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Hello, hello, good afternoon, good evening, good morning wherever you are. Thank you so much for joining another episode of Dela’s Voice. It’s my pleasure to be here with you, spending time here bringing other people’s stories to you, then hearing from you how it inspired you, or how something you heard that just made that click, or brought you that aha moment is the biggest pleasure. For me it’s my passion and I feel like I’ve done my job today. I’m bringing you another inspiration today. Cindy Tanas. This lady is amazing. She’s going to wow all of you, I promise. She is an acting teacher, director, mentor at her acting school Toronto and I’m going to bring her on. When I first met Cindy, I thought I was going to interview an acting teacher. Boy oh boy was I in for a big surprise. She is a life teacher. She can move you. She can make you aware of things that you didn’t know. She can really inspire you to do better in life. So please help me welcome Cindy Tanas. I should say the beautiful Cindy Tanas. Hello. Welcome.
Dela thank you. What a beautiful, beautiful introduction. I’m really touched.
You’re welcome. I meant every single word. Thank you so much for being here Cindy.
Thank you.
What did we say before the show? We talked about our intention and I said my intention is for one person who will listen to this and if acting classes is really their passion and they want to do this they’ll get inspired and they’ll see this as a sign. And you said?
What did I say?
Oh my gosh you said…well I hope that people see that life is like acting and acting is like living and it’s just so intertwined. And I can’t wait for us to dig deep. But let’s bring a little bit of a background story.
Okay.
And talk about how you got started. How did you know that you were going to become an actor teaching acting classes? Did you know ever since you were a kid?
Thank you Dela for that question. It brings back extraordinary memories of childhood. Putting on theatre shows in my backyard, inviting all the kids over into my backyard. And you know they would come and say…what are we going to do today Cindy? So I was always choreographing dances because I started as a dancer and putting on shows for the neighborhood. And so it’s funny because when I started acting I didn’t really know that I was a teacher going to be teaching acting classes even though I had taught dance at my community center as a teenager. I didn’t know that I was a teacher because I had no voice. And one of the reasons that I think I danced, is because I was able to express my feelings and express myself through a silent art form. And then as an actor through the words of the acting text that the character says. But it wasn’t until I started teaching acting classes at my acting school in Toronto that I found my voice.
So did you grow up in a family that was really supportive of the arts?
I grew up in a working class family that knew nothing about arts. My father worked for the Canadian National Railway for most of his life and my mother worked in a nursing home.
They were really more about survival than about needs and desires. And so my father never dreamed of the big vista dreams that some of us can dream of today when we don’t have so many survival issues at stake and we’re so fortunate more so than most of the people in the world on this side of the world that we can move towards a luxury like acting, like taking an acting class. It’s quite extraordinary. So I was really fortunate in that my parents were extremely supportive. They would take me to my dance classes and I don’t know how they found the money Dela. When I was in school I did very poorly and so the teacher basically said – you know you keep shuffling your feet under your chair and you’re daydreaming out the window.
What are you daydreaming about Cindy? And I said dancing. I was just a little girl and my parents did everything they could with the little that they had to try to put me in a dance class. And that saved my life. It really did. And when i would dance something would
happen in my spirit and in my soul that … it just moves me to even think of right now because it’s not something that I was able to have in my life generally because generally as a child I was depressed. I was sad. I was a negated child in a lot of ways because my parents had to work so much.
Were you an only child Cindy?
No I had, I have two older sisters and a brother as well. So there were four of us and very little money.
When you say dancing saved your life…do you …so first of all why do you say that? I just want to get a feel of what you were going through.
Well as I said… I was a depressed child. I was a child who was very…I’m sure a lot of your viewers can maybe relate to this…
Sure…
I was a child that was very much alone. I spent so much time alone that I think it helped me to develop an extraordinary imagination. I was extremely creative as a result of being alone, even though I had two older sisters…they were much older than me so they, you know, they were together. They would close their door and they wouldn’t let me come in. And my brother was much younger so I was the typical middle child and yeah, very much alone.
So i can i can totally appreciate when you say dancing saved my life because for a lot of us we have that passion… we have that one thing that we love so much that frees us… that just gives us that…like you know… the exhilarating freedom and happiness and true joy. And for you that was dancing.
