This is a recorded session from the 2024 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo. In the face of an epidemic of anxiety, depression, and physical disease, many museums have been exploring mindfulness practices to support the health of their communities. This recorded session addresses how museums might develop mindfulness programs that address the developmental needs of youth, a currently underserved population in mindfulness-based museum programming. The goal is to prepare museum educators to confidently incorporate mindful movement into object-based learning programs for youth at their museums.

Additional Resources

Fostering Resilience in Children slides

Fostering Resilience lesson plan

Fostering Resilience Rebalancing Big Energy

Fostering Resilience Mindful Moving and Breathing Techniques

Transcript

Jennifer Reifsteck:

So, welcome to Fostering Resilience in Children Through Virtual Mindfulness. So, my name is Jen Reifsteck and I manage school and teacher programs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian art. That’s my day job. And by night and by weekend, I am a yoga and qigong teacher, and I’m joined in this session with Lisa.

Lisa Danahy:

Hi, I’m Lisa Danahy, and I’m the founder of Create Calm, a non-profit organization that brings yoga and mindfulness programs to schools and communities. I think I just have to be closer.

I’m Lisa Danahy, and I’m the director and founder of Create Calm, a nonprofit that brings yoga and mindfulness programs to schools and the community. And I have been really honored to work with Jen for the last several years to create a program that is able to work with schools, support schools, but also supports community spaces in bringing social-emotional learning to kids from birth up through young adults.

So, I’m really excited to be here and then to play today.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

So, our organizations together developed a program called Artful Movement and Artful Movement is a virtual field trip program for children in grades pre-K through sixth.

And our goal for this session is for you to leave with tangible tools that you can take back to your institutions to develop your own slow-looking and mindfulness programs with your audiences. Together we will practice and then workshop ways to interpret projects, through inquiry practices of guided looking, and through interpretive practices through movement.

We’ll learn how the practices of slow looking and mindfulness are connected, and how they foster skills such as self-awareness, self-regulation, and perspective taking.

So please be sure you have something to write with. You can take notes on your phone if you wish as well. If you want to follow along on the app, we have the slides in a PDF format and all the handouts available if you’d like to pull up those resources while you participate in the session today.

So, we’re going to jump right in with a brief demo of the Artful Movement field trip program of course modified for an in-person audience.

And so, Lisa’s gonna get us started with a mindful moment and to go over our community agreement.

Lisa Danahy:

Okay. Oh, okay. I don’t know if this is gonna work. I like to have a headset so I’m gonna try to do this with the microphone maybe sort of in front of me I will see I’d like to just stick it under my arm.

So, we asked you to take out pens and paper and all of your handouts and I’m actually gonna ask you to put them aside for a second.

I’m gonna ask you to notice as you’re sitting there in your space, if you feel like you have space to move around, if you feel like you have space to really be comfortable and adjust yourself, either slide your chair away from the table a little bit or slide further away from, yeah, from your things.

So, allow yourself to start to get a little comfortable and then place your feet on the floor and just notice what it’s like to connect your feet with the floor. You can even stomp your feet a little bit. Yeah, just feel that connection and then as you press your feet into the floor sit up a little taller stand up a little taller.

Take a big breath in through your nose or your mouth and as you breathe out open your mouth and say. That felt good. Let’s do that again. Big breath in and say, “Ah.” One more time. Big breath in. “Ah.”

Now just take a moment to notice how that feels. To connect a little bit more on the inside and then feel your connection to what’s going on around you. And if your eyes are closed you can open them just a little bit and we’re going to create some reminders of how to be part of a community.

So, yoga means union coming together. And we find that sometimes we feel more comfortable coming together if we know sort of what the plan is. So, we have some really simple agreements that we’ve initiated that we’re hoping are gonna keep you feeling really comfortable, really safe, and allow you to have a really fun time.

So, the first agreement that we have, I want you to reach your arms out to your sides, and if you don’t have room, slide yourself somewhere where you have room. Take both arms out to the sides. Take a big breath in, stretch your fingers, open your heart a little bit, and start to feel as if you’re bringing in all kinds of goodness and love. And then wrap your arms around yourself as you breathe out and love yourself.

