The Heart of Einstein…

Posted on September 11, 2013 by seeandconnect

I recently put my heart and mind to writing about one of Einstein’s many steers about how we live….in collaboration with my pals at Organization Unbound, based in South Africa and promoting Expressive Change. Here’s the piece….

The Heart of Einstein.

I am a huge fan of Albert Einstein, having last year delved into his writings on social issues. I realized that his science was part of a much bigger web of thought that had at its heart nurturing the best of our shared humanity. Which I know sounds odd, considering I’m writing about the man who played a pivotal role in inventing the Atomic Bomb….

I also – by the way – love his hair!!!

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Creating healthy relationships – it matters to social change!

Posted on August 26, 2013 by seeandconnect

Recently, I was talking to two different people about working with the arts to engage children in social change. I was struck by how they were telling me more or less the same story with their different scenarios. My starting perspective is that social change is a collective creative process. I’m passionate about rooting that process in nurturing, restorative and regenerative relationships. The artists with whom I was talking were both clear: when they work with children and the arts, the quality of the object of art or the performance is not what really matters. What matters to them, as artists wanting to play an active role in social change, is what the children take away from the journey they travel together in terms of building healthy relationships with their selves, each other and the creative process.

In one instance, I was talking to an artist who does workshops with children on writing poetry. He explained that the point isn’t for children to write what others might deem quality poetry or even to take up poetry reading and writing as something that interests them. In the workshop, he and the children go on a journey together of exploring their attitudes towards themselves (he likes to work with the theme of “I am”, for example) and also towards each other – as they share what they have written. The children go through the inevitable experience of being vulnerable – exposing their views, perspective experiences and ideas – that is inherent in the creative process. They have an opportunity to see their classmates in new/different light. Many times, this different way of connecting results in students feeling more kinship with one another, in part because they become inclined to give more attention to what they have in common, rather than focus on their differences.

The other artist explained to me how she and her colleagues had done some work with young people to create a show involving life-size papier-mache puppets. When the program was completed and the show performed, the artists found that the Artistic Director seemed a bit disappointed about the quality of the puppets. To my artist friend, the children did a wonderful job on the puppets and the performance went really well. That the Art Director wanted puppets and performance of a different caliber in and of itself didn’t bother her. What she found frustrating was that the focus on the end result seemed to miss the point of the workshop.

In the journey of making the puppets and creating a performance together, the children developed not simply artistic skills and experience, but relationship skills. In working together to a rise to the occasion of working with unfamiliar tools and creations, individually and collectively their confidence in their abilities to work with the unknown grew; they navigated the territory of teamwork, and they played enthusiastically with their imaginations. They also had a lot of fun.

These two perspectives reinforce the story I wrote about in Courage on Stilts the other week.  All three steer me to think about how we would do well to expose our children as often as possible to what it means to be a conscious creator. The arts offer us many different and playful ways to do this. The goal is not to find the child or create children who are super talented in the fine arts or in the performing arts. The goal is to grow children who will become adults interested, able and willing to put the effort into nurturing, restorative and regenerative relationship-building.

I am increasingly starting to focus my attention on this aspect of social change because I believe that healthy relationships are the heart of creating better ways of living together. I find myself repeatedly asking:  How can we breath life into better ways of living together, if we have no heart?”

Reflection questions: How might we incorporate collaborative artistic endeavors into strengthening our workplaces? If you/your organization sought to integrate healthy relationship building into your projects, how might you design the projects differently?

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Love, Power & Social Change…

Posted on August 10, 2013 by seeandconnect

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about power. I have a strong sense these days that when it comes to changing the way we live together – to create more nurturing, restorative and regenerative communities – our outcomes depend heavily on our relationship with power. What does power mean to us? How do we acquire it/Where does it come from? How do we work with it?  What are the defining characteristics of our relationship with it? When are we are most powerful? At the moment, my overarching answer to these questions is: power serves us best when it has its roots in self-love. And what follows for me is the idea that self-love has an important role to play in creating nurturing, restorative and regenerative social change.

Self-love might sound like narcissism. It might resonate of ego and arrogance when you read/hear the phrase. Yet, in my experience, only when I am truly loving my self do I let go of ego and arrogance. Why? Because when I truly love my self, I no longer feel like I have something to prove or defend. So what is self-love?  If I were to define it, I’m inclined to give this definition: a belief in one’s own inherent worthiness of compassion, kindness and nurturing combined with actions that reflect this belief.