In the beginning, and then acting, but what really set me free interestingly enough, other than the dancing, was teaching acting classes. So I find that so fascinating because when I was acting I didn’t know that teaching was going to be the thing that would really bring me home to myself.
So let’s go there Cindy. How did that happen? How did you become all of a sudden, a teacher?
Again, another sort of sad story. My family broke up. My husband left me with two very young children, 20 months old and five years old. I was a single parent and I had to survive. Acting wasn’t enough you know, as you can imagine. A lot of actors don’t make a lot of money.
So I couldn’t survive on the money that I was making as an actor and I had to do something.
I had to find a way. And I had an angel who came into my life and basically helped me to see a couple of very important things. He said two things to me that changed my entire life. I’m a person if you throw me a crumb, I’ll make loaves of bread out of that crumb. He said to me…you know Cindy, you have more power than you know, and your self doubt is what is going to get you in the end. And I am going to send you someone who wants to know about acting.
Can you please help her to understand a little bit about how to get into the acting industry? So I sat with this woman, and to make a long story short, I helped her for about an hour. The next day this angel said to me… so you know I sent you the woman. Did you help her? I said yes, absolutely and he said ..how much did you charge her? I said I charged for nothing and he said…well I’m going to send you another person and this time charge her because that woman told me that you gave her an extraordinary gift. So I was inspired. The next person came and if Setta Kalusdian is listening anywhere out there…she was my very first acting student and I remember her name… because she came to my home…oh my gosh this is so emotional… and I did the same thing with her…told her how to get into the business of acting and then she said…can you teach me to act? And inside of my head something said just say yes and so I said yes. I began to teach her acting, and she came every single week. She sent me someone six months later…
Mario Brum, my first male student. He came every single week and then from there I made my way into a studio teaching acting classes in Toronto. Somebody told me I was a gifted teacher. I needed to hear that external approval at the time. It was so valuable, and it gave me the confidence to do what I’m doing 25 years later which is, you know, I have my own acting studio and I’m teaching acting classes. Probably by this point I’ve taught thousands of students how to start acting in Toronto.
I was going to ask you actually, how many people have you taught already.
You said something that really resonates with me Cindy, you said back then you needed outside validation all those years ago, for someone to tell you that you were a good teacher and I think for a lot of us we can really resonate with that. I know for me personally, that has been a big part of my journey…finding myself and relying on my self-validation so that I don’t need validation first from someone else and I don’t need someone else to tell me
I’m doing a good job. I already know that. So it’s a tough journey. How did you manage to become this magnificent, self-reliant person?
Honestly, you know, I’m really of a bit of a different mindset, in that I believe that we need each other and we need ourselves, both. I don’t think life is a journey we can take alone. I think it’s a journey that we need to help each other through with kindness and an open heart and mirroring you know. And I think what I was lacking was simply mirroring. Mirroring to someone who they are is one of the greatest gifts you can give someone. Whenever I see a quality in someone I try to mirror that to them because we want to be seen, and yes, we need to see ourselves I agree with you a hundred percent Dela.
That’s so important that we see ourselves and that we validate ourselves, and that we’re there for ourselves. And also that we are able to really see each other. Not just look at each other, because we have a tendency to look at what the image is, what the gender is, what the race, the age is, whatever it is, and we don’t really see. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul and there are a lot of beautiful essential qualities in the soul of every human being if we only just are willing to see that. And those who are willing to see, can see.
Thank you for that. When you started teaching acting you used different methods and so let’s talk about that in a little bit and how you discovered that.
I guess I could have been a psychotherapist. I’ve been in so many training programs with psychotherapists where I’ve learned a lot of different healing modalities that I’ve incorporated into teaching at my drama school in Toronto. I have a sense that that’s what you’re asking about. And so I’m able to extrapolate from each of these modalities, elements, that I can, maybe alchemically, transform into something that’s going to work for the actor, and for the human being. Because actors are just simply human beings like you and me. For instance, I use bioenergetics in the actors class to help actors connect with the aliveness in the body to be able to handle a charge. So by that I mean when they’re in a scene and there’s a big energy, an emotion or there’s a big impulse…oftentimes what happens is our nervous system gets activated and we can get up high in our bodies or we even leave our bodies because it’s too much to handle. And the actor wants to be free
in that they can handle those really big energetic charges, and so they need to be plugged into the wall socket so to speak. You know if you have ever seen an electrical cord that’s not plugged into the wall socket, it’s flying all over the room, it’s ungrounded. So we need to get an actor grounded in acting classes and able to really experience the flow of energy of emotion. Emotion is simply energy in motion. We need to be able to experience and either contain an impulse or act on an impulse depending on what the character is doing.
you say bioenergetics and I want to get a little bit more clear on this. I know I may not be the only one who’s not clear on what it really truly means, so is there any way you can explain and give us an example of what that means?
