ppendages i-vii, seven tails

Exercise #7: Intuitive Enhancement

Guessing details about what someone describes, and using that guess to have the other person guess about some other detail allows us to see where the tail of the guess wags. Indirectly we let our self into our conscious associations. We can also call this reactive imagery. Start by telling a story to a partner or group. Then ask questions about how they imagined details that we imply but do not state in the story.

As an example I say I went to bed early on the floor of the sunroom. Describe the room imagined. As the details elaborate the story, I could ask a question about something in this description that I imagined. Like asking what arrangement of windows filled the imagined sunroom. Then I could describe the three walls and the view of the trees twenty feet off the ground or the slanting metal roof toward the back. I could inquire about the imagined leafy view.

Keep in mind that we all use our imaginations in slightly different ways and that the activity might include other types of associations, other than images. Consider any sense as a fair field. This exercise gives us a chance to reveal assumptions or intuitive leaps we make. See what happens. How does intuition conducts itself?




As a totem of these appendages make a drawing, collage, or a visual reminder of a guess that an intuition created that remained unspoken.




Exercise the other aspect of temperament that we access less easily. Try this:

IIII; Leave something unfinished that almost always gets completed and complete something that usually gets left undone and notice the shift in perspective. Though please don’t use that horrible expression of agreeing to disagree. That one gets inappropriately used to end a negotiation midstream rather than leave the closure open or carrying it a step toward further clarity. We want to decide not to return to something and see if we can hold that as our intent. We want to discover a new perspective.



IIIII; I
imagine
playful humor
slipping
in after
acknowledgement
of
frustration.
Use these
shifts to
explore
the social
world.

ppendages i-vii, six antenae

Take something that seems personally, self-satisfyingly playful. Play it for its own sake. Take it into a social setting, present it in some manner, perhaps subtlety. Observe the response. Be amused. Try again. Show more people. If you know someone who knows a lot of people, do something with them. If it doesn’t evoke any response, consider how another presentation might appeal to another.

A second approach comes from educating to change behavior. We can look at what makes someone change behavior. Optimizing this factor makes an enhancement more effective. If an outcome leads to a predictable and consistent outcome, participants more likely attend to it. If an outcome of a changed behavior occurs regularly, then people more likely engage in that behavior. Finally if the measure of the effect reveals itself clearly, then people more likely change the behavior, as they have a way to assess how close they come to accomplishing the behavior.



Enhancing Exercise #6:Enhancements

1. Introduce a type of tag
2. Introduce a new word and meaning to an old expression, perhaps a special form of greeting. Consider using something that comes from childhood that seemed ubiquitous until we noticed no one else said that. I laugh at the endearments that my father called his sons. I can’t spell them. They remain evocative, personal and playful.
3. Tell the same story altering a significant detail in each retelling
4. Talk about playing as a child and get others to elaborate their play memories. Keep searching for more details from the memory. “And then what happened? And then? And who played with what? How did that happen?”
5. Introduce into a new setting a curious aspect of an activity overheard.
6. Enhance an activity with an idea heard in someone’s play memory.





Exercise the other aspect of temperament that we access less easily. Try this:

III; Use emotion as a guide for approaching a thought process and think through an emotional experience. These require careful tweaking because thinking through emotions may dodge the emotion. If the experience seems familiar, immediately try the converse.

ppendages i-vii, five legs

As a suggestion inquire about how others played as children and what aspects of playing they enjoyed most. Find out not just what they remember now but also what they remember about how it felt to play. Allow unexpected activities to count as play. Imagine playing along. Make up an adult version. Consider playing it together. Explore what feels different now. Play a modified adult version

Enhancing Exercise #5: Take a Play History

When spreading out an inquiry, we can explore the behaviors, feelings, sensations, and knowledge about it.

How did we play?

What did we really enjoy and how did it feel?

What sensation did we notice as we engaged in remembering?

What knowledge or truth did the activity inquire after?



After really listening to the answer find out more details about any aspect that held attention. We aren’t comparing this to our experience; we are finding out more. Listen, listen some more, then ask. Remember to leave some spaces open.





Exercise the other aspect of temperament that we access less easily. Try this:

II; Find an activity that involves detail after detail rather than intuitive leaps. Now find one that leads itself by leaps. Try and leap with the first and attend to details in the second and pay attention to any unexpected experience.

ppendages i-vii, four wrist watches

Enhancing Exercise #3: Personal Play Contour

Play like memory unfolds in an individual way. The contour of the experience can have a quality that someone else can recognize. The pace
can follow a familiar cadence. Certain events can lead in and out of the activity. Memories themselves can form integral aspects of play. Someone can play alone; someone else, in a group. Some like to play with very specific rules, while others like to guess and make things up. Some even play games and walk away from an unfinished game and return later to continue the experience. Make it up.

It helps to consider that we all have different temperaments. Based on factors of temperament, we all experience the same world differently. We could almost say that we experience different worlds simultaneously. If we simply divide people’s temperament into categories, we discover things about how we experience the world. Temperament scales in themselves introduce inaccurate ways of discerning difference, but they give a method for highlighting difference.Like with much of science, we posit a hypothesis in order to observe something more carefully. Eventually that enhanced credibility has to be released based on a new understanding of the world.

