We've moved!

This blog has now moved to a more permanent, self hosted location. Please continue to follow us at theexperientialexperience.com. Thanks!

Art Therapy : Rotating Picture

I like this exercise as a way to help people understand the difference between what we can and cannot control in our lives and learning to make the best of what comes our way. It is a simple but powerful art group.

Number of participants: Works best with a minimum of 4 people, large groups should be divided into groups of 4-6.

Time frame: At least 45 minutes, you could allow more time if desired depending on how artistic your group is.

Supplies needed: Plain paper, drawing medium (colored pencils, crayons, markers, pastels)

Setup/room requirements: Tables for each group, preferably so that each group has their own space.

Safety precautions: Keep in mind safety requirements of your facility, don’t bring drawing mediums that could be used as a weapon.

Instructions:

Tell your participants that they are going to be doing a creative expression exercise today to provide insight into their lives. I always preface my art projects by telling people that I do not judge on how well they can draw or how artistic they are, that I am more interested in the meaning behind the work and if they can share that with the group. That usually helps people to feel more comfortable with doing an art project, especially if they are not particularly artistic. Explain to them what you would like them to draw. A popular example I like to do with this exercise is to have them create a drawing of what they would consider success in their future to look like. Some other examples you could use are: a happy place for them, how they see themselves, or a goal they would like to achieve. Make the subject of their art relevant to the reason they are currently doing this group with you; is it for therapy, religious reasons, etc.

After explaining what you would like the group to draw pass out a paper to each participants and the drawing supplies and allow them to begin their creations. Allow the participants to work on their art for about 10 minutes and then ask them to pause. If they were in the middle of a specific part you can allow them to finish that part and then pause. Tell them that they now need to pass their paper to the person sitting clock-wise from them. Now have the group continuing drawing but on that person’s paper adding what they choose to the drawing that person began. So in the example of what success looks like, I would instruct the participants to now contribute to that person’s vision of success. I never tell them it should be positive, I wait to see what they come up with at the end, that helps with processing. Be prepared that you will probably have several people upset that someone else gets to draw on their paper, but that’s good for processing too!

I usually let them continue to draw on someone else’s paper for about 5 minutes before I again ask them to pause and then pass again clock-wise. I continue this pattern until the paper gets back to the original person. This is why having groups of no more than 6 is best so that it gets all the way around the circle. Once they get their original paper back I ask them to look over it for a minute, and then I open up time for the participants to share what their picture represents.

How to process-items you could discuss

1. How easy or difficult it was for your participants to let go of control of their drawing. How is that like the control we have of our lives.

2. How much should we let other people’s impact on our lives affect us.

3. The awareness we need to have of the impact we are having on others lives. Is it positive or negative.

4. How their pictures changed from the vision they had in their head originally to something else, that might not have been their idea of “perfect.” Is there truly a perfect? Can we still find beauty in life if it doesn’t turn out exactly how we want it to.

Feel free to contact me with questions on how to implement the intervention and if you would like processing suggestions. Good luck!

London Bridge

Number of participants: Can be done with any size group. Large groups should be divided into teams of 2-4 people each.

Time frame: 45 minutes.

Supplies needed: Paper and paper clips. Each team should be given 20 sheets of paper and 20 paper clips. This is not an economically friendly exercise so if you have scrap paper (think fax verifications) use that because most of the paper can’t be reused after this exercise. I also provide each team with 3 sheets of blue paper to use a “river” so they can see the distance the bridge has to span. Paper clips can be either large or small or a mix of both.

Setup/room requirements: This exercise works best in a room with tables, enough for each team to have its own space. It can be done on the ground if necessary.

Safety precautions: If you group might engage in self harm activities it is best to count your paper clips again at the end of the exercise to make sure no one steals any.

Instructions:

Explain to your teams that they are in a competition to see which team can build a bridge with the least materials and in the quickest amount of time. They will be given a planning phase to design their bridge and then all teams will compete at the same time to build their bridge the quickest. Final scores will be tallied based on how much of the team budget was used in the building process.

The rules are as follows:

1. Each team must build a bridge using only paper and paper clips that can stand independently for 1 minute. Paper can be folded, twisted, ripped or rolled to use for the bridge, but the actual bridge must be made of paper-no intertwining paper clips!

2. The bridge must touch the ground on both sides, be 11 inches tall (the length of a regular sheet of paper) at its center point, and 33 inches wide (the length of 3 sheets of paper laid side to side).

3. Each team will be scored based on their remaining budget when the build is over. Each team will begin with a budget of $10,000. The teams will incur costs as follows:

-$100 for every sheet of paper used, whether that be a whole sheet or just part of it. Paper clips are free.

-$2,000 for every support/stanchion built in the river

-$100 for every ten seconds(or part of ten seconds) it takes to build the bridge

-Each team’s final profit will be $10,000 minus those costs.

4. Each team will be given 15 minutes of planning to design their bridge and practice how they are going to put it together. Teams can use as much of their paper as they’d like but what they have left at the end of the planning phase is all they have for the actual build. When the 15 minutes is up have each team give you an estimate of what they think their final cost will be.

After each team has given their estimate inform them that they will now be doing the actual build. They must start over with all new paper, no using previously folded papers. On your go have each time build their bridge calling out to you when they are finished. You would then write down their end build time (the one that costs them for each 10 seconds) and then begin the time to see if their bridge can stand for one minute. If the bridge collapses before one minute have them fix it and continue to track their time.

Once all teams have finished tell the teams their build times and have them calculate their final costs for materials and build time. Announce the final costs to everyone to see who is the winner. You may have teams that simply can’t get their bridge to stand and at that point it is up to you to decide when to call an end to the challenge

What works best

1. Encourage creativity with using the paper! I have seen teams complete this by only using 4 sheets of paper, one of which was ripped into strips to form the actual bridge.

