I Colorado mødes de David Deida inspirerede kvindegrupper en gang om uge efter følgende program:
Program
Each week choose three women who will lead a part in the evening. These roles are picked the week before so that the evening is somewhat designed so that you can go right into it.
Entrance
First: a woman is at the entrance to the room. She clears the energy as each woman enters the space. Because every one is coming from work, its good to have a sweetness about this. Sometimes we use sage to smudge each person, front and back, taking your time to really breath it in. Or use some beautiful scented oil, place it in the palms of your hands, rub her third eye area, down the back of her hair or heart area. Sometimes, the woman can hand out certain small poetry notes that the woman reads to another woman at the end… Be creative, short but long enough to allow the woman coming into the room to take the day off her shoulders.
Start
Then: sit in a circle, we like to have silence by this time so the energy can drop more into the feeling tone of the room.
When every one is present, and you have taken a moment of silence, the Second woman of the evening will take 15 minutes to do an exercise. This could be a group physical exercise. It could be with music and movement. It could also be a shortened version of dynamic Osho meditation form.
It could be with art supplies. Painting to music with a theme, or painting onto one another with chanting. It’s always good to have something physical because we open so well with some kind of body movement or touch. Again, be creative and use things that you use in your lives all the time. If you are a mother and have a little daughter, there might be certain games you play with her that you could modify for the women’s circle.
Main Excercise
After the 15 minutes: The woman who is the leader for the group has planned a half hour exercise or so. She can partner up with another woman and lead the exercise together. Here, some theme that pertains to women and women’s issues should be brought up.. It’s always good to break up into pairs of two or three sometimes, depending on the exercise, and to have one person go first, exploring whatever the theme is while the other listens. Some major themes we as women struggle with are: Mistrust of one another, Competition for men, Body issues, Jealousy, Age, Beauty, Radiance or lack of it, Mother issues, etc. You can come up with more.
Part of these exercises have a speaking component to them, and the other part should be through movement, or sound or any of the other senses. All the while the other partner witnesses. It’s in this witness and sharing moment where we practice opening or closing our hearts to one another, and that in itself is the practice.
After the exercise, bring the circle together and share something. It could be a full out sharing time, where you sit and speak, or it could be a physical jester to include the others in your process by emoting or showing yourself.
Break
Then a pee break
Then come back and either put on a piece of music, give a theme to move the body to and encourage each women to keep sharing herself with every one as she moves… So often we hide when we show the movements of our bodies with other women.
Circle
Then: sit in a circle again, and two women get to have what we call a consideration. One woman speaks for 15 minutes on a topic that she is struggling with in her life. It could be boyfriend, work, being or getting organized, health, children, whatever is the most pressing thing in her life. Each woman feels into her and after the 15 minutes can take a few minutes to ask her questions to have more clarity.
Then take another 10-15 minutes or so to give her guidance. It’s helpful to have another woman write these down for her. The suggestions are good to be specific things for her to do and to get practice for her situation. For some women, the feed back might be, to make a list weekly on the most important things she must do and to do them. For other women it might be, to take a bath every night for 15 minutes, get a massage and her toe nails painted. Each woman will requires different kinds of guidance, so each women should really feel into her situation and make suggestions from there.
Some women might need to take dance classes or go shopping with another woman to update her wardrobe to who she is becoming now, and some may need serious guidance on being practical. Don’t be afraid to be frivolous here. What women need and what men need are two very different things so don’t get caught up in what the men are doing. For the most part, women today need to soften and feel their beauty from the inside outward, and the men will let you know that you are doing well by admiring your most important and special gift … the ability to shine and show love through our bodies.
Then: the second woman for the consideration takes her turn, the same process all over again for her….
Closing
In closing: pick the three woman for the next week who will, be the woman at the door, the woman leading the first 15 minute exercise and the woman closing for the next week… The woman closing for this night, has a song she will lead the others into, has a small and sweet game to part every one with, reads poetry or leads others to read to another in the group. The closing is something that leaves everyone feeling their hearts as sweetly as possible.
End
Some thoughts
As women, our biggest gift to give lives in our feeling body. The closure of our hearts is felt all over and we rob one another, our relationships and families if we try to compete with the men for “mental” space. The way we get nourished is to nurture in one another through opening our physical body which can get into our hearts delicate waves of feeling easier than thinking our way into it. So the practices should always have music, water, sometimes foods, smells, light, temperature, and many other textures to make us go, ahhhhhhhh, this feels good.
Also, a lot of the work is to go deep into the lower half of our bodies, where our sex resides. This is very good to share with one another as well, as most often we tend to hide this from each other and that creates a subtle level of mistrust amongst one another.
Just think of ancient times when woman did rituals together, and do them with silence, intention and depth. Oh, and pleasure, lots of pleasure.