Where did you *feel* the STOP?

On the edge of where we ‘trust & believe’ (ourselves / the situation / ..) we feel tension. Mieke uses it in her fly & fall workshop: "walk away from your group, don’t look backwards, when you start to feel the tension (she clogs in her throat and grasps it, to ‘act’ the feeling) you stop and start falling."

Afterwards she asks "Where did you feel the stop in you body"? and hands out some pos- it notes to mark it on your body. People start writing. They start drawing too. As writing maybe doens't bring them much closer to the actual spot of feeling and being aware of it. They are pointing out very different places & they are very curious about what en where the others were feeling.

One of the key questions of this project was: how can we work more with physical, non-verbal expression and communication within experiential learning? Well, here it is.That 's how! People were being aware of what they felt, generating meaning of the experience to themselves, by raising awareness on what they felt and realizing the 'eigen-heid' (uniqueness) of it.

After people had been writing and sticking notes and trying to get a glimpse of others notes, Mieke suggested to 'hear' every one and make a round.

She recapitulated her question, but puts it slightly different now. She asks: "why did you stop?" (vs where did you feel the stop?). This generates other answers. The first answer comes from someone who couldn't point out where he/she was feeling the stop. "I didn't feel. I calculated". Another one add (very quickly) "mee too, i didn't feel myself, i felt the presence of the others"...

After that others talk about where they felt. Very different answers in the kind of feeling, the range of tension (very excited to totally calm), the moment of tension (in the walking, the stopping, the falling) & the possible meaning.

At least I noticed that the question was really available. Maybe because in this physical activity, participants are really in contact with there body and open to felt sensations. I suppose it helps that Mieke frontloaded the activity to mark the point of tension, and I believe the sticky notes helped not to formulate long answers who stay in the brain, but quickly point out and go to the place of the felt sense.

#wonderzoek #WONDER #day1 #stopsigns #edgework #factsfeelingsfindingsfuture #activereviewing #feeling #stayoutofyouhead #nonverbal #expressing #experientiallearning