When I’m out of step with self-love, I tend to believe that I am not worthy of compassion, kindness and nurturing. Guided by this belief, I am unforgiving of myself, harsh, judgmental and toxic. I also navigate my external relationships steered by a corollary belief that I need to prove my worthiness. Guided by this belief, I imagine certain standards I think I need to fulfill, e.g. perfectionism, to become worthy.  Or I might be steered by the belief that I need to protect myself from people realizing that I’m unworthy.  Guided by this belief, I get defensive and build walls. Sometimes this defensiveness (which can seamlessly flow into offensiveness) can take the form of arrogance and a sense of superiority (which of course is at its root is the opposite).

Either way, I tend to become fearful and anxious; I fear the loss of worthiness or, worse, my inability to achieve it.

Out of step with self-love, I can be so busy focusing my attention on assessing what I imagine others are thinking of me or how I appear in a certain situation, that I have little to offer others. I become a poor listener, I lack empathy and I easily overlook the well-being needs of others.

What does this have to do with power and social change?

Power has its roots in “the ability to act or do, strength, vigor and might.” When I am in a state of “I need to prove something” or of defensiveness, I tend to lose control over my actions. This is the result of being reactive rather than response-able.  I am not consciously responding to the present moment, instead, I am reacting to the present moment in the context of old fears, wounds and insecurities. This is a state of powerlessness. Yet, whilst in it, I can feel powerful – by seeking to assert control over others or a situation, by expressing anger, by judging, blaming etc.

When I am in a state of “I have nothing to prove, nothing to defend” I tend to gain control over my actions and by becoming response-able. I am led by being conscious of what is present in the here and now and the desire to work with the dynamics at hand: the dynamics active in me, others and the collective creative process. I seek to act in ways that serve my self and others well – that nourish, regenerate and restore.  This form of power is completely dependent on my relationship with my self – on self-love and acceptance that enables me to be neither on the defense or offensive, but rather to be kind, compassionate and open to stepping into uncertainty.. The deeper and stronger the roots are, the more nourished I become – and in a state of nourishment I am able to give more to the relationships and communities with which I am connected. Thus, exercising this form of power restores and regenerates rather than depletes, exhausts, strains and stresses.

What does this have to do with social change?

My premise is that social change is a label we use to describe the process of creating different ways of living together and – like life – is a collective creative process. Who and how we are being in this process – and thus what we bring to it – is heavily determined by the kind of power we are manifesting (displaying the qualities/characteristics of). If we are manifesting power rooted in a sense of insecurity, lack and fear, we are likely to be bringing defensiveness, offensiveness, aggression, constrictions, rigidity, blame, toxic imagination and strains to the process. If we are manifesting power rooted in security – that is, a sense that our self-worth is not contingent on what happens in the process or on its outcomes – and we are wanting to feed in to the well-being of ourselves and other, we are likely to bring to the process openness, active listening, a desire to collaborate, flexibility, playfulness, forgiveness and nourishing imagination.

I cannot help but conclude that manifesting power rooted in self-love is essential to ensuring our collective creative process brings results in ways of living together that are nourishing, restorative and regenerative for all of us. I write this while having in mind that we are all human – and thus can and do slip in and out of self-love. What becomes important is that we are there for each other when this happens – there to guide each other back to self-love, back into this rich source of creative power.

Reflection questions: How would you describe your relationship to power? When do you feel most empowered? What do you think is the relationship between self-love and power? How would you like to change your relationship with power? What do you think is relationship between power and social change?

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Courage on Stilts – the brave face of conscious creativity

Posted on July 31, 2013 by seeandconnect

I am writing this post from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Last week, I spent a day at a kid’s circus camp in Peñasco about an hour outside of Sante Fe. My time there kicked off by helping out in the group working on stilts. Yes, stilts. One of the kids mentioned that he was five and had first gone on stilts when he was three! What stood out most to me from being with this group was trust, courage and imagination.  These are important themes for the collective creative process that is life and social change. If we are to step fully into our creative powers – including our imagination, we will need to have courage and we will need to trust  the people around us.

At one point that morning, I was asked to help spot while three girls – I’m guessing ages 9-12 – were practicing a set of steps (on stilts) for their performance. The idea was that the two girls on the outside were supporting the girl in the middle as she did a movement that brought her to the floor. It seemed akin to doing the splits on stilts, if you can imagine that. The middle girl’s stilts were about two feet off the ground, I think. It seemed to be the first time the middle girl was doing the move and I watched as the teacher showed her what to do. Middle girl went ahead and did the move. I think it didn’t go quite right but was a good start – based on the teacher’s response.

