Internal Technique

Relaxation

Earlier we talked about how you feel when you are put in front of a room full of an audience or a camera. Your muscles tighten up, you feel your legs are cramping or your throat is choking. All these are signs that you are not relaxed. Every new actor struggles to stay relaxed.
Hence, most of the Stanislavski acting techniques are designed to help an actor stay relaxed. Stanislavski believed that in order to stay relaxed actor must direct their attention completely on the task in the given scene. Because it is impossible to completely remove the muscular tension. If you try to relax your legs, tension moves to your shoulders, and you shake it off your shoulders, it might go to your back. There will always be a struggle. But it is the actor’s job to keep it under control and not allow it to show in his or her performance.
The most popular of the Stanislavski acting techniques are making students hold different positions like sitting on a chair or hanging from the tree or simply just lie on the floor. During this, you have to note which muscles tense up and try to relax them. Through his techniques and regular practice, the actor can make the process of relaxing muscles, a subconscious process. Thus, during a scene actor won’t even notice which part of his or her body has a spasm, it all will become a subconscious thing for him, just like a real human.

Units and objectives

As a method actor, this is an absolute favorite of mine. Because, most of my struggle is to stay in the moment, even if on the exterior it doesn’t appear so. Inwardly, I know I went out of my character, or I noticed something that was not part of a scene. I like to be in part during the scene, and I hope other actors like to do the same.
Stanislavski’s method of acting addressed this issue by creating series of small units of objectives which in a whole would make a scene. It is like reverse engineering an action or task or objective into small units. For instance, your task is to go to a nearby bakery and buy bread. You can divide these task into small several units:

1. 
   Getting your coat maybe because it’s chilly outside.
   
2. 
   Then checking if you got the essentials like money, keys, etc.
   
3. 
   then walking or driving to a bakery
   
4. 
   buying a good piece of bread.
   

However, this technique is must be limited only for preparation purposes. While performing, it must be performed as a whole scene while keeping the objectives in mind. It’s not objective, it’s objectives because as a whole it might look there is one objective in a given scene, if we take the above example, it’s buying bread. Beyond that, there may be a psychological objective that drives the scene. For our example of buying bread, it might be; say, a friend of yours or a family member is coming to visit you and you might want to impress him or her by serving something with bread.
Remember there will always be a psychological reason behind the actions. So, every time you divide the objective into units, find the right psychological reason that drives the scene.