John Markland: The Truth Beneath the Identities We Build (Encore)

Yeah.

I know

I'm here right now.

I much prefer the doing and learning because part of my approach to everything also is like I need to be curious.

Yeah.

And I need to be, again, humbled from a place of I'm going to learn something here.

Yeah.

Right.

So in leading up to this conversation, it invited me to reflect on all the classes I've taken with you.

And there's certainly a common thread, I feel.

Yeah.

And though I would love to ask you, how do you describe what you do and like what the studio you've created is hoping to do? Even though you just said you don't like to talk about it.

Um.

It's, now that we talked about where it came from for me, I think that's kind of the backbone of it, which is recognize, let's begin to recognize who you are, what your identity is, why was it constructed the way that it was, and then what are you hiding? What's the truth of who you are behind this identity? right because in a way we are performing you know even when we feel authentic given our situation there's a performance going on and so i like to think of each class as holding up a mirror at a different angle to be like okay well let's look at your childhood or let's look at the archetypes of your mom and your dad or let's look at your belief system and how did you get to that The unexpressed self is a great one because it's like, okay, well, you had parts of yourself that fractured or no longer served the identity that you wanted to have.

But let's look back at them because maybe if we were to reintegrate them now with the tools that you have, it could actually be a more holistic version of yourself.

Totally.

So I guess that part of my mission is someone to become self-actualized.

Right.

Living closer to their authentic self without such a strong identity.

And then there is more of the emotional journey of the work, too, which is I feel like I'm there to help people build like impulse trusting.

intuition building reconnecting you to the animal that to me is always much more interesting to watch than anything that's a brain construct you know like if you thought about it then you're gonna be trying to follow this pattern of what you imagine whereas your impulse doesn't have that like it's it's really in and of the moment so it's unpredictable And if you are a more authentic version of yourself and you're trusting your animal instincts, then we are riveted because we're watching an animal.

Well, I love that you brought up animal because I was kind of cataloging some of the most unexpected things I've done in your classes.

And you just reminded me of one which was like in a class called Sexy or something.

I did a scene as a gorilla.

I remember.