And it’s the last time you gave yourself a hug. All right, now extend it out, take a breath in, and love everybody else. Feel that connection you have with everybody else. And then hug it in and love yourself. Love everybody else and love yourself.

Start to notice keep going how this feels to open yourself up and then at the same time keep yourself feeling really nice and snuggly So this agreement reminds us to respect ourselves to respect each other to move in safe and positive ways and to bring our best to what we do from the inside and the outside. Next time your arms wrap around yourself Give yourself another big hug, and in your mind, or out loud, say, “I love me.”

Good. All right. Now bring your arms out to the side, sparkle your fingers, and imagine you’re a balloon. Fill yourself up like a balloon. Bring both hands together and breathe out and bring them down to your heart. Let’s do that two more times.

And take a moment to check in with yourself. And our second reminder our second agreement is to listen so take your thumb and your first finger rub it on the top of your ear the top cartilage. There’s an acupressure point here that helps to simultaneously wake up your brain for focus and activate your parasympathetic nervous system to calm you down. So about three o ‘clock in the afternoon or when you come to a session after lunch on the last day of a really long conference, you may want to rub the tops of your ears to help you wake up and to also feel secure.

This is a reminder as we do our agreements to listen, you’re gonna listen on the inside to your inner knowing and you’re gonna listen to your colleagues that are here with you. So, drop your fingers down into your lap take another big breath in. Breathe it out and let it go.

Just notice how you feel. So, if at any point in our practice today You start to feel a little lost you start to feel like you need a little bit of grounding or a little connecting. Remember to love yourself, remember to listen. All right.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

Thank you, Lisa, and that, I think we’re ready to look at a work of art together.

So go ahead and let your eyes wander all over this image. Notice the colors that you see, the shapes, the textures, the lines. Now going to your writing tools.

What did you see? What did you notice as you looked at this work of art? Write down five words or phrases and now we’re going to take a second look. So putting your pencils your pens down. Let our eyes wander all over the image again this may have come up in your conversations, but what questions came up? What do you wonder about this work of art?

So, I saw a lot of animated conversations, lots of smiling and gesturing. Thanks so much for sharing out with each other. Now to share some information about this work of art, so the name of this work of art is Thunder God, and it was painted by the Japanese artist Hokusai. It’s over 170 years old, and it’s about as tall as a love seat is wide, and it’s a hanging scroll. And I bet you’re wondering what that shape was on the back of the figure. And this is how the thunder god makes the thunder. You might notice now the drumsticks in the hand here and the really stylized laser beams of lightning. And perhaps you were wondering about the writing in the bottom corner. It’s signed by the artist who’s also added man mad about painting. Hokusai was 88 years old when he painted this work of art.

Now I am wondering what a thunderstorm might feel like in our bodies and Lisa is gonna guide us that way.

Lisa Danahy:

Can you hear me? Okay So I want you to consider whether as you were looking at this piece of art at any point you felt any energy present, or any emotions present or felt like a sense of a connection to movement in the piece of art and because very often that’s what makes art so powerful for us Is this visceral relationship we have with it.

So, we’re actually going to embody some of what we felt and sensed as we connected with the piece of art. So, I’m going to give you the option to take a spot along the sides if you’d like to stand up and really move or sit on the floor or to stay right where you are in your seats, but make sure you’ve got room to move behind or in front of your chair.

We’re going to be in all kinds of little positions, but it will be completely accessible, and you will be able to move in whatever way feels really good for you.

All right so we’re gonna get started with just a big breath in. Take a breath fill up like a balloon and breathe it out.

Another big breath in and breathe it out. Let your arms reach up overhead, fill up, stretch, and bring your hands down in front of your heart. Now consider what it might feel like to be a cloud, to be a puffy little light cloud floating in the sky and put your body in whatever position feels like a cloud. So, you might wanna ball up on the floor, you might wanna stretch out, make a shape of your body that you can hold for a couple of breaths that feels like a cloud. Good.

Feel free to grab a chair or the floor if you’d like. And then pause here for a few breaths and just feel into what it’s like to have the energy of a cloud. To be contracted and drawing inward. Now slowly start to bring your body back to a standing position. Reach your arms out and take another big balloon breath. And breathe it out.

Now start to rumble your feet. Start to imagine your cloud is building energy. Feel your feet rumble. I’m shaking the whole stage here If we fall down you keep going all right rumble those feet rumble your legs get your whole-body rumbling.