I was impressed because the middle girl had to overcome any fear she might have had, whilst putting trust in the people supporting her – directly and indirectly (that is, a teacher and I were spotting the two girls assisting her with the descent). Soon after, I played a similar role in a similar exercise and I became more impressed. This time, it was a different middle girl. And before she assumed this role of she-who-descends, she mentioned that she wasn’t feeling very confident about being on stilts. I noticed she was on one of the higher sets of stilts, and higher than the previous middle girl.

So, there she was openly acknowledging that she wasn’t feeling very confident and then willing to try a new move that looked rather scary to me. Courage. Clearly, she was nervous. Yet, she went ahead. I gather that it started off well and than went amuck. In fact, I was worried that she was hurt- she looked like a pretzel when the landing completed. She was a bit shocked because one of her stilts had caught on something, but other than that she was fine. And it was declared that she was capable of doing this move. Geez, I was really impressed by this young woman – for her courage.

The Circus Camp is an initiative of Wise Fool – an all women’s circus in Santa Fe with this mission: to ignite imagination, build community, and promote social justice through performances and hands-on experiences in the arts of circus, puppetry, and theatre. The Peñasco Theatre camp that I was visiting is a free (pay what you can, if you can) camp outside Santa Fe. Some children bring their lunches, others are given lunch on site at no cost to their families. Some people might focus on this financial arrangement as the ‘social justice’ dimension of the circus – you know, making activities like this available to children from all backgrounds.

That would seriously miss the point.

The circus camp pulls children into conscious creativity. The children begin the camp by testing out the different more physical elements of the show (arial, acrobatics, stilts) and then choosing which one they prefer to take up for the performance. They all participate in dance and clowning pieces. Whatever the activity, they seem to have opportunities to input into the design of the performance – it isn’t all dictated by the teachers. So it is, that the children are invited to work-play with their imaginations beyond the basics of things like ‘pretend you are a bee.’ (The theme for this camp is bees – one day the kids visited a bee farm to learn about bees and how the live).

Imagination. When we are creating – bringing things into being – with people and are being conscious about it, it can be scary. It can be very scary if we allow our imaginations to open up. Why scary? Because when we put forward an idea, we feel we are sharing a part of ourselves – after all, we thought it, it came from inside us. In sharing a part of ourselves we become vulnerable – vulnerable to rejection, ridicule, dismissiveness, scorn etc. It can be easy to take rejection of our idea as a rejection of us (but delving into that is for another blog post).

Most of the time we are creating unconsciously – going through our day-to-day movements as if on auto-pilot. This tends not to be  scary because we tend to do what is expected of us by our selves and others; we tend to stay in our little boxes that are familiar to us.  It is when we step outside the box that the fear is most likely to kick in, when we venture to be different from how we normally are and different from the general norm.  And when we step outside the box to step fully into our imaginations – Scary!

Yet, if we want to create a different world – the one that we bang on about, the one that is fairer, kinder, more just, more loving etc – we need to step fully into our imaginations and we need to do so in ways that are connected with the essence of the change we want to create. Imagination can take us to really dark places – we can creatively (and in many ways we have) torture our selves and each other, for example. What we want to do is nourish ourselves, restore ourselves, regenerate ourselves – and through imagination open up the possibilities for how we can do so.

This brings me back to the three girls on stilts. The girl in the middle – whoever she may be – relies on the other two for her descent. The other two girls rely on that middle girl to do the descent as part of their collective movement. They trust each other. They support each other to be courageous. All of this taking place within the imaginative performance that they are creating with each other. This performance, in turn, involves a whole host of players (from the teachers, to the lunchmakers, to the cashier at the gas station their mom or dad stops at along the way to drop them off and pick them up).

You can perhaps imagine how it is that each day the children get together and the teachers hold a space for them to feel safe and to give way to imagination and to the support of each other. The children don’t ridicule each other. They do make each other feel safe; this is essential to circus performance. That may seem obvious – given the nature of the performance. But life (and social change) is no different than the circus – just sometimes the risk-taking isn’t obvious. That is to say, if we don’t feel that we are safe, if we don’t trust the people we are with and/or the overall collective process to hold us, we won’t venture to step fully into the space. We’ll hold back what we have to offer.

For me, a circus camp contributes to social justice/social change because it encourages children to be conscious about the collective creative process, and in particular to be connecting with one another by building a foundation of trust where courage and imagination can flourish.