2. Before you begin have your own rules as to what the bridge should actually look like. Can they be creative and make it more of an artistic bridge or should it actually look like a bridge cars could go across? That is entirely up to you.

3. Encourage teams not to overthink the bridge, that is a recipe for not accomplishing the task.

How to process-items you could discuss

1. The importance of planning-how difficult would it have been to just build the bridge without trying out a few ideas?

2. There is no perfect-the bridge may not look exactly like you imagined it would but did it meet the requirements?

3.Value of support in life-the bridge couldn’t stand without at least one support in the river, or at least I’ve never seen it happen.

4. Not overusing our resources-it’s good to have resources, like an abundance of paperclips, but using all of them would’ve weighed the bridge down. Just like overusing our resources in life can leave us feeling overwhelmed and confused.

Feel free to contact me with questions on how to implement the intervention and if you would like processing suggestions. Good luck!

Traffic Jam

Traffic Jam is one of my favorite experiential interventions because it is simple to get ready and usually challenging for participants to solve. It can also apply to just about any group that tries it because it involves a lot of teamwork, communication and problem solving. Before you try this intervention I encourage you to please read, and re-read the instructions to make sure you have a solid understanding of the rules and solution to the exercise, otherwise you participants may get confused or not correctly solve the challenge. I have included in this activity plan a sheet with images that depict legal/illegal moves and the solution to the problem. Good luck!

Number of participants: Works best with 8-10. I would not do any less than 7 or more than 11. Divide your group into small teams if you have more than this.

Time frame: This should take at least 30 minutes. If your group is nearing the time you have allotted you can give them hints to help solve the problem.

Supplies needed: Enough floor markers for all of your participants plus one. So if you have 8 participants you need 9 markers. Pieces of letter size paper work perfectly.

Setup/room requirements: You need enough space for your group to stand in a line without being too close to each other. A regular room works fine.

Safety precautions: Participants will need to stand for an extended period and be able to walk around. You could do this from a seated position if necessary though.

Instructions:

1. Place your floor markers on the ground in a straight line. They should be far enough apart for a person to stand on or next to it without being up against the next person in line. About 2 feet apart is adequate.

2. Have each participant stand on or next to one of the floor markers (you should have one extra) leaving the center marker empty. Participants on the right positions should be facing the participants on the left positions and vice versa. Please see the attached diagram and reference “starting position”.

3. Explain to the participants that their goal is to get the people on the right to fill the spaces that are occupied now on the left and the people on the left to fill the spaces that are occupied now on the right. So basically each side of people will be switching places. Please see the diagram and reference “ending position”. However there are rules to the game. The rules are:

a. Only one person may move at a time.

b. You may only move onto an empty space. No sharing spaces!

c. You may only move forward, no going backward.

d. You may leap frog another player to the empty space next to them, IF they are facing the opposite direction as you. No going around players from your own team. Please see diagram and reference “legal/illegal leap frog moves.”

e. Any time the group gets stuck or reaches a “traffic jam” everyone must return to their starting positions and begin again. Please see diagram and reference “traffic jam” to see what a traffic jam looks like. It happens when two people from the same team are back-to-back preventing the rest from moving around them.

4. Teams must now work to solve the challenge which they will learn takes a balance of moves on each side. Depending on how quickly you would like the teams to solve the challenge you may give them suggestions or let them struggle for a while.

What works best:

• Make sure your participants stick to the rules and call them on any breaking of the rules. The full effect of the challenge isn’t realized if people are allowed to backtrack on moves they’ve made to try again. Make them start over.

• If your participants get frustrated after a period of time ask for suggestions of what might help to solve the challenge. Ideas might include letting one person step off their spot to see the big picture, drawing a solution on a white board, or moving the markers with their hands so everyone can step off their place markers.

• Make sure each group of participants remains facing the direction they started in. It can become very confusing to remember who is on what team if people start turning around.

• Give suggestions on how to solve the problem as you see necessary. Reinforce positive steps they made towards achieving their goal and remind them of incorrect efforts they keep making over and over again-believe me, they will!

How to process-items you could discuss

• Frustration tolerance-how people responded to being faced with a challenge that seemed impossible

• Problem solving-how are the ideas you had for solving this problem (i.e. finding a leader, looking at the big picture, trying a new strategy) similar to solving problems in life

• Communication-what worked and didn’t work with the groups communication to solve the problem

• Knowing your limits-when can it be important to take a step back and ask for help to solve a problem

• Coping-ways to manage stressful situations

Feel free to contact me with questions on how to implement the intervention and if you would like processing suggestions. Good luck!

Traffic Jam diagram

Welcome!

Welcome to The Experiential Experience. I am excited to share with you some of the interventions I have used as a therapist that help people learn valuable skills and challenge themselves to improve. These types of interventions work great for any group trying to come together or learn. They can be used with therapy groups, business teams, church groups, school groups or even families! I will do my best to post new interventions at least twice a week. The majority of the interventions will be experiential in nature with a little bit of art therapy style interventions as well. I am a proponent of art therapy as a way for people to express how they genuinely feel when they can’t do so in words so I feel it is a valuable part of any group process.
I will style my posts like an “activity plan” which has the components of the intervention broken down into categories to make it easier to determine if the intervention is appropriate for your group. Some of the categories include time frame for the intervention, supplies needed, appropriate group size, setup/room requirements, safety precautions and of course instructions. I will also summarize what the benefit of the intervention might be and some ideas for processing what happened with your group after you’re done. Please feel free to contact me with any specific questions you might have about any of the interventions.
Thank you so much for your interest and enjoy!

Coming soon!

The first post for The Experiential Experience will be coming soon! Thank you for your patience!