Yes. When an actor in acting classes is in a scene where the character may be experiencing a lot of rage, a lot of anger… and that rage or that anger scares the person, the actor themselves, they won’t be able to allow themselves to experience that rage or that anger so we want to be able to help the actor do that… and so it’s not only bioenergetics but it’s also working with this idea of sub personalities which you and i have spoken about before… which is the idea that there are all these little characters that live inside of us and many of these people that live inside of us create mind interference because they are really the egoic mind that comes in to stop the actor from acting on an impulse.
Like a raging out expression of rage for instance. Maybe in their family anger was not allowed, maybe that person was yelled at a lot as a child and now can’t access their anger because when they got angry, they got reprimanded or hit or punished in some way. So the mind comes in to protect us from expressing the anger in that particular example. And so we want to be able to help sort of calm the mind, relax the mind and then open up to this big energy of rage that the character is experiencing and allow it to be expressed. It’s also such a healing thing to express our feelings and a healthy thing to express our feelings. Because when we keep our feelings in our bodies and we repress them, that can lead to disease that can lead to the dis-ease ease of the mind, the disease of the body. Feelings are our energy and they’re part of our life force so we want to be able to unstick those sticky tense places in our bodies where we’re holding those energies back, and in, and down.
You’re not kidding when you say life and acting yeah right? As you’re talking I’m thinking of all these different actors that I’ve seen through the years, acting in these movies, and what makes an actor really stand out in their role and that’s what makes the difference. So in your opinion what makes a real good actor?
In one word? Presence.
Okay explain that please.
Okay, so being here now, fully present, in present time, really listening to another human being, open to having an intimate experience between you and me for instance. Which I feel we’re having Dela. The ability to really receive another person. To have empathy or compassion for someone, to be able to experience, as I was talking about earlier, the life force energy moving through our bodies, and to have a quiet mind. And that all just comes from being conscious, aware, and in our bodies, not in our heads, and in our hearts, looking out at life and other people through our hearts, and just being fully here now. And so oftentimes I’ll have my actors stand in front of the actors class and affirm, I am here now. I have a right to be here. I have a right to take up space. This is my time, my exercise. It’s okay for me to have a voice. So we’ll work on all of those blocks that get in the way to them being able to be fully present in the here and now.
So what would a block in an actor look like in the actors class? Would it be almost the same as, let’s say a writer would have a block? Or an artist would have a block?
Absolutely. A block is a block as a block, yes, so I look at blocks from a sub-personality point of view.
I want to get into that please. Could you give a little bit of an explanation on sub personalities?
Okay. Sub personalities are the little people or characters that live inside of us, and these sub-personalities can be parts of us that are really trying to protect us from making fools of ourselves or protect us from getting humiliated, protect us from getting hurt by someone, you know. So you might have a protective part of you that doesn’t open its heart for instance, and sort of, maybe stands back, or withdraws a little bit and is kind of more careful in relationship with another person. And so has a hard time really being fully present and in an intimate place with another person. So that’s going to make the acting suffer. I’m not sure if i lost track of your question?
Yeah, so no, I’m going to go back. But on this sub personalities subject. Something amazing you taught me that I will never forget, is you know, for someone who’s watching this, maybe you’re telling yourself or how you describe yourself is…I’m afraid of public speaking for example, and Cindy taught me not to say that but say “a part of me” is afraid of public speaking, and that’s so powerful Cindy. We give ourselves these identities and then we’re just consumed by believing them. But when we can say, okay so no not all of me is afraid of public speaking, there’s a part of me that’s one little person.
You’re explaining this really well Dela.
I listened really well.
It’s ways in which we do identify with different parts of us. It’s like, have you ever woken up one morning and you feel like you’re just winning in life, everything looks golden, everything looks wonderful, and your whole perspective on life is like a sunny day?
Yes.
