Bag of Tools and Methods

Journaling-principles:

·Journaling is a personal process. Never ask participants to share their journaling notes in public.

·After completing a journaling practice you may create an opportunity to reflect on the experience of journaling. Again: emphasize that participants decide what they want to share.

·Journaling means that you think through writing; not to think and reflect, and then write down the reflection. In the instruction, emphasize that participants should just start writing and see what emerges.

·Step 1: Preparation: Prepare a quiet space that allows each participant to enter into a process of self-reflection without distractions.

·Step 2: Guided Journaling Questions: Read one question after the other; invite the participants to journal guided by the respective question. Go one by one through the questions. Move to the next question when you sense that the majority of the group is ready. Don’t give participants too much time. It is important to get into a flow and not to think too much. ‘Just put your pen on the paper and see what comes out’. Tell them they don’t have to write the questions down, share them afterwards. Finally, share how much questions will follow to give the participants some context to relax in. Speak slowly and loud and hold the space during the journaling. Also afterwards, keep the space calm and silent.

Mindfulness practice

To be read aloud for another person or a group, or to reference for a personal practice:

First, be comfortable in your seat. Sit upright and comfortably in your chair, planting your feet right in front of you. Take a deep breath and relax. You may want to close your eyes. But if you're more comfortable with your eyes open that's also fine.

Attend Downwards

Move your attention slowly downwards, down your legs to your feet to the lower part of your feet. And as you begin to attend to your feet, the feeling of your feet, attend to the connection downwards. Imagine if we were trees, we would have roots going downwards. As human beings, we don't have these physical roots, but we still can feel the connection downwards. Attend to your feet and attend to the connection downwards. Imagine this connection would go all the way down to the middle of the earth. Feel that connection.

Attend Upwards

And now slowly move your attention upwards, up the legs, up the spine to the head, to the upper part of your head. Attend to the upper part of your head, and attend to the connection that is extending upwards. As you attend to that connection notice how the sphere, the globe of your head is a small microcosm of the macrocosm that is surrounding us. Attend to that connection. Attend to the connection upwards.

Attend to the Micro-Macro Connection.

And now slowly move your attention downwards to the middle sphere of your body, to your heart. Not just to your physical heart, but to the whole energy field of your heart, to the whole middle sphere of your body. Notice how it is this part of our body, this part of our being that allows us to connect horizontally to all the beings that are surrounding us. Attend to your heart and attend to the connections that are emanating from your heart.

Attend to a Loved One

And now as we explore that space of connection, picture a person that you truly love, and notice how focusing your attention on that person is opening up your heart. It's allowing you to connect with a different level of energy, to connect with deep appreciation and love.

Attend to the Global Body

And now extend that quality of connection to the global community (to all summit participants) to connect to a larger whole that shares a common journey of relating more deeply with the sources of who we really are. Extend your heart, and the quality of your heart, to our entire community. And now even extend the quality of your heart even more, to all of us, to all 7 billion human beings on this planet right now.

Try to embrace a whole community, the whole, the entire social field in that deep quality of your heart, which includes all our friends, people we know, people we don't know, and even people we may have problems with, we may disagree with, we may be in conflict with. Try to create a space in your heart that's broad and deep enough for all of us.

Attend to the Present Moment

And now slowly let go of that. Come back to the here and now. Relax for a brief moment. Open your eyes and continue your day from this place of strength and connection.