Feel as if you are that cloud now starting to churn, starting to maybe gray or fill denser. Let your head get into it. Let your arms get into it.

Really start to build that energy. Really get it rumbling. Good.

Maybe you want to make a little grrr sounds. Yeah, feel it, feel it, feel it, let your cheeks shake. All right, now, plant your feet. Take a big breath in, reach down. As you breathe out, explode up. Yeah, do that again, come down with a little tiny tongue. Wow, one more time.

Wow.

Now let your arms come down by your sides. Take a moment to pause and notice how you feel.

Is there tingling? Is there a shift in your breath? Are you noticing any change from a moment ago?

You can feel how it shifts so quickly. Clouds are always moving. Energy is always moving. All Alright, so now, take a big breath in, reach your arms up in front of you, step your feet wide, and as you breathe out, make a chopping motion, like lightning. Make whatever sound you want. And if you really want, you can take your hands and hit them on the ground. Yeah. Make that lightning really big and bold. One more time.

All right, now come back up, take a big balloon breath. Breathe it out.

Put your hands on your heart. Notice if there’s been any change. Notice your breath and your body.

Alright.

So, you’ve been expanding and contracting your energy. Take your hands and make fists. And then bring just your fingertips to the tops of your head and make rain. Can you hear it on the inside?

Bring your rain down your head and your shoulders and down onto your belly and your back. Make rain on your arms. Maybe you want bigger rain now.

Maybe you want really big rain. Make some rain on your bum and all the way down to your toes make rain all over your body wherever you want and if you want you can make some thunder let me hear it keep going and if you want you can make some lightning now.

One more time, and come back and make some more thunder, and make some more rain, tapping your whole body, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, anywhere you want on your body, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Alright, now slow it down.

Make little tiny raindrops on your cheeks, taking your fingertips to your cheeks and then to the forehead. Make little taps on your forehead. And then let your arms reach out to the sides. Take a big breath in, fill up like a balloon and breathe it out. Bring your hands to your heart and notice how you feel.

Now step your feet wide. Reach your arms out to the sides. And we’re going to make a little bit more energy move in the storm. We’re going to make some wind and some clouds moving by crossing the midline like this.

And then come up and start to make your arms twist and make a wind the sound.

Start to slow it down and now imagine you’re dragging your fingers through water. Just the tips of your fingers are dragging through the surface of the water.

Notice how your energy is changing.

Notice how, sometimes your energy seems big, and sometimes little. Sometimes it feels calm, sometimes it feels maybe even angry.

There’s no good or bad in your feelings, because it’s all just the energy and you can always move it.

Now slow your arms down, take a big breath in, breathe it out, and then find your way back to where your chair is and put your hands on the seat of the chair or the back of the chair. And you’re gonna let yourself hang a little bit upside down so it looks like this. Letting the last rain drip out just sit extend out through your back stretch back. Hands on the table or hands on a chair, extend your arms, put your head between your arms, and just take a few breaths, spend your knees a little bit to stretch.

Sometimes it helps to go a little bit upside down to change your perspective on how you feel, to shift the energy in your body. Take three more breaths like this. At the end of that third breath. Make your way back into your little cloud that you started with or find a seat in your chair and be a little cloud like this.

Notice what your body wants and what you need.

Give yourself the opportunity to become light, to float, to notice the sensation of movement and stillness at the same time. And to notice that your energy is always shifting, it can be interpreted as positive or negative or good or bad or scary or fun. It’s all just energy.

The emotions can shift as easily. And sometimes if we know how to move the energy in our bodies, we know how to move, how we feel. Just like with the storms, the biggest storms bring rain that waters the plants. The biggest storms move rivers, shake leaves from trees and help them grow.

Clear spaces that are overcrowded. And so even when a storm seems big and scary, it’s just a space for growth. Take one more breath here in your little cloud and then gradually come back to sit. And if you’d like, take out your paper and your pen or your notepad and just make a little note about how that felt for you.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

So, let’s come back together as a group.

So, what we just experienced was a modified version of the Artful Movement virtual field trip. And it’s rooted in the pedagogy of slow looking.

