Meandering Mind - Eva Dillner [40]
This is not a group for beginners. It is for those of you who have experience in one or more of the following areas: intuitive painting, creative dance, toning, meditation and/or personal growth and have the will to deepen your own development. My idea is that we meet one weekend a month between 10am and 4pm and that we rotate the leadership. If you feel shy about taking on a leadership role at the start, there is always something you can help with, such as being the keeper of keys, keeping track of the participant list or being a “cheerleader” giving moral support. More than one person can take on the leadership for a weekend, it's an excellent way to test your capabilities to team up with one or more persons.
In a group like this, there will be triggers of your own inner processes. It is assumed that you have some experience and comfort level with working on yourself.
I propose we meet these four weekends...
I will happily take the leadership role the first weekend.
Does this sound interesting? Forward this to your friends and colleagues. Let me know if you want to lead a weekend. Sign up now for this exciting group!
The response was overwhelming. The time was really ripe for this. And as I had wished, the geographic spread of participants was like a star from the center and the mix of capabilities and experience was rich. How lovely. Right away there was a volunteer to lead weekend number two, on the theme “creative dance and process painting.”
In kicking around ideas about the group, I kept talking about playing with possibilities and all of a sudden I realized, there was the name for our group Play with Possibilities. What a freeing concept.
As the first weekend drew near I pondered how I would lead it. While walking in the woods I was inspired with a focal thread – we needed to tune in the first weekend. What better way than to play with toning exercises like HU sing and toning each other's names. I got a rough structure for the weekend, but in order to do this work you have to stay in the moment and go with what is there and wants to happen. I had done this often enough in evening talks and shorter courses, but I hadn't yet done a whole weekend in free flow.
By the time the weekend rolled around, we were seventeen registered participants, twelve showed up. Two people arrived a half hour late – who were typically very punctual. Hmm, exploring opposites...
I was tested as well. There was one participant in particular who wanted to take over and dabble in my paint pot. I had to firmly set limits, “when you lead a weekend, you can do whatever you want to, but this time I am the leader. I make the decisions this weekend.”
I had purposely stayed away from putting a candle in the center of our sharing circle, nor did I want some guru symbol there either. I wanted this start to truly reflect the purpose of playing with possibilities. For the same reason I used a stuffed animal, a Dalmatian puppy named Lucas, as our talking stick. I let him represent the focus on curiosity with no agenda or expectations.
We used the talking dog exercise to do a sharing. Now I'm sure you've all been to courses where the sharing goes on and on, and it gets really heavy. I wanted to stay away from the usual present ourselves and our qualifications. We weren't here to show how organized and capable we were. Just about all the participants were leaders and therapists, they already knew how to take charge and be serious, in spades.
I like to nip things in the bud, so I asked them to share the answer to three questions, “What is your name? Where do you come from? Why do you think you are here?” Short and sweet.
After our brief sharing, I read a passage from Carolina Eastwood's website with her interpretation of the full moon that weekend:
Full moon brings new realizations and changes
A full moon coupled with Jupiter in Virgo occurs on March 6. Opposing the