The Myers Briggs Personality Test or the Kiersy Temperament Sorter use a series of preferences to describe temperament. Using four aspects of human experience on a continuum, we can roughly group individuals by how they make decisions in their environment. The first consideration looks a how an individual experiences social interaction. On a continuum social interaction energizes a person or depletes energy. A second consideration addresses how information gathering takes place. On a continuum some collect details while others follow the gist of the information and leap to “accurate” conclusions.


The third consideration compares the inner process of thinking through with the process of feeling through it. Finally we consider when a process completes itself either by holding it open or by closing it up.

It seems like it becomes easier for people to play, if their temperament favors an open-ended outcome. To initiate play it seems helpful to use intuitive leaps. Although thinking remains important, at times we have to go with a feeling and discover where it leads. In this manner it becomes easier for some people based on their temperament to play than for others. If we get energy from social interaction then we probably play better with others. Though it seems more likely that depending on the type of play activity the role of playmates will vary. The nature of the play brings in energy when we chose activities that replenish us. Probably movement within the realm of imagination becomes easier, if we use feelings rather than thoughts to guide us.

None-the-less, most people play as children with active imagination independent of what gets described as temperament.

So it seems like the description given above might account for those for whom play resumes more easily. But ideally no one excludes anyone else from playing. In fact I imagine with attention to spin we could describe patterns of access to play for everyone.

Describe playing. Would a close friend agree? Test the description out using the four previous considerations. Did we describe activities that replenish energy? Did we describe things that we do by feeling our way? Did we describe activities that cause us to make leaps? And did we describe things we leave open? Collect descriptions.

Exercise the other aspect of temperament that we access less easily. Try this:

I; Find an activity that exhausts and one that gives energy. Schedule them back-to-back in series and gently explore the energy flow.

ppendages i-vii, three threads

Enhancing Exercise #3:

I offer couples the three minute rule when working to understand a partner. In the event where one person completes something more quickly then the other, one partner deserves a little extra time to catch up. I randomly assign that length of time as three minutes. Given a certain time frame, minutes may collapse to seconds or expanded to days. The potential space in which the minutes occur allows us to feel the give and take of the play. Here we meet the possibility of what play accomplishes. Play makes connection with a partner sensitively. Try it.

So we can probably say that play comes more easily to some and that others have to push a bit more to get there. Actually it shows that we all can develop aspects of ourselves that lead us to be playful. Using our various processing skills creatively, we can develop new ways of playing. Each time we pursue a different channel toward playfulness, we expand empathy and alter past misunderstandings. The play makes up an antidote to the hurt.



To know how to engage others in play requires trust. It requires us to explore first impulses and to adjust them appropriately and sensitively based on the response of others. This energy give and take requires a leap of faith and we have to take on the role of the fool sometimes with a metaphorical step off the edge of the cliff. When we deeply trust the process we can be sensitive and reckless at the same time with humorous results.. This stepping of the cliff happens as we trust our creative impulse.

ppendages i-vii: two leafs

Enhancing Exercise #2: Story Telling

Make up a theme for a story. Choose a collection of seven random past memories; add five wishes, and three current events. From this costruct a story. We can tell stories by our self to our self or to any available audience. Afterwards jot down any aspects of the storyteller’s mind, which hold interest or value. Look for an awareness of shifting time. Notice a different quality of speaking voice. See if any unexpected connections or details insinuate themselves in the story.


Keep using the
same basic story
and notice when ]
other details insert
themselves.
Include them.
After the story sits
dormant for a while,
tell it
and see what gets included
and what gets left out
this time.
Develop the story from a different
character’s perspective.
Select an audience
and begin to tell the story,
preferably with little explanation.
We can tell the listeners
that we might do something
like this sometime.

appendages i-vii, a limb

Licenses To Play
5 cents




Pass into the realm of make believe. The truth anchors our ship in a safe harbor. We leave our everyday life safely protected. We begin to enhance an altered credibility.

Enhancing Exercise #1:Detailing a belief.

Take an improbable idea that you always wished were true and develop support for the idea. Keep it light and focused, and set a limit on the time involved. After that time carry the belief to someone else Hint: Don’t have a starting point, Consider as an example laughing as though tickled by something.

Take a quote from someone, but quote it as misheard. Take an idea that seems trivial. Take a behavior or expression that comes from family stories. Take a page from Miss Manners. Read about some other culture and adapt it. Seed a direction of inquiry.
.
Embark on deepening the mystery. Remember from childhood how to spin a yarn or a long tale. Return to times when saying, “You’ll never guess what happened to me!” blends several things that happened with several wished for scenarios.

We enter the realm of the storyteller. Decide to bring to a social setting a tale that encourages others to tell tales about themselves. Use specific historical events or current events. Remember that we all put a certain spin on what we remember. That spin serves as an essential element of remembering. Each memory subtly shifts (or for some of us, blatantly shifts) differently from every other memory of the same event. Memory being of an observer has its own uncertainty principle built in. Two people can remember the same event differently depending on how it touched them. Own and elaborate a spin. Explore personal things and imagine special things in the world.