Reflection questions: In your role as a changemaker, what conditions tend to enable you to feel safe and courageous? What conditions inhibit you? Presently, which are the spaces in your life where you feel able to step fully  into your creative power?

 

 

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What’s with these “I am” statements?

Posted on July 20, 2013 by seeandconnect

I’m thinking about the day of the verdict on the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman trial (at times, it was hard to know who was on trial, from what I could tell of the little snippets I heard whilst my brother-in-law was watching it on television. What really struck me is something I heard that made me think “Damm, here’s a father who has lost his son and HE – the father – is on trial!”). Many people were posting many perspectives on FB. Someone I know posted a link to this piece: I am not Trayvon Martin. I commented: “I agree with much of what this young woman is saying – especially people stepping up to individual responsibility in collectively changing how we live together. However, I also believe there is merit in embodying the understanding that we are all Trayvon Martin. And we are all George Zimmerman. Yes, me a little brown woman is George Zimmerman…” A few days later, I received a thoughtful FB message from the person who had done the post, which included this link: We are NOT all Trayvon. In the message, this friend made it clear that she agreed with me on one level, a deep spiritual level she said, that we are all one – but totally disagrees that this translates in the real world into “I am Trayvon Martin.’  This post is me reflecting on what I meant/mean with my comment.

Firstly, I realized after giving it further thought that I don’t mean “We are all one” when I say these “I am…” statements. Secondly, it never occurred to me that in saying what I said, it could also be construed that I was/am somehow ignorant of the huge differences between the life experience of a young African-American man and myself (this is what I understood my friend to be communicating to me and I was a little bit perplexed). I’m totally aware that my family, for example,  does not spend their days worried about what might happen if I get pulled over for a speeding ticket. Thirdly, if given the chance to wear an “I am Trayvon” t-shirt or hold a placard saying it, I don’t think I’d do it. But perhaps that is by the by.

So why did I respond to my friend’s posting as I did?

These days, I’m grappling with connection and what it means. I’m grappling with what “I am” means for me or put another way “Who/How am being?”  Is this a spiritual grapple? Maybe. I tend to think of it is an opening-my-heart and mind grapple on most days. Some days I think of it as bourgeoisie navel-gazing grapple. Other days, well, I don’t even think about it or if I do think about it, it isn’t consciously and I don’t give it a label.

I’m also thinking – everyday – about life as a collective creative process, with social change merely being about changing how we live.  Thus, social change is also a collective creative process. It is in this context that I decided to post the comment: “I also believe there is merit in embodying the understanding that we are all Trayvon Martin. And we are all George Zimmerman.” Here’s my thinking…

on embodying “I am Trayvon Martin”: Trayvon Martin was a unarmed African-American young man shot by someone claiming to have been acting out of self-defense. I didn’t follow the trial and, obviously, I wasn’t there at the incident. In this thinking-process, I am putting the truth of why/how exactly George Zimmerman shot and killed Travyon Martin aside. I can’t know that. What I think I do know – and that studies/research back up – is that people of all sorts of racial/ethnic backgrounds are more likely to react with higher levels of fear and distrust to seeing a African-American young man than if they were to see a White young man under similar circumstances.  African-American young men are regularly racially profiled, stereotyped and associated with being threatening. Whether we are conscious of it or not, many of us succumb to this way of seeing – we look and assume. I’d be lying if there weren’t times where I’ve become conscious that I’m succumbing to it. In this way, I say “I am Trayvon Martin.” I am part of the collective creative process that perpetuates the profiling, the stereotyping that contributed to how he experienced life and death. I say this even though I’ve spent a fair portion of my professional career challenging racial profiling and stereotyping.  Trayvon’s life (and death) experience are the results of collective creations. I imagine some people being angry at me right now for saying this, including the young White woman in the post who is clear that she is NOT Trayvon Martin, but IS George Zimmerman. I imagine one reaction to what I’m saying is that I’m including victims/the oppressed in the my blaming – when the people to blame are those White people who perpetuate their own privilege that is for them both a sense/a belief and a material fact in many ways. I’m not trying to play a blame game. And I’m clear that more White people need to wake up to the dynamics in which we live, in which people have privilege based on the color of their skin. We all need to be awake to this and challenge it. In that sense, we are all and I am Trayvon Martin. We are also all – potentially – his undoing. That is, it is up to us – ALL of us – to undo the messed up dynamics of how we live together, how we see each other, treat each other day-in and day-out.

