With the long-awaited arrival of warmer weather, another less idyllic reality settles into the acting community: having to audition while battling springtime allergies. In this article, I want to broaden your understanding of why allergies exist, and also tell you what to do about them. The first thing to know is that allergies are a threat response. We’re hard-wired to respond to invaders to our bodies: viruses, chemicals, and other irritants that enter our system provoke a strong reaction. Allergens, although generally harmless, can elicit a misinterpreted reply from the immune system. Basically, your body is reacting to a potential threat as if it were a real problem.
Our brains have what you could call a “threat bucket.” Into this bucket goes all the stress that we deal with each week. Didn’t sleep well before an audition? The bucket fills up a bit. The N train isn’t running from Astoria? More drops in the bucket. Forgot to eat beforehand so you scarfed down a week-old Milky Way in your bag? Now the bucket’s about to overflow. Your brain believes that if you reach the top of the bucket, you will literally die. So, when you add tree pollen to the mix on top of everything else, your brain says, “Enough,” and creates some kind of output. Basically, it makes a spigot to siphon off some of the contents of the threat bucket. Some of these outputs can be post-nasal drip, sneezing, scratchy throat, and all the other unpleasant things that allergies bring us.
So, what do you do about it? Anything you can do to lower the level of the threat bucket will help. Common sense things like getting enough sleep, eating well, and spending some time identifying the stressors in your life are all good ideas. Beyond that, the solution is movement. The best way we can teach our brains that everything is fine is by moving the structures of our body frequently, cleanly, and specifically. When it comes to allergy sufferers, often some of the joints in the skull are stuck. Many of us are not even aware that our skulls have joints in them, and if there is no mobility there, the sinuses will tend to not drain properly. Click here to learn about a great stretch for one of these joints, and how to use your breath to assess whether it’s working properly or not.
If you’re already in the midst of an allergy attack that is affecting your breathing, here is a video that will show you how to figure out how bad it is, and how to move the phlegm out of the way right before you walk in the audition room. If you are going to take an OTC medication for your allergies, I recommend Zyrtec or Claritin—they tend to be less drying than Benadryl. If you ever want to look up a medication and find out how it will affect your voice, here is a handy link. Give these tips a try, and hopefully your next audition will be allergy-free.
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