Social Presencing Theater Workshop: The Stuck Exercise

Social Presencing Theater (SPT) is a “social technology of collective awareness and systems change” co-created by Arawana Hayashi, Otto Scharmer, and others (Hayashi, 2022). As Hayashi explains, a theater really is simply a place where something significant can be seen. SPT taps into the same sources of insight as other impactful techniques such as Family (or System) Constellation Therapy (Konkolÿ Thege et al., 2021), which help participants to step out of their usual patterns of thought and access different and deeper ways of understanding. By doing so, participants can gain new insights even on situations they may have thought about over and over again. The idea is summarized perfectly by a quote from American artist Robert Irwin:

“Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees.”

Robert Irwin

Coming into the three-day SPT workshop I was feeling very skeptical and a bit anxious. Based on the names of the activities on the agenda and the few short video clips I had seen, I imagined awkward group interpretive dances followed by vague and overly positive debriefs about our feelings. I felt very outside my comfort zone and had difficulty relaxing and opening up during the first few exercises of the workshop (The 20-minute Dance, the Dance of 5s, and the Village). Before even starting the Stuck exercise, which is one of the core tools of SPT, I was facing some accumulated anxiety from the previous activities.

In the Stuck exercise, the participant is asked to assume a posture, or sculpture, that embodies a situation in which she feels stuck. The exercise involves moving from this first sculpture, which represents the current reality, to a second sculpture, which represents the emerging future. The idea is that by feeling deeply into the situation, connecting to one’s body, and suspending one’s mental problem-solving habits, new directions, insights, and futures can emerge (Presencing Institute, 2021).

Individual Stuck

The Stuck I chose had to do with a persistent problem I have in relating to other people. I assumed a posture that made me feel the way I feel in those types of “stuck” situations. I crouched into a ball, tucked by head, and gripped the back of my neck tightly with my hands as if to hide from and protect myself from everyone. The next step was to sink deeper into the posture and really feel it. As I did, I began to feel anxious and frustrated and started to cry. Next, we had been instructed to let go of the Stuck and allow our bodies to move into sculpture 2, the emerging future. I desperately wanted to, but just as in the real-life situations my sculpture represented, I was simply unable to let go. I felt more and more frustrated and desperate as the exercise went on and I heard others around me moving into their new sculptures while I remained frozen. A phrase the facilitator had said to us kept playing in my mind, “Stuck is not sustainable.” Even though I knew this, and I was physically uncomfortable in the position, I was unable to move. When the time was up, the facilitator noticed I still had not moved, and he let me know that next we would do the same exercise in groups and that if I did not have to participate if I did not feel comfortable.

Group Stuck

I was very tempted to opt out and just observe the group Stuck exercise, but after a break I felt a little better, so I pushed myself to give it a try. In the group version of the exercise the stuck person assumes her sculpture 1 and incorporates the other four participants into it in positions that exacerbate the feeling of the stuck and embody it more fully. Then, collectively and without verbal communication, the group follows the same process of feeling deeply into the sculpture, listening to their bodies, and allowing the second sculpture to gradually emerge.

In my case, sculpture 1 involved me crouched on the floor with the other four participants standing huddled together in a tight circle several meters behind me. I could not see them, and as we sank into the Stuck, I very deeply felt the feelings of isolation, rejection, exclusion, and loneliness the sculpture was meant to embody. I began to worry that perhaps they would not come over to me and that I would remain stuck without being able to move over to them.

After what felt like a long time in my anxious state, suddenly several sets of hands were placed firmly on my back. It felt like a wave of comfort and acceptance, and I couldn’t help but start to cry with relief. I could tell that some of the others were crying too because they were empathizing deeply with what I was feeling. We stayed in that crouching hug of support for several moments, and then somehow without speaking, it was as if we all sensed it was time to stand up.

In contrast to how daunting it felt to stand up on my own in the individual exercise, this time at the slightest urge to stand, it was as if I floated to my feet supported by the group. When the group reached a point of stillness, our sculpture 2 was me standing confidently surrounded by the other four, who all had their hands on my back or shoulders in a position of support. At this point in the group Stuck exercise, each participant shares one sentence, simply whatever phrase wants to be spoken based on the experience. The fascinating thing about the entire experience was that at no point did I explain my stuck situation using words, yet the phrases each group member shared at the end were extremely relevant to my actual situation. Their comments all felt like what I needed to hear, even though my group members didn’t even really know why they were speaking those words.

Forgetting the name of what one feels

I have always lived in a kind of prison of my own mind. It is at times my greatest asset and at others my worst enemy. It is often impossible for me to stop my mind from over-analyzing situations to the point of sucking all the joy out of them. I have spent a lot of time thinking and talking about that Stuck situation, yet I have never been able to think or talk my way out of it. This exercise offered me a way to step out of my thoughts, forget about all the details, the words, the labels, and just feel my way out.

The connection I felt to others by suspending my usual ways of communicating was deeper than the connection I have ever felt when I have explained the same situation to others using thoughts and words. The profound realization for me, was that my way of thinking about the situation is the barrier to resolving it. Here I have attempted to describe in words what I felt, but I still don’t really know how. That is likely why I was finally able to truly feel it. To paraphrase Robert Irwin, for me, feeling was forgetting the name of what I felt.

In this exercise, I was able to feel the untapped power of my emotions and my connection to others. I believe that “energy frozen and trapped inside through suppressing our emotions” (Cousquer, 2022) may have the power to get us collectively “un-stuck,” and I am eager to continue exploring it.

References

• Cousquer, G. (2022, octubre 5). Becoming Unfrozen: Seeing, Sensing, and Presencing to Better Face and Respond to Ecological Crises. Field of the Future Blog. https://medium.com/presencing-institute-blog/becoming-unfrozen-seeing-sensing-and-presencing-to-better-face-and-respond-to-ecological-crises-92607e1503c8
• Hayashi, A. (2022). Social Presencing Theater. https://arawanahayashi.com/spt.html
• Konkolÿ Thege, B., Petroll, C., Rivas, C., & Scholtens, S. (2021). The Effectiveness of Family Constellation Therapy in Improving Mental Health: A Systematic Review. Family Process, 60(2), 409–423. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12636
• Presencing Institute. (2021). Stuck Exercise | Presencing Institute. U-School for Transformation by Presencing Institute. https://www.u-school.org/stuck