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FUNQUESTS WITH OTHERS AND BY OURSELVES
Welcome Note: There are an infinite variety of ways to do funquesting. What follows is a brief description of the methods we can draw from when choosing how we want to funplay. At the end, you will find a copy of the funquest worksheet, which we can use in any form of funquest, with others or alone. You can get a much deeper understanding of funplay by reading the more detailed descriptions of these components included in “Funquests with a Facilitator: Personal and Interpersonal Problem-Solving and Improving on Our Stress Responses” under “About Funplay.”
Preparations
Warm-up exercises such as stretching and laughter club exercises can be very helpful, depending upon the situation. Find a place where (preferably) we can have some visual and auditory privacy, comfortable chairs or pillows on which to sit facing each other a few feet apart, and floor space large enough for us to stand facing each other about 5 or 6 feet apart and to move our arms and legs without touching anything. It is ideal if a full-length mirror large enough for at least two people is available; smaller mirrors can also be helpful.
Choosing a Goal
We define a positive intention or a goal for our funquest. Our goals can be anything we want to try to improve or to create. Funquest worksheets can be helpful. Two people funplaying together can have a shared goal (e.g. to feel better) or different goals (e.g to loosen various parts of one’s body, to get into a clearer state of mind). When we’re not sharing a common goal, we may or may not tell the other what we are funplaying about.
Choosing Our Type of Funplay Activity
“Funplaying” is what we call our group of playful, mostly non-verbal activities. A funquest can utilize one or more funplay variations – combining is really fun! We can choose among an infinite variety of funplay activities, limited only by our imagination and our cautiousness. Please refer to “Types of Funplay Activities” in “About Funplay.”
Inner Guides and Affirmations
We benefit if we choose at least one inner guide and one affirmation to assist us in our funquest. The Funplay Institute plans to be offering a funshop on inner guides during the next few months, and we will be offering a funshop on affirmations in January, 2007 – please check with our calendar. (Please refer to “Funquest with a Facilitator” for more about these helpful components in funquesting).
Funplaying
We read the Funplay Candle keywords (easy-to-remember, words that we can use to remind ourselves to seek “embodied states of happiness” in our funquest) – eye contact, smiling, breathing, soundmaking, feeling, moving, touching, imitating and surprising – to focus our intentions on the positive and to invite our playful selves to come out. The myriad of variations on eye contact and smiling are potent pathways to our opening to co-operative playfulness. “Imitation, more or less” is a flexible activity in which surprises (inadvertent, as well as intentional) abound, as opposed to trying to do perfect mirroring or take turns. We also review the “wave“ phenomena in our energy during funplay, especially valuing enjoying the enthusiasm of the peaks and using the valleys to relax and refresh with new impulses. We expect that enjoyment, tension release, laughter, and sometimes tears, will be a part of our funplaying.
With our greatest attention on exploring eye contact, smiling and imitation, we funplay sitting and/or standing, moving in our facial and body expressions with each other, and preferably including our voices (including gibberish). More energetic movement and sound are possible when the space allows for it, and the funplayers are so inclined. Touching protocols can be discussed ahead of time depending on what feels best to the particular funplayers.
Pauses & Stops
We may or may not choose to call pauses for rest breaks, to jot notes or to talk. We recommend funquestors have pad and pencil or art materials handy for jotting down or sketching insights and ideas glimpsed during funplaying. By doing this during pauses in funplaying or immediately afterwards, we can more easily retain the gifts generated by our intuitions. A quest may go back and forth between brief normal conversation and funplaying phases. During conversation, we explore ways to develop better, more effective and fun behaviors in the future. In addition, the word, “stop,” is sacrosanct in funplay, stopping all funplaying and inviting either quiet time or sharing, whichever is needed.
Structuring Our Time
Each wave of funplay, in our experience may last only 1 - 3 minutes, although there are no absolute time parameters inherent in funplaying. Because we often have to fit funplay into an already busy life, it is often useful to decide ahead of time how long to make funplaying and pauses, as well as to agree on an expected time to finish up. We can also follow our natural rhythms to begin again and to pause. For time-keeping, we recommend using a digital kitchen timer, which does not require time checks – which can be distracting when one is trying to maintain right-brain awareness.
Funplaying Alone
One of the most damaging effects of stress is that it isolates us from each other. So, when we are funquesting alone, we always try to include one or more inner guides. If we have one or more facilitators we like, but who are not available now, we can imagine they are with us while we do our session alone. Embodying her or him, in conjunction with our usual creative self, will lead to more energy, and better feelings and ideas. Children often do this in creating imaginary friends to assist them in their inventive play. Sometimes just trying to embodying a guide a little bit will make us laugh. This will help our bodymind naturally start to shift into a more relaxed liveliness and willingness to try something a little challenging. Preferably we are facing ourselves in a mirror and making frequent eye contact with ourselves.
Safety
All funplayers should be careful to not be in pain or cause pain! However, temporarily feeling a little achy or mildly confused is expected from time to time during funplaying; this is part of our natural enlivening and strengthening process. Funplay is very good for our bodyminds - if we don’t overdo it! Relaxing and stretching before and after funplay also enhances its benefits.
Reflection and Sharing
After the last round of funplay, we have a longer time (5 minutes or longer) for reflection, note-taking and use of other applicable media, such as art materials or recording equipment. I focus on arriving at the best insights, behaviors and practical activities I can imagine toward achieving my goal, and I may want to record these in a way I can refer to and understand later.
There is no obligation for me to share with other funplayers what I have thought, felt or written. However, if I have any reason to think others might have ideas in addition to my own about how I can achieve my goal, I can share my goals and action plan and get suggestions. It is always desirable for funplayers to appreciate each other for what we each contributed to our session. At the end of a funquest, the ways of telling whether we have been successful is whether we had some good laughs, pleasurable sensations, interesting insights and formed plans to do something constructive!
Symphony of Laughter
A great way to end a funquest gathering is to do a symphony of laughter for a minute or two (or more!). Please read the section in “About Funplay” called “How to Create a Symphony of Laughter with Friends.”
Enjoy!!!
FUNQUEST WORKSHEET
Date:
My goal or problem/situation/stress response I want to improve on:
My guide(s) (optional, but especially recommended if funplaying alone):
My affirmation(s)/keywords (optional, unless funplaying with a verbal stress response):
Please choose your type of funplay activity, as well as time intervals (if any), and read/review the Funplay Candle keywords before funplaying.
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Practical steps toward my goal (or positive insights, feelings and sensations that could lead to practical steps); also any new affirmations:
Facilitator’s or others’ suggestions (optional):
(later today or tomorrow) Further positive steps, insights, feelings, sensations and affirmations:
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