SUPERPOWER CIRCLE 2020 with Mary Tolena: Recent Episodes
Mary Tolena
Rhythm and Drum Circle Facilitators gather online to share ideas, encouragement, and strategies to help bring people back together with music. Interviews, rhythm activities, breakout group discussions. Join the circle at https://www.marytolena.com/dcfs/superpower-circle/
"Branching Further Into Wellness" with Christine Stevens
We all know the world needs "more wellness" these days. But what do we even mean when we talk about "wellness" and rhythm programs? Christine gave us the definition:
"The active pursuit of health"
From there, we looked at 4 aspects of bringing a larger wellness component to our programs and ourselves.
- Know your intended benefits and the pain points they address. Describe them in language your participants and decision-maker clients understand and care about.
- Have a program format that reliably leads to those benefits.
- Partner with other wellness-oriented organizations that have a mailing list: yoga studios, wellness clinics, support groups, retreat centers, fitness groups, corporate employee wellness departments, etc. Many are looking for online programming these days!
- "Put on your own music mask first!" Cultivate your own personal drumming-rhythm-music-making practice! Instead of "practicing drumming," approach it as "drumming as a meditative practice."
Dr. Jane Bentley had good news to report in this week's Superpower Circle: When it comes to building brain health, we're already doing the right things!
The kinds of activities we offer participants in our rhythm programs naturally build the kinds of neurological connections that feed healthy emotions, bodies, and relationships.
Particular for "Post-Covid Recovery"
We looked specifically at what to keep in mind to design programs for post-covid reunion / recovery groups who might be coming together again for the first time. People — and their brains — are different now, after the pandemic disruption. Our programs must meet them where they are.
Catch up with Dr. Jane's latest wisdom in the session recording!
What are the central metaphors of your life?
What idea, image, principle, concept, or knowing guides how you approach your life?
How do they operate in your consciousness and unconsciousness?
How can they help you navigate and evolve in today's challenging times?
John Fitzgerald and I explore the power of metaphor, sharing our central metaphors and how they operate in our lives. We also look out into our chaotic world, and talk about how our metaphors help us face and respond in the giant "Don't Know" that we're in now.
These challenging times call for us to "pull everything out of the fridge," then imagine how we can combine the ingredients in new ways.
In this episode, we first "take stock" of the various kinds of programs participants have offered in recent months.
Then Louis-Daniel July and I take a client-focused approach to making specific offerings that make it "easy to say yes" by fitting their circumstances.
Finally, we review the many valuable, transferable skills we have developed as Rhythm Event Facilitators, and brainstorm how they can help us diversify the kind of work we do, both musical and non-musical.
Jim Boneau discusses his new book, The Rumble Zone: Leadership Strategies in the Rough and Tumble of Change, and how he draws its central ideas from what he learned through discovering drum circles and facilitation.
In particular, we look at how to build our capacity to face today's giant Rumble Zone with courage, awareness, and curiosity about what is, and what's emerging.
Get The Rumble Zone here: http://getbook.at/TheRumbleZone
In this special episode, we acknowledge the vast landscape of musical and cultural influences that DCFs draw upon, and explore what we need to respectfully incorporate our choices of influences in our work. Sule encouraged us to look at this question from the standpoint of our "Big Why":
WHY do I do this work?
WHAT about drumming / rhythm / music / music of a particular culture do I most want others to experience?
WHAT GIFT / benefit / outcome do I most passionately want to deliver?
Mary Tolena interviews Katy Gaughan on June 10, 2020
We shifted plans with this episode to meet what seems called for in this moment: Using the Superpower Circle forum to look at questions of systemic racism and equity, and our parts in it, as individuals and as a profession.
Mary Tolena launches Superpower Circle 2020, an online gathering where rhythm and drum circle facilitators share ideas, encouragement, and strategies, based on her belief that "Collaboration is our Superpower."
Though in-person group music-making has been central to our profession, and those opportunities are now limited, we know we carry powerful ways to help bring people back together, and help heal the stresses and losses of our disrupted world.
This first episode features:
- A look at "Facilitation (To Make Easy) as a life operating system"
- How principles of Drum Circle Facilitation can help us stay focused and centered
- An interview with Mike Deaton of Mike Deaton Arts about how he responded to the shutdown with "rapid prototyping"
- Community reports of news, experiments, openings, successes, and events
Resources page: https://www.marytolena.com/dcfs/supwerpower-circle-2020-recordings