On Wednesday, May 25th, we presented our final group project. The brief was to invite external speakers to prompt a “debate”. Our prompt: people worry too much about things they can’t change. I worked with Andrei, Yumei, Yadi, Lily, and Oliver.
In an effort to introduce elements of connection within the class, and to tie the concept of worry experientially to the body, we decided to focus on movement-based activities and format the room so that everyone was facing each other in a circle.
As I explained in my introduction to the group:
Since worry is the thinking part of anxiety, one of the threads we will focus on tonight is physical movement so that we can experience being in our bodies. That’s one of the reasons we’re asking you to sit in a circle without distractions—to change the normal way we interact in this space. Hopefully, we can experience how that physical aspect can help quiet the repetitive, uncontrollable aspects of the mind. Feel free to change your position throughout.
The circle format was extremely successful in contrast to the usual clumping around tables facing forward in the classroom. This circle introduced a clean, non-hierarchical experience.
In thinking holistically about people’s embodied experience, and reflecting on whole-body health, the brain-gut connection, and soothing the vagus nerve, as discussed by Kimberly Wilson in Krista Tippett’s On Being podcast we also had fruit as snacks available. Additionally, we had a small speaker playing ambient music to set people at ease. We also asked people to put away their bags and phones to stay present.
Partly what I was interested in with this workshop session was to introduce tools showing other classroom methods that can be effective in creating inclusion and engagement. The simplest was the introduction, where each person successively introduced themselves with a colour and a physical gesture about how their body felt right then. It was extraordinarily successful for me, as a way to remember that even though we are all in the same place locationally, we are all in different physical and emotional states. I would love to do this more regularly as a way to know each other. It is a small way of settling and creating bonds with each other.
All of these scene-setting expressions are almost as important to me as the content. I realized this knowledge feels intuitive—I have been leading groups of people through the wilderness for 9 years (co-leading/co-founding Hiking Club LA) as well as hosting hundreds of events, workshops, groups, parties, and more through my business Days in LA. Inclusivity is embodied through such gestures as making sure everyone is seen and heard and invited to participate. This is pedagogy from lived experience.
These reflections are relevant to this larger project of trying to foster cross-disciplinary connection, because the how of the connection is as important as the action of the connection. It was something I was beginning to codify a couple of years ago when I read Priya Parker’s book The Art of Gathering: how we meet and why it matters—many of the tools and methods she suggested were strategies I had arrived at through my own experiences hosting. The structural/social cues directly influence the content and interactivity. If you want people to interact, support that process.