Invitation 2: Brick Toss

You will need:

• A notebook and pen for reflections, with a printout of the questions OR computer/phone to read them off of.
• An object similar to a foam brick (a small pillow, a thick bundle of socks, a tightly folded sweater, or a shoe, etc.). For simplicity, we will refer to it as the "brick."
• A sash or cloth to cover your eyes (optional), for walking with your eyes closed.
• A speaker or wireless headphones to listen to the recorded audio guidance.

Space:

• Minimum of 20 feet of open space with even ground free of objects you could trip over or stumble into while walking with eyes closed.

Time:

• Allow 10 minutes for the exercise and an additional 15 minutes for reading and Reflections.

The basic design of this exercise is:

1. Read the Introduction to the exercise 
2. Listen and follow the 6 minute audio guidance
3. Read and respond to questions for Reflection in your notebook
4. Read the Closing Thoughts

You are welcome to follow the design as it’s laid out, or take it at a more gradual layered pace by doing a first run through with only the audio instructions for guidance, and skipping the Introduction and Reflections (for now). Then, a second (or third or fourth) run through of the exercise you can integrate the questions for Reflection after each walk, and the Introduction and Closing Thoughts.  Or, you can integrate the written content immediately, reading and responding in full or to whichever questions you feel drawn to feeling deeper into at the time. The choice is yours, with the invitation that you do go through all the written and embodiment invitations of this exercise at some point. It can be repeated as many times as you wish to, as it is a framework for an ongoing revelatory process which continues to teach in the doing of it.

This exercise invites you to engage with it as a process for embodied inquiry, with a Beginner’s Mind and a Listening Body. 

This exercise invites you to explore key capacities that can deepen your awareness of how you move through uncertainty and how you relate to intention, control, and surrender. It is a practice of noticing—of bringing your attention to the impulses and patterns that emerge when navigating the unknown.  It is also a practice of allowing your body to think aloud, and lead. This involves permitting the initiation, response, and follow through of impulses to move through you.  

This is not an exercise in achieving a specific outcome but in observing the layers of your experience — and how you respond to feedback that arises in relationship to intentions made external. It’s a practice in listening, accepting, allowing movement, trusting before thought, and dancing with intention.

It invites you into a process of attuning your guts (radars) and your heart (vital compass) towards the calls to action that being devoted to dreaming decolonial futures into a shared reality will ask of you, by first acknowledging and metabolizing (decluttering) the well-practiced defences which block your path. 

This is not a walk of achievement, but one of attunement. Notice what arises in your body and mind as you engage with the unknown.

The exiled capacities that you are invited to engage with:

• Allowing the body to think aloud by permitting the allowance and follow through of impulses, while ensuring no one is harmed by their embodiment
• Trust of bodily instincts (visceral response-ability before choice)
• Proprioception and extrasensory perception
• Courage to act in response to what is needed within a larger ecology
• Being in relationship with the mystery; seeking and trusting guidance from the mystery without certainty of outcome 
• Following an intention with an open Listening Body as a receiver; trusting your intentions, and your body’s inherent intelligence as a guiding system in relationship to the mystery
• To walk with the hypothesis that nothing never happens.

You are invited to validate where you are right now by noticing, tracking and accepting what you observe, with honesty and non-attachment. This is only your starting point. To move toward something else, it is necessary to first be present—right where you are, in your body, at this moment.

• How do you feel toward the brick—both about it and in relation to it?
• How did you feel when you reached for the brick, whether or not you touched it?
• What is the intention of this exercise? 
• Can you discern any other layers of intention that slipped in?
• How did you move toward the brick? What qualities (e.g., fast, hesitant, calm) did you notice in your body’s movements?
• What part of your body led you?
• Can you discern how you adjusted when the brick wasn’t immediately within reach?
• Consider that the space between you and the brick is the tightrope in the SMDR Compass. How did the balance between you, the unknown, and the brick feel?
• What did you hear or feel as you engaged with the reverberations between the tightrope and the brick?
• How does the tension between the known (the brick) and the unknown (whether you will reach the brick) mirror your relationship with uncertainty?
• Did any feelings of failure or success arise, and how did you respond to them?
• What are your mental blocks when meeting the unknown? 
• What insights did the walk reveal to you?
• What else in your life can you apply these insights to?
• How willing are you to take a risk and follow an impulse, when you don’t know if you’re going to succeed or fail?