So, what is slow looking? Shari Tishman, she’s a researcher at Harvard Project Zero and she defines SLO looking as taking the time to carefully observe more than meets the eye at first glance. And Shari goes on to say that slow looking is a quote rewarding feedback loop so the more you look the more curious the you are and the more you want to see and keep looking.

So, you may all be familiar with timing and tracking studies of visitor experiences in the galleries and we know from these studies that visitors aren’t necessarily slowing down. If they’re spending any time in front of an object it’s they’re spending most of their time actually reading the label reading the interpretation of the object.

So how can we get visitors to slow down?

With the Artful Movement virtual field trip program and other programs at the National Museum of Asian Art, we use Project Zero Thinking Routines. So just by a show of hands in the audience, who’s a fan of Project Zero thinking routines and uses them in their practice. Excellent, great.

So, if you’re new to Project Zero, Project Zero comes out of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and was founded in the late ’50s by a philosopher who wanted to study the arts as a cognitive science. And when Nelson Goodman went to research how the arts are studied as a cognitive activity, as any good researcher, he wanted to start with the body of research that already existed. And he found absolutely no research that existed. And so that’s why it’s called Project Zero.

It’s studying the arts as a cognitive science. And I first heard about project zero actually at AAM in 2011. And so today we experienced a combination of two thinking routines. So, thinking routines are a way to scaffold the learning, to really deepen the engagement of looking at a work of art through guided discussion. And it’s working to build these skills or thinking dispositions. And so, we experienced to modify looking 10 times 2. Instead, we looked 5 times 2. And this develops descriptive language, your vocabulary skills, your observation skills. And we used that as the C and C think wonder in our conversations.

So how does slow looking and mindfulness overlap? Quite literally, in the slide we put in, It’s the inquiry. So, at the root of these practices is the slowing down, taking the time to notice. And that noticing comes from a place of non-judgment.

What you see is what you see. What you feel is what you feel.

And when you slow down and inquire through mindfulness practices, And you do that in a non-judgmental way. You are developing curiosity. You’re developing wonder.

And you’re able to notice different perspectives.

And these are practices for a reason. They take time. They take concentration. These are learned dispositions.

So, Lisa, do you want to talk about inquiry, awareness, and connection and get us into the energy component?

Lisa Danahy:

Yeah. So, I have all these little notes in my head rushing around, and I’m not sure what I want to share with you first. But I’m going to start with inquiry and this notion of curiosity. Recent studies have come out that have shown that imagination is key to accessing the higher functioning in your brain. And when you are curious, when you are able to question and use your imagination and creatively experience your environment, you are able to create more positive quick synapses. You’re able to build new neuro pathways. You’re able to connect with your brain, getting it out of a limbic response and getting it into that more executive functioning space.

And when folks are coming to the museum, a lot of times it can be very cognitive and it can be really connecting and we can share a lot of really academic beautiful history and it can help to engage imagination and movement to get into that space to bring them really into that very comfortable place of not judging, not feeling unsure of themselves or feeling really more stable. The way we can do that is through being aware. I’m aware of what I’m doing, I’m aware of what you’re doing, and I’m aware of how I’m connecting in my space.

When I connect, I can be more curious. When I’m more curious, I can be more aware. When I’m aware, I can be connected. The one thing that really works with bringing the movement into this program, bringing that awareness into the mind-body connection is that there’s a book called Spark. I don’t know if any of you have read the book Spark by John Raddy.

John Raddy has, he’s a psychotherapist and researcher, and he has pulled together all this research on the value of movement in building the brain and actually wiring the brain. It is said that when you play, it takes approximately, I think it’s four minutes of play to implant a new experience as a memory. It takes 4,000 times of rote memorization to plant the same experience. So, we want to get away from just talking and providing information, and we want to get it to be a little bit more of a felt experience. And so that’s where the movement really starts to help.

So, when we start to move, we get into this energy inquiry. And you did these things today. You were able to connect. We started actually with the connection to the breath. We connected to the breath because it’s usually a pretty quick space to get into, and you start to very quickly feel that you can adjust your states of being. And from that connection, you get into the focus, the inquiry, the exploration, the imagination. You’re starting to move the body and activate the nervous system.

The nervous system is one of the primary ways that we can shift our experiencing and we can engage social-emotional learning. The nervous system is a key to our self-regulation, and that’s where once we can tap into that nervous system, we can start to recognize through the awareness how we can calm ourselves down, how we can rebalance.

