ENGLISH

What is Alba Emoting?

Alba Emoting proposes a systematic method, based on scientific findings, which allows to train any person –independent of gender or social heritage– to express basic universal emotions clearly, with the possibility to summon them and modulate their expressive and subjective components at will. It helps to learn to modulate emotional states with different degrees of intensity, allowing a prompt precise rise and end of an emotion. In short, Alba Emoting is a physical method that helps to transmit emotions unequivocally.

Based on the results of many years of scientific research on the psychophysiological aspects of human emotions, Prof. Susana Bloch and her collaborators developed this method that allows any person to express, recognize and perceive creatively the basic emotions of: joy-laughter, sadness-crying, fear-anxiety, anger-aggression, erotic love and tenderness, and to better understand mixed emotions, such as jealousy, pride or ambition.

By learning the precise reproduction of  respiratory-postural-facial patterns specifically related to each emotion, an individual is enabled to:

- Get in contact with h/his own emotions in a direct and simple way.
- Develop awareness of one's own emotions and those of others.
- Facilitate the communication of emotions.
- Experience a vivid, genuine and organic transmission of an emotional state, valid to any observer, independent of h/his talent, gender, or cultural background.
- Increase one's capacity to make finer distinctions in the expression and recognition of emotions.
- Develop and enhance emotional intelligence.

A special "step-out" technique is taught which allows the person using this method to immediately return to a neutral non-emotional state, thus safeguarding h/his emotional balance. 

The method has proved to be particularly useful for the work of performers, for psychotherapeutical purposes, and is now being used in different domains of communication, education, health and management.

A full Alba Emoting training program includes the following:

- train the execution of the effector patterns for the 6 basic emotions
- help learners to gain insight in clearly recognizing their own emotions and their correct expression as well as recognizing those of others.
- work systematically with the "step-out" procedure, which is essential to avoid what Susana Bloch calls "emotional hangover"
- work with mixed emotions, as distinct from "pure" emotions
- apply the reproduction of the patterns in performing activities
- work with "emotional melody" in different situations
- learn to incorporate the "step-out" procedure as quick physical dynamic procedure to apply in any emotional situation.
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Emotional Effector Patterns

Emotions are functional states of the organism which comprise simultaneously a physiological activation (neuroendocrine reactions) an expressive behavior (neuromuscular reactions) and a subjective experience (feeling).

The particular respiratory-facial-postural configuration which characterizes each of the six basic universal emotions (tenderness, eroticism, anger, fear, sadness, and joy) and which allows these emotions to be identified by an observer is what we have called "emotional effector patterns"(Bloch & Santibanez, 1972, 1986).

Since breathing, posture and facial expression are under voluntary control, we taught naive subjects to reproduce these effector patterns without naming the emotion. We found that if the subjects correctly reproduced the effector patterns, they could evoke images and personal souvenirs and, as the effector patterns were further developed, they could begin to experience the corresponding feeling.

If a change in breathing and in posture is instructed during the effector pattern reproduction ("step-out" technique), the subject can immediately return to the non-emotional state (neutral) unless a "critical mass" of feedback effection has been attained. In this latter case, the feeling is maintained until it ends in its natural time course.

With training, i.e., by a systematic repetition of the "step-in/step-out" procedure, it is possible to alter the time course of the subjective arousal and even to abolish it completely. Such a state of affairs is useful for acting behaviour (Bloch et al., 1987) and also activities such as making a speech, or conducting a good relationship with patients in the case of medical treatment or psychological therapy, among other.

The reproduction of the "emotional effector patterns" appears to be an interesting model for studying emotions. It provides a more objective experimental protocol than the classical procedure of using external emotogenic stimuli (slides, films or real emotionally charged situations) or by suggesting moods based on personal emotional souvenirs or by instructed "imagery".

The possibility to induce emotional states and to modulate them by specific voluntary physical actions, specially specific breathing patterns, demonstrates experimentally that central states of the brain can be altered by a selective modification of output patterns.

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SUSANA BLOCH



Susana Bloch Arendt, creator of Alba Emoting, ™ is an internationally known research psychologist, who specialized in Neurophysiology and Psychophysiology.

Of German origin, she graduated from the Universidad de Chile, in Santiago, then pursued graduate studies at Harvard and Boston Universities in the USA. Back in Chile, she became Professor of Neurophysiology at the Department of Psychology, and Research Associate at the Department of Physiology, both positions at the Universidad de Chile, and in between was Visiting Professor at Boston University and at the Universidade de Sao Paulo in Brazil. Later, she became Directeur de Recherches at the CNRS (French Research Council) and created her laboratory at the University of Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France where she worked for 23 years.

She is the author of more than 100 scientific publications in international journals within the general area of Brain and Behavior, and more specifically in subjects such as Visual Perception, Learning and Motivation, and the Psychophysiology of Human Emotions. After many years of research in this last area, she created her own method, Alba Emoting ™ that allows anyone to learn to consciously induce, express and modulate basic emotions using the body, especially particular breathing patterns.

At present she is re-established in her adopted country, and is dedicated to write, to teach her own method and to develop practical applications in different fields, both in Chile and abroad.



BOOKS IN ENGLISH

- Bloch, S. 2006. The Alba Of Emotions. Ediciones Ultramarinos PSE. Santiago, (261 pages). SEE REVIEW
- Bloch, S. 2003. The Development of Alba Emoting (Hyrum Conrad, Editor) BYU-Idaho Press (115 pags). SEE REVIEW, PREFACE AND ABSTRACTS.

SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS

- Articles by Susana Bloch and her collaborators about human emotions. (In Spanish, French and English)
- Articles by other authors about Alba Emoting. (In English and German)
- Articles by Susana Bloch and her collaborators about other items in animal behavior.

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