Author — Tatyana Muzhitskaya
… For several years in a row, together with my colleague and co-trainer Sergey Verevkin and the participants of our personal growth training, we played “live chess” every summer at a camp by the sea. The idea is that one person wants to understand his story, act it out, and everyone else helps him in this. It was invented by psychodramatists. But, unlike the canons, we decided not to force people to choose some roles in advance, to try them on for themselves. We have decided to play pure «live chess», and we invite you to the session.
Your turn! Don’t run away!
In live chess, of course, there are no opponents, no one wins or loses, but a person has the opportunity to observe the system as a whole and comprehend some moments that have happened in his life and are happening now, see the threats that can happen, and then depending on the behavior, find strengths and resources.
So, join the big chess game. Sea shore. Personal growth training conducted by Sergey Verevkin and myself. Every day we had such a game, so everyone could play the role of a playmaker and a piece. The figure is chosen by the person who makes the arrangements. I invite you, dear reader, to the auditorium.
Sergey and I preferred not to bother with the content. If we look at all the Mexican TV shows, it’s pure chess, where one character has moved to another cell, everyone is crying and wiping away tears, and wondering what the next move will be. We decided to do without the series. It was interesting for us, just the opposite, to include as little as possible the “social brains” that prescribe that men should be like that, and women should be like that. After all, if we look at the world around us, we will notice that women are very different and men even more so.
So here’s the party. Dasha comes out and says that she wants to play a scene from her life. “I’m very curious why my husband…” she begins. «Stop, stop, Anya! — we stop her, — do not tell us a story, the less we know the details, the more chances that we will really be able to show a real, systemic arrangement, read from the body. Everything else for us is just an extra background. Let’s try to focus only on the sensations of the body.
We say «live chess» because all the moves will make a difference. How many active characters are there? Dasha begins to list: my husband, my son … We interrupt her again: “It doesn’t matter! Please don’t tell us anything, your job is to tell us how many characters there will be: character #1, #2, etc.» There were 5 characters in Dasha’s story. We asked Dasha to choose “actors” from the whole audience (and there are 20 people in the group, the choice is rich), give them numbers, but do not say who they should play until the end of the game. Very often, people subconsciously choose precisely by the similarity of a set of motor fields, and not at all by external similarity.
By the way, Dasha turned out funny: for some reason, she chose a small, fragile girl for the role of her husband. A two-meter hefty ambal fell into the role of the son (but it turned out later). In the role of grandmother (which later turned out to be a complete surprise for us) was a young, beautiful, sexy woman in a short skirt and long legs. And it is very important to look at who a person chooses to play himself, because he also has to choose someone to play himself. Often, by the way, a certain “motor double” is chosen, which is not similar in face, physique and age, but very similar in movement, reactions, intonations, and as a result, life strategies.
After the heroes are chosen (and, I remind you, no one told them who plays whom, so far there are five figures with numbers), Dasha is invited to place each hero in space.
There is a certain chess field, which we agree on, 10 by 10 meters. Everyone sits on the edges, no one can cross its borders, except for the players. Let’s run ahead a little, let’s open the «veil of secrecy» for the reader, so that it would be more interesting to observe. The woman herself wants to deal with this situation: why suddenly, unexpectedly for her, her husband made a scandal, kicked her out of the house with her son. And she wants to understand what is happening and what to do next. But no one here knows about it yet.
Dasha begins to expose the characters, as the soul lies, in the order of their importance to her. Character #1 takes his place first. And then the fun begins. There are plenty of opportunities to arrange the rest, the field is huge, but it turns out that character #1 and character #2 stand side by side, almost holding hands (body contact is ruled out by the rules), character #3 stands strictly opposite them, character #4 stands in corner behind the back of the character number 1, and the character number 5 stands sideways and observes the situation from the side. The rules of the game are as follows: all the characters move in turn, according to the numbers, and the reason for moving is the basic rules.
A character must take several actions during his turn. He must not only move, but first name his feeling. It is a feeling, not a thought, not what he thinks or how he presents his character’s strategy. He does not need to turn on his brains, it is important to get in touch with the unconscious. And it’s not even so important what he will say about his feeling, because the feeling is not so easy to define, and the list of feelings is limited: joy, happiness, bewilderment, disappointment, fear, anger … Interest is less of a feeling. So, it is not so important to name how to give the body the opportunity to react by attraction or repulsion, unfolding, or expansion, that is, to show any of these reactions.
