I’m just back from two and a half days with somatic practitioner Arawana Hayashi. Arawana Hayashi comes from a dance, meditation and theatre background and for the last few has been working with some of the big names in management consultancy – Peter Block, Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer in particular. I highly recommend her. Having trained with most of the leaders in this field I can say she rates as one of the top somatic practitioners in the world.
We spent the last few days with Arawana exploring Theory U – “a change management method targeting leadership as process of inner knowing and social innovation” through embodied ways of working and Arawana’s “Social Presencing Theatre.” What this means is that you look at a situation/system you are a part of (e.g, a company in transition) and move into emergent possibilities through seeing, sensing, presencing , crystallising, prototyping and performing (in this case an actual performance piece). Mind, body, emotions and intuition are all involved.
Theory U and Arawana’s take on it is a radical approach to leadership and “learning from the future” with a sense of “already whole” rather than the more typical – “something is broken, here’s my goal to fix it, here’s my plan to get there. Using the body in leadership is what I do and I enjoyed Arawana input on this. The “not knowing” aspect of the work however was challenging and scary to me as someone who is “paid to know”…and also rewarding. I worked with my own example of how to structure (or not) Integration Training in a way which provides both autonomy and community for myself and associates.
Thanks to Arawana for the stretch and patience – I love how her work is bringing somatics into the mainstream and provides what I’ll call a feminine balance to the leadership work I currently offer. (My own and my associates work with somatics and embodied learning in business can be found here.) Thanks also to somatic coach Eunice for hosting and to the other participants for making it a rich experience.
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Leadership so What: It’s about not knowing and being
as well as knowing.