Tim Robbins

And that was where everything shifted for me, for the work that we did.

This idea that the access to these four emotions is key to everything.

but also the ability to shift from one emotion to another immediately, as it happens in life.

You can be having the worst day in the world and find a hundred bucks on the ground and go, hey, yeah, that's a good day, right?

That's the way emotion works in us.

And so when you bring this into prison and you say, you got these four emotions,

And you have to be able to switch from one to the other like that.

That's the training.

So now you've got a situation where they're in an improv as different Commedia dell'arte characters, and one of them is angry.

And then the other one is angry too.

And you say, hold on, hold on.

This isn't much of a scene because it's only gonna be a fight.

But what would happen if you responded to that anger in a different emotion?

Sadness or happiness or fear.

What would happen?

And so they do that improv, right?

Now, what are they learning here?

They're learning that they have a choice in the emotion that they have in response to anger.

That is the starting point.

Because it gives them agency over their own emotions.