What is NeuroActing | Neuro Acting

What is NeuroActing?

NeuroActing is a holistic approach to acting that integrates mind, body, and soul. This encompasses techniques derived from Method Acting, neuroscience and Qigong, the self-healing exercise and meditation system. Key skills involve self-awareness, emotional range, physical expressiveness, and the ability to connect authentically with a character.

Self-Awareness and Emotional Range: NeuroActing emphasizes understanding one's own emotions and developing a wide emotional vocabulary to draw upon for character portrayal.
Physical Expressiveness: This involves using the body to communicate character, including movement, gestures, and posture.  
Authenticity and Connection: NeuroActing aims to help actors connect with their inner truth and express it authentically, leading to more believable and compelling performances.
Breathing Techniques: NeuroActing incorporates breathing exercises to manage anxiety, enhance performance, and facilitate emotional expression.
Neuro Gestures: These are specific physical actions designed to trigger emotional responses and enhance character embodiment.
Audition Technique: NeuroActing helps actors approach auditions with confidence and effectiveness by integrating breathing techniques and emotional preparation.
Resilience and Stamina: The ability to cope with the demands of the acting profession, including long hours, rejection, and emotional intensity.
Communication Skills: Effective communication, both verbal and non-verbal, is crucial for conveying a character's emotions and intentions.
Creativity and Imagination: The ability to develop unique character interpretations and bring them to life.
Listening Skills: Active listening is essential for interacting authentically with other actors and responding to direction.

The Birth of NeuroActing by Bryan Bounds

Like many people, my involvement with acting has been a life journey. Like the poor souls in the film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” who had a message implanted in their minds by benevolent aliens, we actors have had a yearning implanted in our psyches (often from an early age) that we spend the rest of our lives trying to grapple with. I’m no different.

My life experience has taught me that this yearning is about wholeness. The journey of this life has been about the persistent search for wholeness to overcome a deep trauma. Watching my father die of liver cancer at the age of ten was a deeply traumatic chapter in my life which permanently affected my personality and outlook on life. It took me into the depths of the hell of alcoholism and eventual recovery through therapy and the 12 steps. And by using the tools that allowed me to recover from the mental illness of alcoholism with an integrated personality, I slowly came out of the wilderness to start practicing my craft, and I have found untold bliss in my acting when I apply those principles to a relationship with a scene partner and with an audience. It has completely re-contextualized my experience in acting. Being service minded as a recovering alcoholic, I began teaching to fill a need in the community.

Then the universe brought Clara into my life. She was a student with high-functioning autism. As I began selecting exercises to help boost her social skills, and introducing them into the class, I found my other students benefitted from these activities. Everyone’s skills were boosted. Of course they would be: life in the 21st century if now about dealing with the ‘polyconsciousness’ of being ‘IRF’ and our virtual, disconnecting digital life. Out of this knowledge that what I was guided toward was helping young actors, I chose the term NeuroActing in 2020. My ‘school’ is a fusion of method acting, neuroscience and the principles of service and connection contained within the 12 steps of recovery. As a student has told me, “It reflects our new way of approaching life” in this digital age when we desperately need connection in our growing isolation, and greater empathy to combat the effects of digital algorithms on our psyche.

It’s timely, it’s healthy, it’s healing and most importantly, fulfilling to actors.

HISTORY OF NEUROACTING:

A logical progression


1989-1991	MFA in Acting, University of Texas at Austin Bryan becomes a Method Acting lecturer at graduate school
2016-2018	Creates American School of Acting Fills a gap in actor training of young adults in the UK
2018-2020	Develops NeuroActing training system In response to helping students on the autistic spectrum. Devises exercises to boost focus, empathy and creativity in all students.
2020-Present	Develops NeuroActing online training system Refining the system, creating an online course and helping students across the world to level up their acting standards and boost mental health.