Action in Sessions
I’d like to hear people’s experience with action in sessions. When I say action, I mean moving the body and doing things other than sitting, lying down, or standing. Here are a few examples:
- People who do family work[1] do “special time”[2] with the young people and sometimes with each other. These sessions tend to be active.
- Some of us use the “decide, act, discharge” direction (though the action is often outside of the session).
- People’s workshop highlights are often the playing and the singing.
- At Tim Jackins’ workshops, there is always a chunk of time for hanging out[3] and throwing X-Zylos.[4]
- When there’s enough resource, we sometimes do “physical sessions”[5] in which we get to fight hard for something.
I have noticed that most of my sessions do not involve action. I think it might be good for me to change that. What have you figured out?
Yoni Kallai
Nev Ilan, Israel
Reprinted from the e-mail discussion
list for RC Community members
[1] Family work is the application of Re-evaluation Counseling to the particular situations of young people, and families with young children. It entails young people and adults (both parents and allies) interacting in ways that allow the young people to show and be themselves and not be dominated by the adults.
[2] “Special time” is an activity, developed in RC family work, during which an adult puts a young person in full charge of their mutual relationship, as far as the young person can think. For a specific period of time, the adult lets the young person know that he or she is willing to do anything the young person wants to do. The adult focuses his or her entire attention on the young person and follows his or her lead, whether the young person tells, or simply shows, the adult what she or he wants to do. Adults can also give “special time” to each other, following these general guidelines.
[3] “Hanging out” means spending relaxed, unstructured time.
[4] An “X-Zylo” is a type of flying toy.
[5] A “physical session” is a session in which a counselor, who has been trained to do it, provides aware and thoughtful physical resistance for a client to push and fight against.