And then the next day you wake up and you’re a loser and you’re feeling down and your energy is lower, and things don’t look so sunny anymore. They look gray and rainy. Those could be two completely different parts of us. One part that sees life through the eyes of positivity and another part that sees through the eyes of negativity, could be potentially. And what we’re trying to get at is this place in the middle, because this place includes both the sunny day and the rainy day. So this place in the middle is what I call ground and center awareness in acting classes or the capital A Actor.
Oh my god it’s so exciting!
The idea of awareness or consciousness and inclusivity as opposed to exclusivity. I see I’m getting a little bit clearer with this.
Yes, do you see the light bulb in my head right now?
Yes, I do see it.
I’m getting clearer and it’s exciting.
I call these parts protectors. They’re protecting us from all of these things that I said earlier and they all have their own agendas and their own needs. In this centered place we are just here now, fully present, available to each other. Our hearts are open so there’s no big agenda for instance. I’m not sitting here with any plan. I didn’t plan any kind of agenda for today. I’m just sitting with you Dela, and I’m just saying…okay I’m going to listen and whatever she says I’m going to take that in and see where it takes me. And maybe a part of me might come up that’s not as clear you know, and so it tries to answer the question and it has a little less clarity. And then all of a sudden as I dis-identify from that part I find clarity.
You said the capital S and what you’re referring to is the Self right? The capital S itself. I heard this from someone else… it’s not about negativity, it’s not about positivity, it’s about the authentic self…right? Being here right now yeah? Accepting each other, no judgment.
No judgment about ourselves either. Because we’re all human yes? We have to make space for ourselves to make mistakes, to sometimes be identified with a part of us, and we have to make space for that in others too.
I’m going to go back to my original question that brought us to sub personalities and that was… we were talking about how when an actor in the actors class gets a block and how an artist faces a block, a writer’s block or something like that, and you were going to go into sub personalities and that’s when I interrupted you.
Okay, and so the question is?
How come we get blocks?
Oh, how come we get blocked? Good, yes, mind interference. Mind interference. When we’re in our bodies, when we’re fully embodied…the mind can take us into the future, it can take us into the past but the body can only be here now. That’s very profound. If we can be in our bodies we are going to be available to the feelings and impulses and creativity in our souls because in order to connect to soul we have to be in the body.
I love that!
We can’t connect to soul from the head. It’s really about relaxing the mind in whatever way you can. Some people do it through meditation, I teach it through the sub personality work, the people that live inside of us. Also just walking through life, looking around outside of you, what you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, waking up our five senses you know, just really feeling your feet on the ground, feeling your hips moving. It’s amazing to watch people and students in acting classes, and I have a lot of compassion when I see people and the hips aren’t moving and the body is stiff and all of the energy is up here. It’s great to have energy up here too, especially in a medium like this when you’re on camera, but we still need to be fully embodied even to have that presence on camera
so we’re not just talking heads.
There’s a lot of talk right now…I feel like I’ve been bombarded with all this talk about being mindful and being in the present. And one of the simple things that I’ve learned to do is deep breathing. How does that play a part in what you teach?
It’s huge, it’s everything! My students will laugh at me because I’ll say this piece is huge it’s everything and then I’ll turn around and say this piece over here is huge. It changes on any given day. The breath is so important to all of us and and to the actor in the actors class, because the breath does three things. It helps us to drop into the body as we pay attention to it. It helps to relax us…and there’s a really great breathing exercise I could teach you that helps with anxiety and helps people to relax, and then the third thing that it does is it opens us up so we can be available to our feelings, to our impulses, to our life force that lives in our bodies.
Amazing!
It’s about coming home to ourselves. Coming home because when we connect the spirit and the soul to something greater than our individual egos…this is the elixir, this is the high of life. We all want to be free of the mind we all want to be alive, I really believe it’s aliveness and connection that we’re looking for as human beings, and acting classes in Toronto can help give that to anybody. That’s why I recognized at some point in my teaching that this wasn’t just for actors and I began to remove myself from the industry of acting and bring more of the life coaching so that anybody can gain the amazing benefits from acting. I’m not trying to plug my teaching.
And you should because this is the platform for it.
But it’s not what I’m trying to do because I truly really believe that no matter where you go, no matter who your teacher is, I think this is ultimately what we’re each of us looking for.
