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RECOGNIZING the TRUE ESSENCE of ANY EXPERIENCE

July 6th, 2008

By Anne Marie Cummings 

The deeper meaning behind the Sanskrit word rasa, "essence, sap, flavor, or juice," inspired Rachel Hogancamp when she chose the name for Rasa Spa. 

Ithaca College theatre professor and massage therapist Paula Murray Cole states that rasa is a term also used to describe the experience one can have watching a performance or encountering a work of art. "Rasa is a kind of energetic transmission from one object or person to another."  As an example of this Paula described the energy she received from a magnificent exhibit of Jackson Pollock's work at MOMA in 1998, an exhibit I also was fortunate to have seen and experienced.  "I didn't understand Jackson Pollock until I saw that exhibit.  I was completely moved by his work, the energy that he used, it's all there, transferred to me from the canvas.  That was definitely a rasa experience." 

Rasa has many meanings, but as Richard Schechner, University Professor in the Performance Studies Department at Tisch School of the Arts, explains "rasa is flavor, taste, the sensation one gets when food is perceived, brought within reach, touched, taken into the mouth...and enjoyed." 

 Schechner created what he calls the RasaBoxes ^TM, an acting exercise training the actor as an athlete of his or her emotions.  The RasaBoxes exercise is a tool to train actors to become familiar with the physical and physiological sensations, and expressions they associate with the rasas, which correspond to emotion.  Simply put, RasaBoxes involves a grid taped out on the floor with nine boxes.  Each of the nine boxes has in it one of the transliterated Sanskrit words for the rasas: raudra, bibhatsa, bhayanaka, karuna, shanta, sringara, hasya, vira, or adbhuta.  For the actor, these rasas don't just mean one thing, they mean a range of things.  As Paula described, "Giving you two examples, the rasa ‘adbhuta' is a category of experiences not translatable to one word.  Experiences of adbhuta are related to wonder, surprise, curiosity, the moment of discovery, the feeling you get when you're standing in the Grand Canyon, when the hero sees the God or an encounter with the divine.  The experience of ‘karuna' is related to sadness, grief, anguish and compassion." 

Once the RasaBoxes are taped out onto the floor, the actors enter each box feeling, sensing and experiencing what each rasa brings to mind and body.  Eventually the actors move from one box to another polarizing the feelings that they experience in each box.  Shortly into the exercise, the actors will develop a very free improvisation involving a wide range of interactions or "scenes" in different boxes.   This exercise encourages actors to externalize what is often an internal process.  It is a physical and psychological process which can lead actors to a greater understanding of the characters they are playing.  Paula eloquently describes the rasa connection from her rehearsal notes when she herself used the  RasaBoxes as an exercise to experience the deep grief of Ophelia in Schechner's adaptation of Hamlet:

I breathe in karuna, taste it, smell it...my body folds on the first long exhale as my knees sink to the ground, my belly tightens and rounds my spine.  My throat tightens and my breath heaves, my head bows.  One hand reaches up to cover my eyes while the other supports the rest of my weight as it drops further into the floor.  I breathe in the karuna that is all around me.  I sink into the feeling, my eyes well up with tears.  I want to surrender my breath to the openness and expanding relief that sounding this pain would bring.  I tighten and fight against that feeling of vulnerability and exposure.  The sound squeezes out anyway, a high keening noise.  I breathe again and my mind rifles through the baggage of remembered and created associations I have with this feeling:  a muscle memory?  An emotional imprint?  I can see the image of myself here on the floor.  Then mourning the death of my father.  "Richard would love it if an actor could go from zero to sixty with his emotions in a matter of seconds. As a director, he wants what he wants when he wants it, and he invented the RasaBoxes proposing that actors could go from one emotion to another immediately without any preparation. As a training tool, the RasaBoxes exercises help actors to find this immediacy by inviting them to enter into the boxes and explore."

