The first exercise felt like part 2 of standing-on-the-table-and-repeatedly-shouting-our-names. We had to use our name and add a tune to it. We were given ten minutes to figure it out and then sing it in front of the class. Each person sang her song alone once and everyone else started singing it too after that. It made us feel really good (like rockstars) and most of us had a huge grin on our faces. There was a lot of variety in the tunes that were created. Some people used their full names, some used only their first name. Some used fragments of their name in different combinations and others repeated their name over and over again, in tune. Classical twists, cheerleading chants, slightly haunting tunes were some of the themes for the day. A few were quite catchy and played in my head long after class was over.
After sharing our songs with the class, we had to create a dance to our song (or create another tune) as well. It was fun to see what everyone came up with and each was different from the other. While some were slow steps, others were really fast and difficult to follow. For some you had to jump to your feet, for a few you had to lie on your back. Some were carefully choreographed and others were quite random. Some seemed to finish almost when it started and others seemed to go on and on. And then there were those in the middle.
The last exercise before we broke for lunch was to think of 3 distinct character traits in ourselves and enact it, making everyone else guess. We were supposed to act out things that others didn’t know about us, but that didn’t work out too well. While each of us displayed our three traits, there were a few people who were familiar with atleast a few, if not all, of them and other who didn’t know any. That varied from person to person.
After lunch, Kalpana suggested the running-around exercise, which we enjoyed so much in the morning. But after lunch everyone was too full and lazy to move so we moved on to the next exercise that she had planned. We had to think of a time that we surprised ourselves, and how we felt before, during and after that moment. We spent about twenty minutes thinking and then opened the discussion. It appeared that there were different emotions that were involved in surprising oneself- for some it was an outburst of anger, for others it was when they burst into tears. The exercise was interesting, as we ended up finding something new about ourselves as well as those around us.
To follow that, we paired ourselves and told the other person something that we thought that they wouldn’t know about themselves. While most of us deviated from the actual topic after a while and generally started chatting, there were some really serious and intense conversations going on. We were required to close our eyes after hearing what the other person said about us and feel what our body was feeling. Usually one never really follows what their body is thinking or what it goes through so it took a lot of effort and concentration. Listening to what each person experienced was really interesting because all the reactions were so varied. While some people felt really happy, and felt it in their knees, other felt suffocated and the feeling was there in their throat. Each person’s body language displayed what she felt- while some looked down and smiled, others maintained eye contact and frowned. While some accepted what they were told, others denied it. It was nice that through the conversations, most people opened up to the possibility that maybe the other person was right, whether it was positive or negative.
We ended the class by having an overall discussion on what we felt about the class that day. Everyone seemed satisfied and was happy to have found something new about themselves and about those around them. I think everyone is looking forward to next week’s class :)
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