As an actor, relaxation is not just an important element to always maintain within your career – it is essential. Without it, your work is over-thought, tense, and self-restricting. That said, these ramifications can be just as apparent when too much effort and strain is put into your craft. Part of your job is finding a consistent balance between effort and relaxation, complexity and simplicity, depth and surface, authentic and fabricated, self and character. Your whole life is about balance. Don’t forget the little things!

Take a look at this fantastic advice piece on finding the balance between effort and relaxation, via StageMilk:

When told to ‘relax’, assuming that we don’t know what it really means, it’s no surprise that we might become more stumped and confused than ever. This can lead to even more tension, stemming from a sort of perceived ‘defect of character’.

For some, the resulting confusion can lull us into unhelpful territory, aiming for a state of lethargy or indifference, others into incessantly focusing on ‘finding their centre’ (when they probably should be focusing on what the other person is saying to them or, better still, the other person’s centre) and others to downing roughly a gallon of St John’s wort, spraying Rescue Remedy into every orifice in the head region, saying a quick prayer and hoping for the best.

It might be good to start by saying this. Relaxation is not about what you need to do, but about what you DON’T need to do.