And it is that exploration of RasaBoxes that invites non-actors to get a taste of their own ‘true essence' in relation to the work they do or simply to get to know themselves better. One of Paula's students who took a RasaBoxes workshop used the exercises as a development tool for her landscape and architectural designs.  "She made a model of a war memorial and she took two energy forms (rasas) from the RasaBoxes, vira and karuna.  Vira meaning heroic and karuna meaning grief, anguish and compassion.  What she erected were these walls made of stone, but they were weeping.  The walls themselves were vira - heroic, and the whole wall itself was karuna - curved in shape as if bent over weeping.  The end result was so evocative and strong.  Energetically, I think she managed to shape and form the essence of vira and karuna in her work.  Hasya, another rasa, means laughter, fun and play.  If that same student wanted to make a garden for kids that's full of hasya, it might be filled with fun shapes, and colorful flowers, a playful one where everything in it would evoke a sense of lightness."

Understanding the body and how emotions can be seen in facial expressions, in a subtle smirk or a frown, is a portion of how the RasaBoxes helps Paula with the work she does as a massage therapist.  Paula described to me how she begins her massage sessions:  "For me, the massage starts with a consultation.  This is when I'm able to study the way my client moves, talks, and expresses his or herself.  This is when I can see signals from them.  I ask some standard questions, but I read a lot more than their verbal answers.  I notice their facial expressions, tension around the mouth or eyes.  These can be signals of emotions, so if I'm aware of what the corresponding emotions are, I can look for those things.  The first step is awareness.  For instance, I was giving a client samples of aromatherapy oils to use during a massage session when she did this thing with her mouth I interpreted that as a fear signal.  I couldn't tell where the fear was coming from, but her non-verbal behavior helped me because then I inquired if she was opposed to using aromatherapy oils.  That was when she said that she didn't like them, but was afraid to say so.  If somebody comes in with a lot of anxiety and I'm aware of it, then I know ways of working with that person.  If they want to feel less speedy or chaotic then I can organize the way I move, the amount of pressure I use, the kind of music I have playing in the background, or whether I use heat or not.  I have to listen to the cues. Being aware of different energy patterns helps me to tailor a massage session."

            Furthermore, every experience we have does something to us, "We hold onto things, we let things go, we are continuously being shaped by our contact with the environment.  Our foot, for example, is shaped by everything: the shoes we wear, our way of walking, the ground that we walk on."  And at the most basic and simple level of understanding how rasa experiences translate into our lives, take a look around you.  Does where you live provide a rasa experience for you every day?  Or is it something else?  Paula talks about where she lives..." I live in Brooklyn on a street corner with loud cars and trucks.  The energy of this place makes me feel irritated at times.  There's lots of cement, the air is polluted, people can be nasty.  How that plays on my sensory experience is that I find myself feeling irritated and fearful more often than I'd like.  But because of the work I've done with the RasaBoxes, I know that I can change the energy around me.  Maybe I can put some vira or hasya elements in my home or recognize more easily when I experience raudra (anger) so I can  do something positive with that energy."
            What intrigues me the most from my talk with Paula about the RasaBoxes is what I personally view as the ultimate rasa experience found in the center box called shanta, which means a place of peace and bliss, where all the energy forms are balanced.  Paula explains, "My experience in shanta is emptiness, when I can let emotions pass, when I don't wrap my attention into any particular experience. There is no judgment, but I am the witness of all of the experiences."
            The shanta RasaBox reminds me of what Pema Chödrön says in her book, When Things Fall Apart.  "Sometimes we meet someone who seems to have a great sense of well-being, and we wonder how that person got that way.  We would like to be that way.  That well-being is often a result of having been brave enough to be fully alive and awake to every moment of life, including all the lack of cheer, all the dark times, all the times when the clouds cover the sun.   Through our own good spirit, we can be willing to relate directly with what's happening with precision and gentleness. We can use a difficult situation to encourage ourselves to take a leap, and to step out into that ambiguity." 
            While each individual may interpret the information about the RasaBoxes differently, based on their own set of experiences, I can't help but think that life is kind of like the RasaBoxes - we don't know what box we will step in next, and we don't know how that moment may relate to our future, but our future is a result of what we do in this very moment.  Now is the time we can begin to recognize the true essence of any given experience.  

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