So, the key is not to always stay here, right, even though a lot of us want children to stay here especially Because they have big energy, what we really want is to play with and move. We want to play with and move the energy, we want to play with and move ourselves, and we want to play with and move our minds, right? We want to engage in this slow looking, the project zero thinking routines to really get out of the standard answering and responding and waiting for someone to tell us about our experience.

And that’s the same with the movement, you know when I had you create your own movements. When I had you feel your energy when I had you doing that you were controlling your experience And so it’s really important as we’re developing Social-emotional skills is to empower everybody we’re working with to have a sense of ownership of their experience an agency a Voice to be seen to be felt to be heard without any judgment, any expectations.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

So, to bring it all together and recap, so Artful Movement, again, was a virtual field trip developed between National Museum of Asian Art and Create Calm. It started in 2021 as a virtual field trip for students in pre-K through sixth grade but has since evolved into on-site trainings for teachers. And as you experience today, it starts with a centering breathwork practice, classroom agreements.

We go into looking at one work of art with a project zero thinking routine, and then a movement from instructor from Create Calm guides us through a movement and experience to interpret the work of art. And then we conclude with a relaxation and time to reflect together and check in with the students. You know, how are you feeling right now?

The program fosters social and emotional skills, such as self-regulation, self-awareness, perspective taking, and it’s culturally responsive because we intend to create a learning experience that’s based on trust. We value the students sharing their unique perspectives, their unique experiences with us.

And now we’re going to turn it over to you all. It’s time to workshop. So, what we’ve prepared for you, we prepared six works of art coming from the National Museum of Asian Art Collections, and we provided a link to Project Zero Thinking Routines.

So, the goal of the workshop is you’re going to be working in your groups of three or groups of two, and you’re going to pick one work of art of the six we prepared for you. You’re going to pick one projects you’re thinking routine that you would use to examine the work of art and then you’re gonna work together as well to create a movement or a sequence of movements and I know Lisa has some tips on sequencing movements.

Lisa Danahy:

So how many of you were able to get a sense of whether energy was rising or lowering as you were moving earlier today. OK. All right.

So, the idea here is that when you look at a piece of art, you may tune right into a type of energy that you want to capture in that piece of art that you want to play with. And in that case, you can take just one thing and you can move with just that one thing.

You’re going to want to breathe your way into it and breathe your way out of it, but you can come up with just one movement. So, in your handouts, the things that we did today are listed on a handout that kind of focus on whether they were high energy or low energy, what they did. So, you can actually use this handout to help you to pick a movement to match your piece of art or you can create your own.

But the idea is that you want to feel an energetic space and find a way to embody that energy so that you are relating to the energy of the piece of art as well as your experience, your personal experience.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

I think it’s the next. I think the lesson plan template also takes you to the Google Drive, right?

Lisa Danahy:

I think so, maybe. Yeah, I think that might. I think so.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

Yeah, so the lesson plan template is also, the Google Drive link.

Lisa Danahy:

Where you’ll find your handouts.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

Where you’ll find the handouts about moving energy. The middle link takes you to the website of Project Zero, specifically their menu of thinking routines related to exploring art, objects, and images. And then the final QR code takes you to a link of the six works of art from National Museum of Asian Art Collections.

So again, you’ll pick one work of art from that six, one thinking routine from the menu of choices from Project Zero, and then create your movement piece.

Lisa Danahy:

So, let’s go back to that template in its form that you’re going to find in your Google Drive if you want. And you don’t have to use the template. We just put it together for you, so you have it. But the idea is, you’re going to pick your object, the piece of art, and then you’re going to do a slow looking yourself at that piece of art, determine a movement so that you’ve got your project zero thinking routine on the bottom which one you’re going to use or if you’re familiar with them you can pick one, otherwise you can pull from the QR code on the next page. And then you’re going to create your movement and you can pick one of these movements that’s already there or you can create your own.

So, you can pick one movement and let that be the whole experience or you can pick a series of movements. So, what I did with you is when, so we lead an institute that is a three-day exploration of this lesson planning, so we’ve really tried to boil it down into something really quick for you all. But the idea is to create a bell-shaped curve of an experience of movement.