on “I am George Zimmerman”: Basically, I apply the same thinking process, as above. George Zimmerman is, like many USAmericans, a person who lives in fear – probably excessive fear. That is, he is in constant fight or flight mode. I’ve literally seen how our brain waves, when we are experiencing anxiety (for whatever the reason) can become set in this mode. When in this mode, we are constantly afraid and hyper-sensitive – inclined to perceive most, if not everything/everyone as a threat. I’m inclined to think that a guy who wants to spend his free time as armed volunteer watchman (a.k.a. vigilante) moves through the world AFRAID in not-so-healthy levels. Fear is human. However, to go around in wired in your brain for fight or flight  – not healthy. For the adrenaline to rocket up in the presence of an African-American young man – well that’s not healthy also and is culturally conditioned in people who – on top of that – are already wired to be REACTIVE. Thus, I’m thinking “I am George Zimmerman” – I am part of the collective creative process that breeds fear and compulsive reactivity rather than conscious response. A culture that also breeds a lot of racism. Mass Media, film etc…it all feeds into who and how we are all being.

Sure, I’m a person that tries to challenge these things. Nevertheless, embodying (rather than merely saying it) “I am George Zimmerman” and “I am Trayvon” is my way of reminding myself to stay aware of what I’m doing with my creative power and how I’m connecting (or not) with others to create a different – healthier and safer – reality.

I don’t know what all the different people wearing t-shirts and carrying placards/banners saying “I am Trayvon” are thinking or feeling. For those who think that it is a nonsense. I get why you think that. For those who insist on attaching themselves to the slogan, I’m assuming it is your way of showing solidarity – you mean well. I don’t mind. I don’t mind, but I agree with the point that what must go with the slogans and marches of solidarity is an owning up to the facts and the harsh reality of how the dynamics of privilege and oppression not only work in the US generally or in some neighborhoods, but also in our own backyards, in our own lives – no matter who we are and where live. Day-in, day-out.

This owning up, however, is kind of pointless if it isn’t combined with action. But what are those actions? Who does what? I have ideas….and I believe the possibilities are infinite. There isn’t a single answer/solution and the path will emerge, we build it as we go along. The key is, we have to be consciously building it, with clear intentions. All of us. Or as many of us as possible. We are being asked to step into our creative powers to construct a new reality.

Reflection questions: What do these statements “I am George Zimmerman” and/or “I am Trayvon Martin” mean to you? What concrete actions can follow on from such statements to shift what we are creating together – steering our collective creative powers in a more steadfastly and deeply restorative, nurturing and regenerative direction? In other words, where do we go from here? Where do you go from here? What can you do in the next day, week, month to play a role (however small) in dismantling and creating alternatives to systems/dynamics that perpetuate cultures of fear and violence and privilege based on the color of one’s skin?

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Quickie – How consciously are you giving life to your creations?

Posted on July 9, 2013 by seeandconnect

Life is a collective creative process. What we blandly and vaguely call social change is about changing the way we live together. Thus, it is also a collective creative process. The process results in creations, which can take on infinite number of forms. The process, well, the process is a dance – a step here, a step there, a gesture, a movement, a connection, a disconnect, a rapid pace, a slow pace, a stumble, a fall, a get-back-up-again moment, a stay-on-the-floor and wonder “What the hell is going on, where is this going?” moment or two or three, a celebration, a commiseration, a question, an answer, an embarrassing moment, a liberating moment, a surprising moment-connection-movement. When we are together creating we bring to each creation an essence, the spirit of the creation.

You might read this and think I’m not talking about you, because you think “I’m not creative!” Ahh, but everyone is creative. To create simply means to bring into being. You, me, he, she, we are all bringing things into being every second: thoughts, words, actions. We create them, and usually unconsciously – that is, we experience them as though they simply happen and we are passive vehicles through which thoughts, words, actions are expressed. This is a choice we make – we choose to be passive or active, ignorant or conscious of what we are creating.

Reflection questions: how conscious are you of what you are creating? What’s tends to be the essence or spirit of your creations?

