Just as the health of the body demands that we breathe properly, so, whether we like it or not, the health of the mind requires that we be creative.
David Bohm
Coming to Our Senses is a creative mindfulness course that uses artistic practices to foster experiential learning on mindfulness-related themes.
The session schedules below provide detailed descriptions of the 'Creative Challenges.' These challenges, derived from "The Art of Looking at Ourselves," are also listed here for easy reference, along with an explanation of their purpose and origins.
Session 1
Dropping the Balloon
In this creative challenge participants are invited to pick up an imaginary balloon, to mime blowing it up and then to share with the group the size, shape, and colour of the balloon. This is an exercise typical in improv workshops, to help release creativity and spontaneity. Participants are then given several group tasks whilst keeping up the imaginary balloon. After some time a comparison is drawn between the repetitive and symbolic movement of flexing the arm and the way the mind feels the need to ‘do something’ with thoughts or other phenomenon. This dynamic metaphor can trace its antecedents to image theatre – a whole section of the Theatre of the Oppressed.
Session 2
Journey to Now
Sitting around a circle of paper the group uses all the art materials at hand to draw/paint, sculpt the life journey they have travelled to this point in time. Where they are sitting is when they were born, and the centre of the circle is the present moment. They are encouraged to be creative and use colours and shapes to signify significant periods rather than write text. Once completed, the group strand and review their ‘path’ then rotate around the circle to view and bear witness to the journey of all the others, until finally returning to the beginning of their path. Straightforward visual arts exercise to encourage representing life experience through abstract forms.
Session 3
Sensory Walk
In pairs one partner is blindfolded and the other is invited to curate a sensory walk for their partner. The roles are then reversed. Participants are invited to use found objects and situated environment to their fullest, exploring all the senses (apart from sight) and to limit engaging in conversation so that the partner can experience a fully sensory experience rather than being pulled into thought or intellect. A stock in trade of immersive theatre devising process, encouraging use of found objects creatively and engaging with materials through all the senses.
Session 4
Chaos Game
If time and group numbers allow this creative challenge is a simple game, whereby one individual walks around a circle of pairs (holding hands) asking each pair if they understand the game. The pairs respond by telling the individual to ask the pair next door. Meanwhile individuals in the pairs make eye contact across the circle and swap places. The individual looking to understand teh game can jump into an individual left behind by their partner, claiming them by holding their hand. They are not allowed o intercept participants in the act of traversing the circle, only the individual left behind in the circle. This left without the partner then become the one who walks around the rim asking each pair whether they understand the game.
At a certain point, the facilitator introduces another rule. When the facilitator shouts out ‘Chaos’ then everyone must find a different partner. They must do so as if they are extras in a disaster movie.
They must imagine what is the most terrifying movie disaster for them (e.g. Godzilla, tsunami, aliens) and act as if they are being pursued by such a disaster.
The game ends when the facilitator calls a final ‘Chaos’ but instructs that it should be done in extra slow-motion.
The game illustrates the rollercoaster of constant and mystifying change and how letting go to it can be fun.
First Movement
When a human (or any vertebrate) egg is fertilised in the womb the cell multiplies into a strip of cells that constitutes the spine. On the top of the spine forms the heart. This strip then bends over so that the heart attaches to the spine in the precise place where we find it in our bodies. Our face and head is then formed inside the heart and detaches as the spine unfolds, lifting the head up. The hands and arms are also formed in the heart before they too unfold and open out.
The participants ‘remember’ and re-enact this movement of the body’s creation. In pairs they take turns to be protagonist and witness. The protagonist sits or kneels on the floor and practices this movement of moving from the enfolded position to the unfolded, slowly raising the head and opening and extending the arms. Pausing a moment in this image of openness before returning slowly to the enfolded position in preparation to unfold again. This opening and closing are practiced for some five to ten minutes. The other partner in the pair serves as a silent and respectful witness to this re-creation.
Artist, dancer, and cranial sacral therapist Simon Whitehead first introduced this exercise to me. It is from the dance and physical theatre cannon.
Image of the Hour
While the facilitator announces an hour of the day the participants mime what they would be doing on a typical day at this time. We start at 2am and go around the clock for 24 hours. Participants are invited to notice when they are opening to experience and when they are closing, when the activity they are doing is nourishing and when it is depleting.
This is another exercise from the armoury of the ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ adapted for the purposes of the course.
Session 5
What do you really want?
In pairs, one partner repeatedly asks three questions in sequence of the other. With each sequence the protagonist is challenged to answer from a more authentic, embodied and ‘true’ place. The roles are then reversed.
This is like many exercises used in theatre to prepare an actor for a role. The repetition element; the re-presenting element (maintaining present moment awareness through 50:50 listening which is practiced beforehand); and the assistance – which is the listening of the partner, makes use of Peter Brook’s formula for theatre. Just as in Brook’s Holly Theatre its aim is to help the actor break out of a ‘role’ and find a creative, spontaneous and authentic action.
Session 6
The Gold in the Wound
Standing with eyes closed and supported by a small group, the participant feels in their body and describe a shape and colour to the parts of their body that ache or are numb or tense. That call their attention. The support group offer up the corresponding shape and colour for the participant to affix to that part of their body. Once all these parts have been identified, the participant tells the story of the wound, letting the part speak. Perhaps some have stories that intersect. Once the stories are told the parts reveal the ‘gold in the wound’. That is, once they are reframed from a burden to an old and forgotten protection, what is good about them can be discovered. To help reveal the gold, the participant peaks off the shape and colour as if it were a bandage. The wound no longer needing to be covered up.
While this activity has creative elements – storytelling, imagination, it’s lineage is more from group processes like Internal Family Systems. Nevertheless, it is an essential component in the course and helps release creative action.
The OK Corral
A cross is taped down onto the floor and each quadrant is labelled by placing paper that respectively states – Theatr Cynefin 2024 © 11
Top Right Quadrant: I’m OK: You’re OK
Top Left Quadrant: I’m Not OK: You’re OK
Bottom Right Quadrant: I’m OK: You’re Not OK
Bottom Left Quadrant: I’m Not OK: You’re Not OK
Participants are invited to walk around the four quadrants and imagine what kind of things a person with such a ‘life position’ would say and think, how they would hold themselves and how they would act. They are then asked to place themselves where they least like to be, where they most like to be and where they belong. At each stage the group discuss the qualities of such attitudes and their appropriateness in different context and how they relate to each other.
This exercise draws from both transactional analysis and techniques in Theatre of the Oppressed where we aestheticize the space of the workshop. It produces a distancing effect to enable new awareness of patterns that are underpinned by certain life positions.
Session 8
Sensory Poem
In this last session participants answer a sensory questionnaire and from their answers write a poem with the creative challenge of trying to induce a kind of synaesthesia in the listener.
The group then form an audience and take it in turns to stand in a box taped on the floor and to read their poem to the audience. There are two rules, they must try and make eye contact with each person in the audience and they cannot move from the cross until the applause has stopped.
The poetry task is a creative writing exercise, the performance of the poem draws on the Mastery methodology developed by actor Ted Danson and Tim Robbins.
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On Creativity by David Bohm