I do want to do a shout out to Dordaneh, amazing director, filmmaker, and she was the one who actually talked to me about you Cindy. She told me that you changed her life. That your teachings and acting school in Toronto really changed her perspective and she was actually amazed at how life transforming her time with you has been.
Well you know Dela. I just want to say that, well first of all, I love Dordaneh. I mean she’s just, she’s Dordaneh. It’s not me that changes their lives. It’s the work. And this is universal work.
I don’t believe that this belongs to anyone so I don’t put any kind of copyrights on my work. It belongs to all of us. I’m just a conduit. I’m you somebody who’s fortunate enough to be in love with what I teach. And to be able to channel that through me to my students…but it’s…you know you can lead a horse to water…it’s the student in the actors class that drinks the water you know. They’re the ones who have to do the work of transformation and I always know when students will say… oh you changed my life Cindy… I always know that the thing to do is to give that back to them because that’s their power.
That’s amazing. Thank you. We’re going to take a look at some of the comments. I just want to acknowledge all the people who are watching us. Thank you so much for spending your afternoon with us. There’s a reason why you’re here. I never take that for granted. Anytime I come across something that I hadn’t planned on, I always feel like there’s a message in here for me. And I hope that you get inspired today. Also, please hit that share button and share this talk with other people because you just never know whose life you might touch today. Also, give us a thumbs up because we love the back-to-back validation. I like those, and we’ve got lots of people watching.
Cindy lots of comments and so when you were talking about dancing, know that Morelli who’s watching says dance can change our life. She changed her life through dance. She’s a true believer in that. Elaine says wow that’s awesome. I have a comment. I can see clearer now that the rain is gone. All of the darkness has left away. Here we go, okay there’s another comment. A friend of mine was introduced to an actor who now goes live with him several times a week including tonight. Ken Glenn and a guy named Scott show. Thank you. Thanks for plugging them. Okay now I want to take you to that exercise you said you might want to do. You said you said there’s an exercise I could run you through. Would you mind?
Oh goodness. Now I have to remember what that is. I must teach 52 exercises a year at my acting school in Toronto. Every week a new exercise in my acting classes. I’m trying to remember. What it was I was going to do with you Dela?
You actually didn’t mention it. I think we were talking about breathing.
Very good, okay.
We’re just going to take a short little, tiny break and we’ll be right back and you can share that.
[Music]
Okay
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
And we’re back with the wonderful Cindy Tanas and she’s going to teach us a breathing exercise.
Okay. I can’t remember who it is that actually invented this breathing exercise but it’s an exercise that a lot of yoga people do, a lot of different master spiritual teachers have done, and I’ve heard of it for so many years. I use this and it’s simple. It’s breathing in for the count of seven, holding your breath for the count of four, and then breathing back out for the count of seven.
But what you want to do is you want to slow the breath out by breathing out through a straw or through your teeth, not an actual straw but just imagining your lips are like a straw so that you can almost hear the breath as you breathe out. I also teach something called the ujjayi breath but that might take a little bit of time for me to teach that here…which also helps to deepen and slow the breath. So basically you want to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. So, breathing in for the count of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Hold your breath for the count of one, two, three, four, and then breathing out for the count of seven.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Now we’re going to switch it so you’re going to breathe in for the count of four. You’re going hold your breath for the count of seven and then breathe out for the count of seven. So breathing in for the count of one, two, three four. Holding, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. breathing out for the count of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. And if you repeat this for as long as you need, at some point the anxiety will start to shift and you’ll start to feel calmer.
That’s amazing.
And it takes as long as it takes.
I’m a big believer in deep breathing. Cindy, years ago I had a panic attack. I had a close call
and I called a crisis hotline because I had their number available to me, and the first thing that lady said over the phone (and i always talk about this because it’s so powerful), she said breathe. She helped me breathe and we forget about how important it is to breathe. I mean we’re breathing all the time, automatically, but that deep breathing, the one that actually takes care of us, that we forget to do. This is what this is.
And there are so many different breathing techniques that can help you to energize yourself, help you to ease anxiety, and there are a lot of apps out there today that you can get that help you with meditation and breathing and they are very useful. I’m always telling my actors in my acting school in Toronto to go and see if they can find an app to help support them. Especially if it’s new for someone.
You said something along the line of everybody can be an actor. Everybody can act you said.
