Mindfulness over matter
Artist and psychologist Ellen Langer gives this great YouTube presentation on mindfulness over matter.
Mindfulness is often thought of as some kind of zen state of calm, but the way Langer talks about it suggests something different: an alertness to what is happening around us. It’s a great reminder of how easily we fall into trances. If you watch the video, she’ll walk you into a few trances and then get you to realise what happened. Even if you just watch the first few minutes, we think you’ll find it interesting.
That ability to break trances is a great skill for facilitating. In our Naked Facilitator workshop, we include a quotation from the book Hamlet: Globe to Globe about…
any artist’s twitching, attuned sensitivity to the movement of the world around him, and his or her sudden ability to seize the full potential in the air
For us, that’s what makes facilitation exciting – being sensitive to what’s happening around us. It’s not about executing standard processes, however much we might like them. Noticing the details of people’s reactions, and helping to set an atmosphere in which the unexpected can be relished rather than feared.