Emotional memory

In one of our Stanilowiskis workshops we did Emotion Memory. The idea of this is to be able to think of a memory that links the emotion that you are trying to poetry an put across, eg: Sad emotion=Sad Memory, Happy emotion=Happy Memory. You do this technique to be able to give really raw emotion instead of just putting it on.
       We all sat in a circle and all said a memory, most of the memories that were said were quiet sad.
I really didn't like this method at all. It was physically tiring. If you had to do this everyday for 2 weeks for a touring show you would been emotionally and physically tired after it all and it could mentally effect you as you are revisiting a memory that might not be a nice memory to think of. It would be a good method if you where only doing the show say twice then you not getting as much impact as you would if you were doing it for 2 weeks.
        Jill also gave us another task. When telling our story when we had finished we had to tell a normal story but convey the same emotion into it, for example my story was the idea that I had lost my shoes, which in itself doesn't sound very sad because it isn't. I made out that I had made a promise to my mum to look after then and that I had broken that promise by losing them and I was getting more upset about the fact that I had broken my promise as that is something that I don't do. I found this lesson really really hard. If I were to do the lesson again I would have thought of a happy memory instead of sad as it wouldn't have been as emotionally hard or tiring

Wikipedia 

'Affective memory was an early element of Stanislavski's 'system' and a central part of Method Acting, (two related approaches to acting). Affective memory requires actors to call on the memory of details from a similar situation (or more recently a situation with similar emotional import) to those of their characters. Stanislavski believed actors needed to take emotion and personality to the stage and call upon it when playing their character. He also explored the use of objectives, actioning, and empathizing with the character.