So, you’re going to start with breath and then you’re going to come into the body. So, you may want to come into the body with a smaller movement and then with a bigger movement and then you’re going to come back down on the other side. You don’t want to leave folks hanging up in the big energy. You’re going to come back down with a breath or another movement and then breath. And so, the chart that you have here, you’ve got things like crossing the midline. You’ve got things like making big movements, bringing you upside down inversions, and then these cross-body movements that help to settle.

So, you can use those as the center of it. You can also use them as either pieces, like the down dog and what we call turtle shell, what I call cloud for you today are very centering and help you find the energy or come back to the neutral energy.

So, we really just want you to play with it. There’s no right or wrong here. You don’t have to use these. You don’t have to there’s really there’s no way you can do this wrong because it’s your embodiment of the piece of art that you’re working with.

[In the background] I tried to get on water, but I had a leader train and by the time they come to the area the network is super flowing. There’s a way to sit. There’s a great deal of conversation. And then the other networking kind of stuff, it was all super fun. But it’s ideal to do that in the middle.

Lisa Danahy:

So, how’s everybody feeling?

Do you all feel like you have movements sort of tracked out or do you need another minute or thumbs up if everybody’s good to go or…Okay.

All right so let’s pull up the art.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

We could either do this by art or we can just take volunteers.

Lisa Danahy:

Let’s go by art.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

Let’s go by art, okay. So, did anyone pick the ancient Thailand vessel? The spiraling, okay.

Lisa Danahy:

Okay, we have spirals.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

So, let’s all stand up and let’s move again. So, we’re going to learn from you friends how to move to this work of art.

Lisa Danahy:

You can move out into the sides too if you want.

That’s fine. [laughs]

[Audience 1]

So, we’re feeling what that feels like in our ankles, maybe some static feelings in our arms. Yeah, are you holding water like that? Can you slowly come to a standard position? Maybe start moving our arms in some circles. Start out small. We’ll slowly get bigger. Incorporate some knees, start to make those circles really big.

That’s a good question.

Yeah

Yeah, the trust in the breathing. The autonomy yeah, there’s no right way to breathe in this. Let me slowly make them smaller again. You feel how that changes your breathing?

Yes, and then we’re still breathing. (laughing)

[Audience 2]

Those are fairly similar. Yeah, good job. OK, I’m going to lead you through a similar thing, I suppose. First, start standing with your feet together. Raise your hands up over your head and touch at the top.

Imagine you are very strong, but with strength comes the component of being brittle. And someone drops you and you crack. And so, imagine now that you go limp, you can even lay on the floor if you want. You’re a bunch of little shards. Oh, no.

But somebody picks you up. Inhale, stand.

And similar to how you were formed on a pottery wheel, you can spin in your body very slowly, don’t get dizzy, and you can exhale very deeply as you go.

That’s all I got.

Lisa Danahy:

Thank you. So, for those who were experiencing being guided through that, any thoughts, any comments on the different types of movement causing different energy sensations?

[Audience 3]

Even though we were moving, it really made me actually focus more on the object and the first glance glancing at us swirls face and then really like feeling that energy even though we were moving at the same time.

[Audience 4]

And I thought with the second set of instructions I was really cognizant of the fact that that is a piece of pottery that has a history and age and so that was really cool.

Lisa Danahy:

Yeah, to think about the material, your construction, right, that was really neat. So, was there any point in the energy that you felt it go higher or lower?

Where was a high energy point? Was there a high energy point?

Yeah, big arms yeah how about a low energy point yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so can you see how you can sort of put them together there.

[Audience 5]

I was just gonna say that you know just examining the vase you have the circularity as Noah pointed out when it was on the wheel or around. But you also have the circularity in a different plane, which is vertical, on the actual vase. And each of us, even though we didn’t coordinate, and you explored one of those, and we explored, I think, primarily another.

So, I thought that was really interesting.

Lisa Danahy:

And when you tie that in with the Project Zero Thinking routines of what do you see? What do you wonder what’s going on and you’re getting the descriptions and the feelings both from the movement and from the visual it’s pretty cool. You can go…

[Audience 6]

They start with, you know, myself, you know, the small circles where you started and then they talk about my community and then they talk about me. So, I think you could really embody it with that.