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Improv-ing: social change learnings from improv protocols

Posted on July 2, 2013 by seeandconnect

The other evening I went along to a drop-in improv class at Second City in Chicago. I’m tempted to say I haven’t improv-ed in a long time, but Rachel – the teacher – reminded us that it just isn’t true. Sure, I haven’t done an improvised sketch with a group of other improvisers for more than five years – well, with people who call themselves improvisers, or in an context where we call what we are doing improvising. Yet, every moment in life we are improvising. I’m improvising now as I type. I was improvising when I said hello to my sister a few minutes ago. I had no script. I just spoke. I just typed. I have my mantra:  Life – and thus social change, which is changing how we live together – is a collective creative process. I could also say that life/social change (as Rachel did) is one long improvisation sketch. We are all improvisers. Which is why, some of the standard protocols for improvisation are valuable in life and social change.

This is by no means a new connection to make. Check out, for example, this article in Waging Non-Violence by Ken Butigan, Improvising a New World. And over the years, I’ve received different emails with principles set out to make this point. I continually think it is a very helpful connection to make, thus I’m writing it about it now – to add to the stocklist. The following improv protocols really stuck out to me the other night:

  • Humble ourselves:  We like to think we’re clever and we like to show people we’re clever. In an improv skit, it is so tempting to get caught up in saying the funny thing, the clever thing that makes everyone laugh. Usually, if that’s what you are trying to do it won’t work. Often it won’t work, because you decide what you think that is – and you  get attached to your idea. Which means you try to get it in there somehow. Even when it doesn’t really sit with what’ going on in the scene. You are trying to make the scene all about you and your ideas. Another way to try and get attention to yourself is to make sure you have lots to say or have something dramatic to do. No standing on stage with one or no words – that’s NOT A BIG ENOUGH PART for you. Never mind that the tree is a part of the story as it is, and it is the part that you’ve landed in – no,  you want A BIGGER PART. Moral – get over it, get over ourselves. Drop our egos, embrace humility.
  • Give gifts: Ahh, I love this idea. In improv everyone is encouraged to be up there with the other players ready to give gifts. The idea isn’t to make it hard or challenging for fellow players, it is to make it easy and fun. If it is easy and fun for you, it is easy and fun for the audience, too. Do things like make it clear what you are offering up. Name it – say there is a rat on the desk rather than leaving it open and fuzzy by saying – “Oh, I see something on the desk” Then other players can latch onto the rat and work with it. Or sometimes giving a gift means giving someone an assist when they are struggling. So, when you see someone looking stuck with what to say/do next,  you jump in and help out. At the heart of gift giving is the question: “How can I contribute in way that is energizing, restorative, regenerative?” Sometimes this might mean being the one who has the initiative to end a scene when it really needs to be ended. In improv, you really are all in this together and for it to work well, everyone needs to really believe this and act on it. Go on! Give gifts.
  • Be present (your greatest gift): Well, the above practices aren’t easily done if you aren’t present. That is, if you aren’t listening to and observing what is going on in the moment. Instead, for example, you might be trying to think of what the next clever line might be – and in fact not at all hear what the person talking is saying. Then you come out with something that totally does not make sense. Some gift, you’ve given. The other players end up struggling to follow on. It is like throwing a stink-bomb into the room – not a very nice gift, is it? Smelly and suffocating. Who wants that? Or, another player might need a hand and is trying to let you know this through eye contact, only you aren’t paying any attention, and thus keep missing the cue they are giving you. Not really useful to other, are we, if we aren’t keeping aware of what’s going on.
  • Trust and surrender: This is my theme for the year, so of course this stands out to me. In improv you say what you say/ do what you do and just roll with it. No time or space to think too much about what you do and certainly no time to think about what you’ve done. Because, if you are looking forward or looking back than you aren’t present. Being present requires trust and surrendering to the moment and the process. Trusting that when the protocols are in place and being practiced, it’ll all flow. Who knows what form it will take – just go with the essence of the process, the play. What you are also trusting is the web of relationships among all of you – the players – that this web will hold all of us in a nurturing way. No one is trying to throw anyone out there to get eaten by sharks. When it doesn’t flow – well, no worries, we are all still safe!

Sigh. Just thinking about it, I feel peaceful and excited – improv is fun and delicious. So expansive and playful.  Including the stumbles and falls – because there will always be stumbles and falls! Will you feel awkward or embarrassed? Sure. Sometimes. But, who cares? Feel it, make a face, maybe even laugh at ourselves and then let it go, so we can be in the moment. Ohhh, Yum!!!

Protocols for life and the way we live. Protocols for being in the creative process that is how we change the way we are living. Maybe we should stop getting so caught up in this seriousness of having to IMPROVE things and focus more on the joy that can come from  IMPROV-ING things….from improv-ing who we are and how we live together.

