From Planning to Pathfinding
I am about to graduate as a movement medicine teacher.
A week after completing my Movement Medicine dissertation we hosted the first of a series of annual Kufunda planning sessions. We run them every year. With what was emerging from my movement medicine exploration, I knew that I could not do the same old sessions. We work with the Art of Hosting at Kufunda which is a wonderful approach to participatory leadership and yet it is still primarily dialogical: Head and heart, but little body.
I brought the dance in fully: Dance to support people in arriving into themselves, dance to support them in connecting with each other. It was a joy-filled dance in a joy-filled Dare (our African meeting space); Dance to connect with a moment from the past year where people felt alive, in flow, fulfilled. They let it enter them and they unfolded it into their dance - a dance of celebration and delight. We took this into an appreciative inquiry (a dialogue process) in order to more deeply understand what is growing in our community. Then a nature observation to observe and explore the life process of Opening as it could be witnessed in nature - and to link it to what is opening at Kufunda: Dance. Nature and Dialogue. Simple yet profound.
Day two after spending time deepening our collective understanding of what day one had brought, we danced into future dreaming. First we danced into grounding and presencing ourselves, and connecting in community. Then we danced into the future - opening to the openings, inviting a stronger connection to the impulses coming through at Kufunda at this time.
It was precious.
It felt like we were pathfinding rather than planning.
It was body-heart-mind, past-present-future, journeying with the support of each of our allies, visible and invisible.
It was the most nourishing of this kind of session we have experienced. And this is not just my view. People reflected on how enriching it was. How illuminating.
Even those who normally avoid the dance when it happens at Kufunda.
It was the first step in our annual planning process. The second will work with design: - creation of the structures and activities to move us towards the dreams and intentions that are emerging in our field.
It was a simple yet profound shift into an embodied and ensouled way of working, out of which can rise deeper connection and wisdom, that is connected to the emerging field of which we are part.
It is a way of working in which we do not have to figure it out; in which we are not making dreams, but are open to become more conscious and connected co-creators of an evolving whole.
A visual harvest of the emerging clarity from day one of our retreat - seeing the deep relationship between the deepened inner work happening at Kufunda with our ability to bear and bring fruits to the world in the form of the National Citizen’s Convention, the All African Anthroposophic Training, and more.
Maaianne is an apprentice movement medicine teacher. Movement Medicine is a conscious movement meditation that enables people to dance with the wisdom of their embodied selves, in connection with the community of life, to strengthen their capacity to bring their gifts and unique purpose in service of the world. www.schoolofmovementmedicine.com
