I just finished participating in a workshop recently (process work; www.processwork.org) here in St. Petersburg and it prompted me to ask another set of questions that are most pertinent to an OST back alley, not the highway...
While I was participating in the workshop, I noticed how most people were listening so intently to the workshop leaders, almost with mouth open and with brilliant eyes. And then I thought to myself, "wait a minute, open space is everywhere! And even if this workshop is not OST facilitated, there is open space here." The group is the bearer of the wisdom, but it is sure not acting like it. Rather they have surrendered a part of themselves, perhaps, to the workshop leaders. If the wisdom is in the group, then why not experiment with feeling the wisdom of the group. Why not turn off the workshop leader information channel and listen to the participants. And I tried that a little bit. It was fascinating to just observe the participants, but I wasn't just observing, I looked to see who among the participants is not part of the mainstream, not within the "spell" of the workshop leaders. And I made a mental note of these people. I realized that it would be a totally different experience of participating in a workshop, a totally different energy field, something I would like to experiment with more. This is something to be careful about, because there's an energy shift for the group and for myself when being the observer, so I want more thinking to happen here. But careful exploration of different workshop participation approaches may be in order here... What was fascinating was that after I identified others who were not under the spell (I don't count myself as not being under the spell) of the workshop leaders, two of us sought each other out and had a fascinating series of OST-esque butterflyland conversations. This one participant who I spoke to said she came not to look at the workshop leaders but at the participants! And then another butterfly joined us later and said she made a note of who were the "fanatics", so to speak, in the group (we were 150-250 people), those drawn in most to processwork (pw) ideas. And she made a special move to not be drawn in by this energy. All of this brings me back to a thought that came to me a few weeks back: there are lots of workshops/methods to workshop facilitation/training, etc. What about workshops on workshop participation? How to participate in workshops? A holistic approach to workshop participation? I am thinking about developing one such workshop (based on the medicine wheel). Nothing tricky, pretty obvious (and fun) stuff. And a great way of bringing up the conversation of how we participate in life...an open space... Oops, looks like there's a noisy old motorcycle zooming up my back alley...ZOOOOOOOOM! Warmly, Raffi Отдохни, поиграй с друзьями! Он-лайн игры в новой версии М-агента http://r.mail.ru/cln2661/agent.mail.ru * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