Lisa Danahy:

Thank you.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

Okay. Did anyone pick the Chinese court robe, the Shelfu, by chance. I thought I saw birds, so I’m curious if there was anyone picked either the Korean face? Yeah, yes, the blue and white, yes.

[Audience 7]

Everyone please start seated. We are calling this crane waking from slumber. So with you all started seated I want you to imagine yourself a crane just waking up and you’re just starting to feel the weight of the sleepiness on the base of your feet.

I’d like you to breathe in and breathe out, feeling the weight below your feet.

And now slowly start to lift one foot and then the next foot lightly tapping on the floor. Lift one foot and then the next. Take a deep breath in and breathe out. And now bring your feet both back down to the floor and cross the right foot over the left foot and back, then the left foot over the right foot and back. Slow movements, you’re just waking up from a long sleep.

And now bring your feet back to the floor, resting. Take one deep breath in, let it out. And now we need to wake up our head and our neck, which has been curled. You need to uncurl your head. So, start to turn your head to the left and then to the right, to the left, to the right, down towards your chest then back up again to the left to the right, towards your chest and up again. Take one deep breath in. Let it out. So, the second time when you take, you’re going to take a deep breath in and when as you start to let your breath out, I want you to realize or think about your arms, the position of your arms, also known as wings.

Start to raise one arm, one wing, and lower while breathing in and out. Raise one, the other wing, lower. Raise one wing lower, the other wing lower. And now put your two wings back down towards the middle and we want to sort of stretch, get ready to stand up. So, you’re going to stretch out your core a little bit so stand or while you’re sitting just kind of lift your head extend your chest while breathing in and then breathe out and when you feel comfortable stand up and now raise both wings to the side breathe in and breathe out one big breath in as you raise your wings and breathe out.

Now we’re ready, we’ve woken up and now we want to take a little flight. So, you want to take your two wings out to either side and start to twist your body as though you’re floating through those swirly clouds, no they’re not swirly, through those clouds that are above them. Great. Yeah, they’re kind of curved.

And I want you to start to look at the ground and look for a beautiful marsh landing where you’d like to, a marsh spot where you’d like to land. While you’re slowly start starting to slow down your flight just a little bit when you feel like you’ve found a landing spot. Then very slowly and carefully sit back down. Kind of pulling your wings down. Either side of you I don’t know how to explain that.

What are we doing next oh.

Yeah, yeah, we’re going back to feet. Okay, so we’ve landed now. We want to make sure that this this marsh land is strong enough to hold us. It’s not too marshy So you want to take your feet and tap them on the floor again? Bringing your breathing down. Back to the center. And then to sit tall and that’s all we have…

Lisa Danahy:

Thank you, that was great, so anybody have any observations from that?

Any, yeah…

[Audience 8]

When you asked us to look down after we were in the air. I honestly felt like this strange like perspective as if I was like actually like up higher than I usually am. So that was really interesting how I really got caught up in that story and those movements to the point where look down at my feet I’m like whoa my feet are so small. And I was also imagining maybe being in a group, especially of like much younger children. I know that it’s nice and it’s soothing to be caught up, but if, say, the lesson was about perspective or being high up in the sky, asking what you might see below or something like that.

Lisa Danahy:

Yeah, I think that’s a really good point because one thing we want to, it’s always fun to have a story and to tie a story to our movement and our art, but sometimes it’s nice just to be a little bit outside of the story too. So, you’re flying high, you look down, find a place to land, right? And so, because then we don’t have to question whether they know what a marsh is or what a, right?

You know, I mean, no, no, no, this is, we’re all learning this together. And I do the same exact thing. I create these really fabulous stories. We go to the beach and then half the class goes, I’ve never been to the beach. And so, then I go, oh, yeah, that’s right. So just allowing yourself to not have such a story that was really beautiful, that perspective. Because that’s exactly what we’re trying to do is create a space of curiosity and open learning. So, you land where you wanna land.

And it’s nice too because in that piece of art you can’t really tell where they are, you know, whether they’re coming or going or, you know, they sort of seem like they’re on land, sort of seem like they’re kind of in floating, so that was really great. So big energy, where was a big energy moment?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the flying was big energy. Yeah.

I agree. I agree. And then a low energy.

