This post is part of a project to share reflections about all 28 of the Core Elements of InterPlay.  For background information about InterPlay or this project, read What the Heck is InterPlay?!.

Ack! Get Me Out of My Head!

Before a recent InterPlay class, I was chatting with a participant.  He revealed that over the last few weeks, he’d had a hard time getting into the warm-up.  “I’ve been so in my head,” he said, “judging myself and my experience. Incapable of relaxing.”

His experience was so unpleasant that he would have walked out, only he didn’t have his car with him. Out of desperation, he discovered something quite profound:

I told myself to really let my body feel what we were doing, to see if I can drop down from my spinning mind into my still body.  It turns out that I really enjoyed the class after that.

How cool! He exercised his power to turn his own experience around — simply by inviting his body to notice what it was feeling.

I asked whether there was anything I, as leader,  could have done to help him to drop into his body sooner.  He thought for a moment, then added:

No, I don’t think so.  Or, even if there was, I like that I discovered it myself.  It felt satisfying to notice what was happening — all by myself! — and to make a choice that changed my experience for the better.

Sigh. I have to admit slight disappointment. My ego wants to be the Provider of Rich Experiences for others. But here my student showed me that he can take care of himself! His power to notice, and act on what he notices, is his biggest ally.

We Do Stuff…and Then Notice

This story is a lovely example of the InterPlay concept of “noticing.” My facilitator’s manual says that the simplest way to explain an InterPlay class is this:  “We do stuff and then notice.”

So, after we do an improvisational exercise — storytelling, for example — the teacher will probably ask,”What did you notice about that?”

I used to be really annoyed by this question. It’s so general!  You see, I’ve been trained in several conversation methods, most of which are highly structured, guiding the participant’s reflection intentionally through specific questions.  InterPlay’s broad “What did you notice” seemed loosey goosey to me at first.

But now I really get why it’s often useful to stay general. It allows people to tap into their own experience and say whatever is helpful for them.  Participants can enter the reflection at whatever place is comfortable to them.

Notice Your Own Experience

Whatever you notice is exactly right. Well, that’s not exactly true.  In InterPlay we do encourage participants to notice their own information — not anybody else’s.  This is actually quite challenging.

It’s so easy to watch someone leaping around the room ecstatically and say, “You were having a great time out there!” Even if I actually have no idea what that person was feeling while dancing.

Instead, staying connected to my own experience, “I noticed you did a lot of leaping, and I imagined that you were really enjoying yourself.” Or, “Watching you leap made me want to leap too.”

In the story  my student told me, he was so proud of himself because he was able to NOTICE some information about his experience: judging thoughts, the inability to relax, feeling really “top heavy.”

Once he NOTICED this information, he had the freedom to make a choice about it.

And that choice ended up changing his experience for the better.

Yay for noticing!

What do you notice?