© Elliot Essman 2005. All rights reserved.

These pages contain the complete text of Human Action, public speaking trainer Elliot Essman's philosophy of human achievement.

Elliot Essman Public Speaking Training
Human Action Table of Contents
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To lay the groundwork for Shock, you need to create personal atmospheres that are conducive to mind clearing. Sometimes this means the mind just has to be put into a state of rest. Often, something more active is needed. Once again, poetry can serve as an outside Shock stimulator, clearing as it fills.

If relaxation is what you need in order to clean out and recharge, you should relax in three distinct stages:

• Stage one is purposeful relaxation. This means that you do whatever you can to make sure you have the time to relax, and that your environment supports the relaxation. You need to do purposeful relaxation because relaxing, restorative circumstances will rarely come your way by chance.

• Stage Two is spontaneous relaxation. Here you just let things slide. But you can only get to this point by arranging the environment in advance.

• State Three is dynamic relaxation. You reach this stage after you've planned the relaxation, begun the process, and let yourself slide into a spontaneous state. Assuming you don't fall asleep (though sleep has its merits also), you will often be in a supercharged state, a state where thoughts mingle with feelings and creative energies flow through you.

Catharsis and Ablution can take the form of non-thought, a much more extreme state than relaxation or physical release through exercise. The final chapter on Masks will cover this concept in depth. Meditation can be useful in clearing the brain, in shutting down habitual and automatic thinking and self-imaging patterns. Of course, meditation has other ramifications, beyond the scope of our study. But what is key is the idea that your brain cannot remain empty for long. The discontent so basic to the human species kicks in and calls us to action.

As we'll see in the final chapter on Masks, the momentary “leaving” of the thinking self, that split second of escape from thought, is enough to generate Positive Matrix Interrupt, Shock and Trope.