Well, we’re always acting, aren’t we? In life we’re all playing roles. What I want to say is that acting classes is for everyone. You don’t have to be an actor in order to benefit from the actors class, but you do have to be a soul searcher, a truth seeker. I think you have to be someone who really wants to liberate yourself in some way, to free yourself, and that is all you need. So yes, acting classes really are for everyone. Acting is for everyone. It’s a beautiful art form, and when people come to me with wounds, with difficulties in their life I always ask them if they have a creative outlet. So many of us are sitting in corporations working at a desk for so many hours, and we’re losing that life balance you know, that balance between work and life. We need creative outlets in order to keep us sane, in order to keep us connected.
Yes, so what are some examples of a creative outlet?
Oh, anything. Dance, acting, singing, writing, any expressive art form which I’ve mentioned, but life can be just a creative act in and of itself, it really just depends on how you’re approaching life.
I feel like people who have a creative outlet are more relaxed in general, and they have a better outlook on life. Is it my impression or is that really what happens?
Well you know, I think creativity absolutely helps us in our lives, and I’m of the mind that we as human beings have good days and bad days. Sometimes we’re more conscious some days than we are other days, we all have a shadow and we all have a place where we still need to look and grow and learn about ourselves, and creativity is such a wonderful warehouse filled with subconscious material. When we can when we can tap into our subconscious we can create a link between our unconscious mind and our conscious mind and we can connect to soul and creativity that way.
Anything that stirs that is going to be useful. A Lot of people who are wounded come to acting classes, people who have a lot of emotion. A Lot of time the talent is deeply embedded in the wounded places, in the dark places inside of us as well. If you think of Vincent Van Gogh… I just recently went to the Van Gogh immersion that we had here in Toronto and you know, he was a very wounded man who apparently cut off his own ear. But he put so much of his shadow feelings, so much of his darkness, so much of what he was dealing with into his painting that he created the most extraordinary works of art at a time when no one else was painting in the way that he painted. He painted like a sculptor! His paintings are like sculpture. They’re just so beautiful and impressionistic, and nobody was doing that in when he did that.
So you know, I think the wounded soul gives the actors class, acting, any kind of art, any kind of creative outlet, gives the wounded soul a place to be, to live, to come out of us, to be expressed, and brings about so much gorgeous works of art. I don’t think that art is just about positivity. It’s about the inclusion of everything about a human being. The dark, the light, and there’s beauty in all of it. And I think we have to learn to really accept ourselves in all of these places. The wounded places, the vulnerable places, the places where we’re insecure, the places where we’re struggling, as well as the places where we’re shining and where we’re extraordinary and where we’re really feeling that we’re at our best. I think both of these aspects of ourselves, the shadow and the light are needing to be included and integrated, as opposed to split off. I think that just started with religion right? Where we just said, okay, there’s good and there’s bad. And that’s problematic when we think that way, and it creates duality. So we really want to have that sense of inclusivity. And one of the ways that we can do that is by finding this capital S Self, finding this center, this compassion for ourselves.
Thank you, wow, I could listen to you all day Cindy. By the way, you’ve got a great way of explaining all of this. I want to say hi to Lisa who is sending us a compliment. Thank you
Lisa. And Robert J Moore who says sorry I cannot stay but this sounds intriguing. I will catch the replay. No problem Robert. Thanks for stopping by. And a friend Bera Tohi. He’s watching from Iran. Right now he’s saying hello. Hello Bera. This is amazing Cindy. I’m so happy that I met you, because you brought awareness to a whole new world for me and looking at everything that I sometimes give identity to, the things I don’t like or the things I do like, mostly the things I don’t like about myself… giving those identities I can see how that would create problems in my life. So, accepting all these little people, all these little parts of me.
And not just accepting them Dela, but also having compassion for them, and well that’s the same thing I guess, but also getting to know them. Coming into relationship with these parts of you so that we can appreciate them for what they’re doing. This might help the viewers too. Even though parts of us might be sabotaging our lives, we might be doing things that are based on old software programs.
