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X-casting director turned acting coach, Lawrence Parke, wrote an invaluable pamphlet called "Increasing Your Success Ratio at Interviews and Auditions", his book on this subject is too laborious, but that little pamphlet of his is great. You can usually find it at The Samuel French Bookstore. Read it, dwell on it, try to see it in real life, then experiment with it, it works well with both Vincent Chase's Cold Reading Technique and Michael Shurtleff's 13 Guideposts.

Personal Experience in acting is just that, your private personal experience that is going on inside you at all times. It may relate directly to the scene or not. There are a million variables, but the important thing is to understand the concept and then you can take it from there.

In a nutshell, it's what separates leading actors from bit part players in the "American Star System" of acting.

When a Star deliver's their lines, all the bit or supporting players watch the star and talk to them.

The star doesn't look at the other actors as much because they are caught up in looking at their problems and concerns that their role in the story dictates. They are involved in their personal experience, so their thoughts and feelings frequently interrupt perfect line delivery and eye to eye contact with the other actors.

We, the audience, get caught up in wondering what they are thinking and feeling, what they are going to do. Those bit part actors and some of those straight laced supporting actors aren't memorable like the Star, because they send their attention to the Star and not to their own personal experience. Good personal experience is a form of competing with the other actors in the scene.