King of Bhutan

Today we facilitated a group joy exercise in which we introduced different body postures every 5 minutes during a meeting about a tense topic. The exercise worked with the grounds of flow, physical energy and connection. The postures included slouching, standing up, crossing one's legs and arms, etc. In one posture, the participants were encouraged to imagine themselves as royalty from different countries in medieval times, meeting to discuss the preservation of world peace. We sat with a kind of grounded dignity and openness to the weighty matters at hand.

One of the participants stood up and introduced himself as the "King of Bhutan," a country which includes alongside its statistics for gross national product a number which signifies the country's gross national "happiness." (This is in fact true). He apologized for remarks he had made the previous day that had been difficult for some people. He spoke out of respect for the other people, and he himself had a noble air about him.  The energy in the room was a balance of seriousness and perspective, compassion and humor.

We haven't talked a lot about humor and joy. Naturally we have found that humor, especially in situations that have a genuine seriousness about them, can open up a space of joy. As we have discussed the grounds, we often hear humor when people talk about difficult situations that require some sort of letting go. When the letting go finally happens, that is often when the humor appears. We look forward to working more with humor. 

Solidarity Workshop

Over the weekend, Jenny and I facilitated a two-hour solidarity workshop for a group of political activists. We found the participants smart, open and willing. We started the workshop by identifying such grounds of solidarity as whether and how we connect with other people, whether we have common agreements and common objectives with them, whether we feel we can contribute and how we feel about others' contributions, whether we have a sense of trust, whether we think conflicts can be worked out, how strong our own sense of self is, and so on.

Afterward we introduced exercises to work with the grounds we had identified. We broke the group into two smaller groups. The groups were given the following instructions:

First exercise –
     Group A: "Create an artwork about elephants."
     Group B: "Decide together how to use your time."

Second exercise –
     Group A: "Decide together how to use your time."
     Group B: "Write some haikus about groups."

Third exercise –
     Group A: "Choose one of Group B's haikus to be integrated into the artwork. Then witness the process as group B integrates the haiku into the artwork."
     Group B: "Witness Group A choosing the haiku and then integrate the haiku into the artwork."

The last exercise was the juiciest, as each group watched the material they had created being worked over by the other group. While Jenny and I found the discoveries made during and after the exercises quite interesting, what struck us the most was how important communication was, particularly communicating respect, consideration, and having a priority of including others in consensus. Along those lines, in the wrap-up one participant suggested to us that we might have contacted the group before the workshop and dialogued about what was going to happen in order to create something that was more collaborative and directly tailored to the needs of the group. We thought it was a great idea and would consider the suggestion for the future.