A lot of times they’re just protecting us but they’re protecting us in a kind of ancient or archaic way, based when they were born, which might have been when you were five years old or 10 years old. So they are child parts or they are adolescent parts that had no information, no way of knowing how to protect you, and they did their best they their best by turning into an inner critic, beating you up, telling you you’re worthless telling you you’re, not good enough. All these things that we tell ourselves. That part of us… even though it’s sabotaging our lives, it’s trying…it has some kind of good intention for you. It’s trying to protect you in some way, and we have to ask these parts of us… what is your good intention for me? What is it you’re really trying to do? And that inner critic might say… I just want you to feel safe in the world or I just want to protect you from humiliation because I want you to shine.
The inner critic might want you to shine and be really successful, but is beating you up. Trying to do that by beating you up and telling you that you’d better smarten up, you’re stupid, whatever it’s saying to you. If we can create a conscious relationship with that inner critic or any protector then and we can appreciate it for its good intention. That’s when it’s going to listen to us. The us that is the capital S self or the ground and center awareness. That’s when it’s going to listen to us and it’s going to be able to transform the way it goes about its role, the way it does this role. It can actually transform into a very conscious part of us that now is our biggest fan, and is trying to help us through life, instead of beating up on us. And that comes from a working relationship between you and this part of you. I think one of the things we can do is we can think in terms of two.
There are two of us. There’s us and then there’s the ego part right? These parts of us are the parts of the ego, and they each have their own agenda, they each have their own needs. Some of them are very wounded, some of them are really just protecting us. In this centered place we can begin to help our ego to get on board, and integrate through us and see out at the world through our hearts. A lot of this is so very simplistic in the way that I’m describing, but it’s really quite profound. And it can be complex sometimes to understand it but it’s simple and essential at its core.
You guide people through that in your acting classes and you simplified it for me, based on my experience the one time I spoke to you and that was really simplified. You guided me and it was a great experience Cindy.
Yes, and I think having the experience is what simplifies it. You can talk theories all you want but once you have an experience you get it. All of my acting classes are really way more experiential than they are theoretical. I don’t talk a lot in the actors class. I put people into a situation and give them an experience, and that’s how they really learn.
And that’s how you’ve been able to help thousands of people become better at expressing themselves as actors in your acting school in Toronto. I think that’s really powerful because it’s intertwined. I want to encourage people if they want more information, your website is right there, www.cindytanas.com. Reach out to her and find out a little bit more if you’re interested in her acting classes in Toronto. We’re out of time my dear Cindy. We’ve been speaking for 58 minutes. I want to give you another minute to leave the audience with whatever you’d like to leave them with.
Okay. What I’d like to leave the audience with is that there is no one else on this entire earth like you. You are a unique individual with untapped riches and potential. You are enough. Believe in that. That’s what I want to leave you with.
Oh so much love and power in that Cindy. If we could just all believe that, that would be amazing. Let’s start believing that. I want to thank you… all the viewers for watching. I have one person saying…and remembering to do the little things like pay the internet bill on time. Something he said that was really interesting to me was this one thing. It was made clear to me.
As I engage with someone while doing a live stream it enables the higher power to work through me. That was really interesting to me, because we do so much right now on live stream. This is the form of our connection right now. That’s food for thought. Thank you for that.
That’s beautiful.
Thank you, Cindy. Thank you so much for your message today thank you for this amazing Interview. Thank you so much for everything you do for everyone, and how you touch the world in such a such a unique way.
Dela, back to you. You’re doing so much for everyone, bringing on all these different speakers and allowing people to listen in and maybe learn something or look at something in a different way. Thank you for that.
Absolutely, we’re all connected so much deeper than we’d like to believe sometimes. Sending you lots of love, lots of hugs across this platform. I’m hoping that we’ll meet again Cindy Tanas and thank you. Thanks for everyone who’s been watching this episode of Dela’s voice. As always, this is Dela, hoping to spark your soul. Till next time.
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Cindy Tanas Actors Studio teaches acting classes for Theatre and Film in Toronto and the GTA, Collingwood and Southern Georgian Bay.
Connect with Cindy for a free consultation
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Acting Teacher / Mentor / Life Coach Cindy Tanas, has run a highly reputable and successful Toronto acting school for over 25 years. She teaches Acting Classes for beginners and experienced actors. Cindy is a member of ACTRA, former Chair and member of TAAS (Toronto Association of Acting Studios) and member of Theatre Ontario.
Cindy Tanas Actors Studio offers a holistic approach to acting in Toronto since 1995. Both in person and online acting classes are available.
www.torontoactingstudios.com
www.actratoronto.com
www.theatreontario.org