GAIA Journey - March 4th 2021
Event Information
About this Event
Mar 4th - Social Presencing Theater: The Art of Making a True Move
“Social field awareness is the only paddle or rudder available to the small boat [of our current situation] as it moves out… into the unknown.”
How do we return to the natural intelligence of our bodies to sense into the social field, in order to cultivate our relationships and our creativity to their true potential?
We are all social artists: every day, moment-to-moment, we co-create human society through our daily activities. In a world shaped by structural injustice, pandemic, climate change, and other symptoms of our current socioeconomic system, how can we uncover the brilliance of human wisdom, and be intentional about creating the future we want?
This month in the GAIA Journey, we focus our attention on practice. On March 4th, we will come together to learn with Arawana Hayashi, who originated Social Presencing Theater as a foundational practice of awareness-based systems change. Join us at 9:00am EST for a collective sensing experience, or at 12:00pm EST for a celebration of Arawana’s new book “Social Presencing Theater: The Art of Making a True Move” and reflection on 15 years of practice.
Social Presencing Theater uses movement to elicit genuine insight into our own behavior, and into how groups shift from perpetuating stale relationship patterns toward becoming creative entities. It provokes reflection and learning. It makes visible the deeper patterns that support the cultivation of healthy social relations, sparking creative action in teams, organizations, and communities.
Session One, 9 am EST: Collective presencing experience with Manish Srivastava
In this session, Arawana will be joined by master facilitator Manish Srivastava to lead a collective inquiry into our experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and the truths and injustices that it reveals. Manish is a Mumbai-based coach, facilitator and artist who has used Social Presencing Theater to challenge gender-based violence in India and Latin-America; he is a core faculty member at the Presencing Institute and the author of “Trading Armour for a Flower: Rise of New Masculine” (Notion Press, 2019).
Session Two, 12 noon EST: Celebration and reflection with Practitioner Voices
Join us for a wide-ranging discussion and reflection on fifteen years of Social Presencing Theater to celebrate the launch of Arawana Hayashi’s new book, “Social Presencing Theater: The Art of Making a New Move” (PI Press, 2021). The discussion will feature practitioners Geovanny Guzman and Heather Huggins, who have been working with students at Queensborough CUNY, a community college in New York City; and Claudia Madrazo and Laura Pastorini, working with young people from the Mayan community of Izamal in Yucatán, Mexico, with the organization La Vaca Independiente.
Language Tracks
Similar to the previous GAIA cycle, various language communities will host related sessions in local languages, typically about one week after the English Global session. Find your language track info here.
Stay Connected
If you're not able to attend the upcoming live sessions you can still stay connected and participate in the journey - Join our email list for updates about GAIA and future ways to get involved. [Click Here]
About
The GAIA Journey started out in March 2020 as an impromptu global infrastructure, offered by the Presencing Institute in light of the Covid-19 pandemic for sense-making, for leaning into our current moment of disruption, and letting this moment move us toward civilizational renewal. It has sparked a committed community of over 11,000 people around the world and aspires to continue supporting deep transformation through awareness-based systems change, which is so needed in the world today.