Pausing and becoming embodied within a safe cocoon inspires pupa:
creativity and true transformation
A physically felt paradigm shift is what carries us forward
Intuitive ideas aren’t just thought up, they are felt first. When we have an Aha! moment, we feel it coming in our body. Whether we need solutions for a work or personal problem, our bodies can show us the way forward with these felt shifts. Our bodies are where our right brains, with their broader perspective, communicate creativity to us. All we have to do is listen.
Safety is key
To be your creative self, alone and with others, you have to feel safe. When a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, it first builds an outer shell to protect itself. Then it undergoes the metamorphosis phase of a pupa. How do we build our own safety cocoon? We need to be in our social engagement system. That's the part of our autonomic nervous system that uses our whole brain and our whole body (vs. fight/flight/freeze where our amygdala runs the show). We find this safe grounded place with self-regulation: breath work and mindfulness. We can also use co-regulation when we connect with another. My favourite tool is Focusing: a deep body listening technique that uses non-judgmental listening.
Psychological safety is safety in teams and groups. A research project at Google found that their most innovative teams were the ones that had it. As leaders, we can build psychological safety by being more embodied. Deep collaboration tools like Thinking At the Edge, Theory U of MIT and Dynamic Facilitation create the pauses that lead us to safety and allow group creativity to emerge..
Embodiment + Safety = Creativity
Creating a safe cocoon for transformation, through the PUPA process:
Pause and sink deeply into your body, in a centered and grounded way
Understand from a broader perspective, in a whole-brain and embodied way
Permutation: felt shift in the body, followed by a paradigm shift in the mind
Prepare to take action (planning, positive psychology, prototyping)
Act with courage and authenticity
Embodied creativity tools
Focusing
Gene Gendlin, a philosopher, developed the practice of Experiential Focusing to teach people how to deeply listen to their bodily wisdom. Focusing gives us access to creative ideas that normally come to us while in the shower, exercising or driving. As such, it is a powerful tool to get transformative ideas on demand, at work.
Theory U
Theory U is an awareness-based system change process created by Otto Scharmer from MIT. Pivotal to the process is the use of Social Presencing Theatre, an embodiment technique created by Arawana Hayashi. SPT allows us to map and shift social and organizational systems.
Facilitation
There are many ways to use deep collaboration to help groups co-create. These create safety for the bodily knowing or intuition of participants to emerge. They include: Open Space Technology/ Unconferences, Dynamic Facilitation, Thinking at the Edge (TAE) and 4D Mapping.
Try Focusing and see if it’s right for you or your team.
“Unless change occurs unmistakably in the body, it does not, in my opinion, occur at all.”
—Eugene Gendlin