Playspaces

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Open rounds
This is both the beginning and the end of the Alimá playspaces. Open Rounds is the healing circle method we use. The workshop explores the different aspects of Open Rounds. Each of the stated aims of the playspace is itself a playspace. They can be taken separately before doing the Open Rounds playspace or they can be taken at any other time (or not taken at all). Open Rounds brings it all together.

This is a longer playspace and is set up as a healing circle/radically participatory playspace. While all the playspaces are participatory this one is even more focused on letting the group intelligence and the presence of place guide the content and direction of the gathering. As such it follows the general wisdom of Open Rounds healing circles of being radically open.

We will:

work at being a healing presence;

accept our gifts for healing;

study when the masks of power break;

re-member ourselves, our community

Accepting our gifts
We will:

explore the ideas and the feelings about carrying gifts;

work with each person to identify gifts that she or he carries;

identify what it means for each one to be carrying the gifts they have;

clarify how gifts work in community.

Being a healing presence
In this playspace we will explore what it means to truly be present as healers for ourselves and others. We will look at both the skills that we bring to a healing environment and the empathic qualities that accompany these skills. The focus of the playspace will be on how skills, experiences and knowledge interact with the rapport we create with ourselves and others as we discern healing journeys.

Participants will have a chance to explore what it means to pay full attention to someone as a healer. The idea is to both honor your skills and to go beyond only relying on these.
We will:

look at habitual consensus reality and how it shapes our way of being in the world, our awareness of self and others, our relationship to consciousness in general.
work on dishabituation: the process of breaking free from the habitual body-mind-spirit holding patterns that keep us from being present and aware here and now.
Dishabituation will help us be more focused on three major aspects of being a healing presence: stillness, witnessing and responding
focus on how to turn this process into a practice.

Caring for our teachers.
Our teachers give us much that we do not necessarily reciprocate.
We will:

identify who our teachers are;

figure out how to nurture each of our specific teachers;

see how we learn through honoring our teachers

When the masks of power break.
We will:

see what masks of power are like, how we carry them, what they do for us;

study what happens to our masks of power when we accumulate or channel power through them;

discern how we deal with the consequences of power as they manifest in our masks.

Rigorous unknowing
As we walk through habitual consensus reality we get to create mental, and embodied maps of reality. When we get a chance to pull back from these maps we notice that there is much more about reality for us to learn. In this playspace we look at how to do that unknowing in a consistent manner that brings out the wisdom inside and around us that gets drowned out by our habitual “knowing”.

We will:

work on identifying and bringing back forgotten pieces, forgotten memories of the community;

look at how we become whole by re-membering;

move from knowing what reality is toward being part of the community that re-members itself;

find out what we have to un-know in order to truly know;

work with our teachers, guides, to get to “be”, rather than “know”.

Touch bodyplay
The body learns through many things, including touch. Touch is one of the senses we tend to forget or push aside as we concentrate on visuals, auditory stimuli or olfaction. Touch relates deeply to other important senses, such as proprioception, balance, …
Touch also brings us closest to our cultural taboos and regulations of sensuality, sexuality, self-expression, violence, movement, restriction and how we embody our identities. All of this makes touch a very powerful tool for self-development. At the same time: there is wisdom in touching for healing that has come to us through different cultures and times. We will explore touch as it relates to health as well as how the cultural and social constructions of touch influence how we touch and how we perceive through touch as well as how we bring integration of experience and meaning through touch.
We will:

study the relationship between touch and healing;

explore the nature of perception as part of /related to touch (tactile sense, intuition, other);

look at the three-touch method (gut, heart, head);

do improvisational movement;

integrate the experiences of touch, movement and perception as part of healing work.

Cultural healing
A workshop for healers who want to work from the cultural reality of their patients and understand how they can more fruitfully engage their own culture in their healing work.

Sharing the blessings: a playspace for healers and other transformers
We will share our gifts as transformers with each other. Each sharing the blessings playspace will be open to all who want to come. We will exchange healing, learn about each other's practices, build community.

We ask you to bring a gift in three: fruits, flowers, stones, written wishes, dollar bills, coins, anything that you would like to give away to others. These will go on the altar as offerings for Eshu, the guardian of the roads, during that playspace and we will find out what to do with them at the end.