Yeah. So, this is crossing the midline. It’s the quickest way to connect the right and left hemispheres of the brain and body. Any time you cross over the midline with a hand, a leg, a head, anything that you’re doing, it’s the quickest way to enhance the mind-body connection. So, I always like to see cross-binding. Oh, out of curiosity, what was your Project Zero thinking routine?

I noticed.

>> [INAUDIBLE]

Jennifer Reifsteck:

I think we just have time for one more group to share if anyone wants to volunteer.

Thank you. So, So if you guys cool awesome. All right.

[Audience 9]

So, we are taking a look at the piece in the upper left of this screen these two birds here which is actually a full wall, correct?

Yes, this is a full wall quick tidbit we chose this piece because it moved from two blocks away from my museum to inside of their museum. So, we had a connection there. We thought it was pretty cool. But yeah, so, we’re not gonna do the full extended version of this, but take a moment to look at the work of art. That’s our moment.

Now, I want you to think of a couple of things you see here. Just what do you notice? And you can shout one thing out and then I’ll repeat it into the microphone. What do you see? What comes to mind?

Feathers, spread wings, Ooh, conversation, confrontation, dark, flying, a few different words here, all right, gold, excellent, all right. So what I want us to do is we’re going to imagine, very similarly to our last group, a day in the life of these creatures here. The way that I’d like for us to begin is just waking up our morning. So, I’m gonna have us all stand up and we are gonna take a moment to stretch our wings as we’re waking up.

So, what I’d like for you to do and I’m wanting to put the microphone in my armpit here too, is stretch your wings out and then pull them back in.

And again, I might forget to mention the breathing here but please continue to breathe. Maybe take a deep breath in as you’re stretching out. And then out as you pull them back in. In as you stretch out. And then out as you pull them back in.

Excellent. So now that we’ve had a moment to stretch our wings to wake up, I want us to imagine what it would look like for these birds to move throughout their day.

We mentioned some conversation, some confrontation, maybe something’s going on here. So now that we have our wings all stretched out, I want you to begin to move your wings around a little bit. Start to feel what it’s like to have these wings, to have these feet beneath you. And as we’re moving specifically, I want us to make some big movements with those wings so we can imagine spinning around. I’m seeing some up and down, some side to side, some big movements. As we’re getting into those big movements, I want us to add some bigger movement, some moving around the space. Feel free to use those feet, move around. And I want us also to imagine what it would sound like to be these creatures. Add a little sound to your movement as well, whatever feels right to you. What would it sound like?

Excellent, lots of big sounds here, big sounds, little sounds.

Awesome, and then much like our last group, take a moment to find your way back to your nest. And once you’ve found your nest, we’re gonna fly back in, drop back down. Feel free to take a seat on your chair. And we are going to settle in for the night. So, take a big breath out. Maybe another in and out, and we’re gonna curl ourselves up within our wings. Curl up into a nice little ball, and again take a few more nice deep breaths.

So now that we’ve settled in, now that we’ve nestled into our nests, I’m wondering, do you have anything more that you’re wondering about these works of art now that we’ve put ourselves into the shoes of these animals here? Do we have any more questions that are still in our minds? Again, I would leave more time for this, but you can shout one out if one comes to mind.

I know I’m still wondering what they’re doing. What’s their relationship? And we can end it there.

Lisa Danahy:

Awesome.

Big energy? Where was the biggest energy?

Yeah, yeah. One of the biggest secrets in creating movement experiences, especially for kids when you’re not used to cueing breath, is to make sound. Because you need to exhale to make sound. So, when you invite sound, you don’t have to guide the breath. And sound creates more visceral experience of the movement, too. So yeah, that was lots of really nice big movement. And then did you feel the shift of the energy after you moved, and then you came back down into your nest?

Yeah. And how many of you saw the piece of art differently after the movement, right? Yeah. That was the whole point of doing this, so thank you for modeling that so well. Any questions or comments from folks on that experience?

Yeah. Yeah.

Awesome.

Jennifer Reifsteck:

I know, we’re at time.

Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us in this workshop and participating. We’re going to put up our contact information up here. If you want to drop your contact information, we do have a sheet in the back. We’d love to hear from you and continue workshopping together if you’re interested. So safe travels, enjoy the rest of your conference. Take care.