Reflection questions: In what ways do humility, gift-giving, being present and trust & surrender resonate with you, as protocols for day to day living (including in your work relationships)?  How do you tend to practice these protocols? What blocks you from practicing them? What encourages you to practice them?

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What if….?

Posted on June 28, 2013 by seeandconnect

What if, this thing they call “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” here in the United States (and elsewhere probably, where they have psychiatrists and psychologists) is actually a sham?

I’m not saying the we don’t have anxiety, aren’t feeling anxious and aren’t feeling fear in our hearts. But what if, it isn’t actually a disorder – but a sign of disorder? What if it is   our bodies way of telling us that we are living in a state that goes against the order of things? Goes against the order of things in the sense that we are killing ourselves rather than trying to live?

That is to say, what if we feel panicky and anxious and sometimes literally CANNOT BREATHE because our breath  and life is being sucked out of us? You see, another word for breath is spirit – from the latin spirare.  Spirit can also mean animating or vital principle in man or animals – from the french espirit.  So, what if so many of us are anxious and depressed because we are sensing that with each day we are becoming less and less alive – and this feels scary, because we don’t want to die?

I breath, therefore I am. I am, therefore I create.

What if, here in the United States all this talk of disorder and deficit, e.g. Attention Deficit Disorder, is really a way of getting us to ignore the truth of our own abundance and, I say again, the  order of things? What if it is getting us to relinquish our creative powers in order, well, to keep a different kind of order? What if, really, each and every one of us has crazy power to create a nourishing and regenerative world for all who inhabit it?

What if anxiety is all the creative energy being channeled into fear, as a way of getting our attention to say, nay to scream: “I’M HERE!!! DON’T LET ME DIE!”  Workshop after workshop, healer after healer talk about our wounded children that we carry inside and the need to heal the wounded child or not let the wounds take over our lives. What if that wounded child represents our powerfully creative self reduced to a little girl or boy trembling in the corner?

What if we all decided to revive these children and reclaim our creative power? To own it, take responsibility for it? What if we decided that our fear is not a symptom of something wrong with us, but a symptom of something right – in the sense that something in us wants us to save that child, to save that creative power, to save our spirit so that we can breath new life into the world?

What if…?

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Find a partner and create play…

Posted on June 26, 2013 by seeandconnect

Well, I’m so glad to be blogging again after nearly a rather long hiatus. I’m still very much thinking about creativity, creative process. And dance. Sometime in April, I went to an ecstatic dance night in Vauxhall, London hosted by Urubu. I was going through a rough patch emotionally at the time and definitely not feeling connected to my creative power in a nurturing way. By the end of the night, I was very grateful to the dance for re-connecting me, for reminding me of who I can be as a creator.

It was a Saturday night. One of those urban nights where I couldn’t find someone to go out with (I had admittedly, left it to very short notice) and had to muster up quite a bit of self-motivation to propel myself out into the cold and rain and well across the city. Happily I saw folks I knew and the live music was fab. However, once moving, I still struggled a bit. At one point, we were encouraged to find a partner. The lyrical beat of the music sparked something in me and I began to feel playful.

Finding a partner at these gigs rarely is an effort. You look around, make eye contact and there you go – and so there I went. I really got into the playfulness. And together we played with the rhythms. Lots of smiling while we flowed in a dance. We were constantly in a game of lead and follow, in a way that blurred the lines between the two. I might make a gesture that my partner would start to follow, but he would quickly add his own twist to it and vis-versa. I recall us being in that wonderful state of movement where we definitely were joined in our rhythms while also retaining a bit of our individual style. In the space was he, I and we.

When the music was finished, we hugged and thanked each other in a heartfelt way. I remember thinking at the time “Wow. That felt so good. I felt like I was in my creative power – I felt inspired and inspiring. And it was all so playful. Delicious.”

I not only felt connected with my creative power, but felt connected to the rhythm and play of my self and another dancer, another creator.  Certain friends know me as the Jester. At the time of this dance outing, I had felt like my jester-self had been in hibernation for awhile. That lyrical exchange felt like an awakening of my hibernating jester-self. She moved with playfulness, cheekiness, lightness and easy-flow. It was good to dance with her again, to dance with my jester-self and to share her movement with someone else.

I went home that evening sweetly exhausted and feeling strengthened. I witnessed in myself the power to create play, connection, flow, smiles, laughter.

