). But as I watched people in my class, one by one, eagerly getting up on stage to perform—without knowing what the next prompt would be—it occurred to me that they were practicing some of the very qualities meditators everywhere are trying to master.
Getting Comfortable with the Unknown
When the instructor asked for the next set of three volunteers to come on stage, I found myself holding back. There was a part of me that needed to know what the prompt was going to be before deciding to walk up. I wanted a heads-up, to mentally prepare myself for what was to come. Without it, I felt a trace of anxiousness in my system. How would I get ahead and think about what to say and do in advance? And what were the rules? Was there no structure to this class?
So I watched everyone else in class, one by one, getting up on stage in groups of threes. The only thing they were waiting to do was have fun. I was always the adventurous one, so I thought—turns out this is an area in my life where I’m still somewhat reserved: creative expression.
There are no rules to creative expression.
We’re so used to having set parameters given to us that when none are provided, we’re often at a loss. All of a sudden, we crave direction and guidance on how to be.
Participating in the unknown can be a little nerve-racking because there’s no preparing for it. But the unknown is where creative flow can occur. If we can let go of our need to know what comes next and be comfortable with uncertainty, our own instincts and creativity will emerge. That’s when magic happens.
Letting Go of Control and Self-Judgment
I quickly realized that my need to know what’s coming—so I could mentally prepare—stemmed from a desire for control and self-judgment. I wanted to give a good performance. I wanted to make my audience laugh. I wanted to prove I knew what I was doing, even though it was my very first class.
As I observed the rest of the class just having fun and being silly on stage, I realized how much self-judgment I still carried. This class required the willingness to make a complete fool of myself, and it was terrifying. While a little silliness felt fun and harmless, the thought of freezing and not knowing what to do didn’t feel okay. It could threaten my self-confidence, my self-image, and how I perceive myself moving forward.
I came from the advertising industry and worked with brilliant writers. I’ve brainstormed funny concepts and commercials with many creatives. A sense of humor is not something I lack. So the idea that I could potentially suck at this felt threatening to my ego.
Thanks to years of mindfulness practice, I was able to let go of the judgments and expectations my ego needed and finally get up on stage to take my turn.
Staying Present in a World of Distractions
Being on stage with an audience watching in close proximity can really challenge your focus and concentration. I found myself responding to the audience’s reactions, trying to gauge what made them laugh, instead of being in the moment as the scene required.
I soon realized how much this class was teaching me about being authentically present, just as I am, regardless of how others behave around me. In order to be in flow, I needed to relax, trust, listen, pay attention, and respond as appropriately as possible based on my own instincts.
Then something interesting happened. As I worked up more courage to get comfortable being in character on stage, I became hooked. I couldn’t wait to get back up for the next scene. The experience of flow gave me a kind of high.
Bending Reality Through Play
In one of the prompts, we were asked to act as if we were adopting a pet at the luggage claim area of an airport. It was a wacky concept that made no sense in the practical world, of course. But it was the perfect amount of absurdity and compatibility that allowed our imagination to play. We gently stroked our luggage and pretended to see puppies coming down the luggage chute. It was a blast.
After the scene, the instructor gave us a few tips to think on and asked, theoretically: If in a world where luggage can bark, what else can be true? I pondered that question for the rest of the night.
I’m sure he didn’t mean for it to be a deeply philosophical question, but to me, it encompassed the law of multidimensional reality. When we shift our perception about one thing in our life, how many other perceptions can we alter? And what is reality but our perception?
In the next few minutes, I observed everyone on stage altering some of our commonly held truths and imagining the impossible. As each silly and irrational scene unfolds, they seem less and less impossible. So how else in our life can we blend together odd pairings and make the impossible possible?
Life is an improv stage. We are responding to each moment without knowing exactly what’s going to happen in the next. We only hope to step on, have fun being our most truthful selves, and leave a meaningful creation behind. We are improvising as we go, and there are no instructions for how to do this correctly. To do any of it with ease and joy, we need to relax, trust, and allow the world around us to respond however it wants, while maintaining our own flow. I will be back to attend another class next week.