Reflection questions: What’s the story of the last time you experienced creating play?  As a changemaker, activist – whatever label you use to identify your choice to take on a conscious role in creating healthier, more regenerative ways of living together – in what ways might play enhance, or has in the past enhanced, your creative process?  What’s the story of the last time you felt you were in a delicious, relaxed, steady creative (bringing things into being) flow of I, S/he, We?

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We all are creative – let’s own it!

Posted on June 19, 2013 by seeandconnect

The word CREATIVE, I want to us to reclaim it. How many times have you heard someone say, or have you said, “I’m not very creative”?  Basically, when we say this, we are using it to say “I’m not very imaginative or original.” This is a correct use of the word. However, I’m now wanting to distill this word to its basics. That is, I want to think of creative in the basic sense of referring to originative – having the power or ability to create. CREATE simply means to bring something into being. So, when I say, “I’m creative” it means I bring things into being.  Used this way, everyone is creative – because everyone is constantly bringing things into being – with varying degrees of imagination. The question I’m often thinking about is what are we – you, me, everyone – creating? The point of today’s post – a post that is bringing me back to creating for my blog after a bit of a hiatus  – is to suggest that it’s time to own our creative power, to take responsibility for what we are creating. If we can be imaginative about it, well, all the better.

A thought pops into my head. I have created that thought. Words come out of my mouth. I have created those words. I take a step forward. I created that movement/motion. Thoughts, words, actions – I am creating them all the time. So are you. How we live together is the sum of these creations.

Yup.  Life is a collective creative process. How we live together is a collective creative process. While we simply can’t know the full impact of our creations, we can speculate on some of the impacts – sometimes we even have a strong sense in our body, for example, that lets us know. Usually when you have that sense in your gut of “I shouldn’t say this” and decide to follow it with “but…” and go ahead and say it, you get the kind of response you anticipated. Not only did you create words, you possibly created anger, criticism, carelessness. Of course, the reaction/response to what you say is not something you create. The person you speak to is creating their reaction/response. You are not responsible for their creation. They are responsible for their creation, just as they are not responsible for your creation. Well, not fully, anyway. What they create was in some manner sparked by what you created and vis-versa. We are at once individually responsible for our creations and our creations are also connected to and informed by  other people’s creations (more on this another time).

My point is – we are constantly in a web of connections, a collective creative process, a dance.

We are all in a creative dance together. Imagine a room where everyone is dancing. And they are in their own body, dancing away – with no awareness of the space around them, no awareness of the people around them. It is free form – people move however they want. They are encouraged to move whatever is in them – some people are dancing rage. Some people are dancing sadness. Some fear. Some joy. Most are moving between all of those. Legs are in the air, arms or jutting out.

No one is paying attention to their environment. Imagine.

The result is a lot of collisions. Maybe even a bruise here and there because of the force of impact. Definitely feet are stepped on. People stumble and trip. Let’s assume these people are somehow wired to be unaware of what is outside of their selves. Immediately after bumping into someone, they might say “I’m sorry” but this does not lead to them choosing to pay more attention to their environment. They slip right back into free dancing around the room with total disregard for everyone else. Eventually, people start getting angry because they keep stumbling, falling, having their toes stepped on and getting an elbow in the stomach.

Arguments ensue, while everyone is thinking “What it is it with these people, they have no regard for other people’s space.” Yes, everyone is thinking this.

Imagine you are watching this madness. You might want to scream out “Would everyone please pay attention to their surroundings and find a balance between your own rhythms and movements and the movements of others?!” Seems pretty sensible to you and to me, no?

What you would be doing is asking people to own their creative power. To take responsibility for what they are creating and their contribution to the collective creation – from which they are inseparable. From which WE are inseparable. We can’t know all of the impacts/results/consequences of our thoughts, words and actions. These accumulate over time in non-linear ways. We can, however, have some sense as to what we are giving life to in the present moment with our thoughts, words and actions. What type of dance we are fueling.

We can have this sense if we choose to have it. If we choose to be AWARE and CONSCIOUS of how we are moving through the world. This is what I’m thinking. Imagine if we begin to own our creative power, rather then unleash it out into the world hiddedly-piddedly and with nominal awareness, consciousness. In the beginning, I suggested that how imaginative you/we are isn’t the point – we are all creative. True. That said,  I guess I am asking you to use your imagination here  in order to open up what could be. Keeping in mind, of course, that we can’t fully imagine what could be – that’s the beauty of it, the mystery of what could happen if we all began to own our creative power….but that’s a subject for another post.

Reflection questions: In what ways have you relinquished ownership of your creative power? In what ways can you claim greater ownership of it?

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