All characters are placed, the first character is asked about feelings. “I feel the aggression! he answers. — Anger. In this regard, the facilitator asks: “Where do you want to move?” There are a lot of options where you can move, feeling aggression, you can approach directly the character that causes this aggression, and get his response. You can, on the contrary, if it is folding, run away to the far corner. Our heroine acts paradoxically. She says: I feel aggression, but I don’t want to move anywhere. Here you are, the field of passivity suddenly turned on! As it turned out later, this strategy haunted Dasha for life, because it was for her that the first character played.
Question to character number 2, who is standing next to Dasha: “What do you feel?” “I also feel indignation, aggression,” he replies. «Do you want to move? — Yes I want to». You must first point with your finger where, and then move. This step is also very important, because first you need to realize the intention. It happens that a person begins to wander around the «board», looking for something, then changes the configuration, the location of the body. But if he said in advance where he wants to move, there he should be.
«I want to move over there!» — and he approaches character #3 as if with the intention of challenging him to a fight. He is expanded, does not hesitate, and we understand that he is adamant in his intention and will carry it through to the end. The rest of the public can only guess who it is, and everyone unanimously believes that this is her man, he behaves painfully like a man. Husband or maybe dad. He approaches the little fragile girl, hangs over her from above. Little fragile girl — character number 3, now it’s her turn. Before that, she had already lost several feelings, she saw that emotions were directed at her. «What do you feel? — I feel fear. — Do you want to move? — Yes! — Where? “Get out there!” — she shows, and moves behind the back of the character number 1. Hiding!
The next move is character number 4, who is standing in the corner. «What do you feel? — I feel joy! — Do you want to move somewhere? “No, I don’t want to, I like everything here very much!” Here is the grandmother, as it later turned out, who from her “corner” incites the couple and grazes this whole wonderful situation.
Character #5. “What do you feel? — I feel detached. Do you want to move somewhere? — Yes I want to. In the very center of events! — the character says and comes close to the character No. 1. The character No. 1 is compressed from two sides: the character No. 2 is very close behind him, the character No. 5 is standing in front of his face. «What do you feel? — I feel a point and hopelessness. Where do you want to move? But the character continues to shrink. «Nowhere!» He stays in place again. An insanely interesting game, and most importantly, everything is clear from the outside! I just want to exclaim: why are you standing there like an idol, well, take a step! Well, turn around! The girl, who is the main character, already has tears in her eyes: “How do they know everything? That’s how it was!» We tell her: “Be quiet and just look!”
And then the game continues, and according to the rules of the game, it continues until all the characters are satisfied with their place, or not everyone is satisfied, but no one needs to move anymore. This will mean that the system has come into harmony. A few more moves and movements, and you can already write the script for the series. As a result, the mother-in-law visited both next to her son and in diametrically opposite ends with him. The heroine and her husband managed to quarrel and fall in love with each other. These emotions are immediately visible by the position of the body. And by the way, love and passion — this is when eye to eye, the world disappears, and love is more calm and family — this is when people just stand side by side and look in one direction (long live Exupery!)
Then, when all the figures seemed to calm down, in fact, they stood in a circle, and in a natural way, on their own, no one told them to get up like that, at that moment our main character, who had hardly moved before, suddenly declares: “Yes, at I have a desire to move!” And through the whole field he runs to the other end, so that from there he can look at the back of everyone standing. This causes a wave of new movements, and again the husband is on the other end (despite the fact that we all know that this is a husband, but for the audience and participants a fragile girl). But here again, sooner or later everything harmonizes. And again, as soon as the system comes into balance, the main character’s eyes light up: «I want to move!» And this time she “calls out” her mother-in-law.
Finally, a new location convenient for everyone was found again: this time they stood in one line. During this time, Dasha already sobbed and laughed to tears. We say: “Dasha, you saw how everything turned out, now stand in this place yourself and talk about your feelings.” She takes the place of her character, we see satisfaction on her face at first, then we suddenly notice the same sparkle in her eyes: “I feel joy, I want to move over there!”
The group reacts with an explosion of laughter: “Dasha, now you understand why in life “do you only dream of peace?” After that, the pieces on the field once again make move after move, and finally turn in the other direction in approximately the same configuration. And, mind you, we are not playing according to the meaning, not according to who should go where in accordance with the logic of the scenario. No, everyone proceeds exclusively from those emotions that arise in accordance with the motor fields, depending on the location of the figures. Therefore, the less we know about the pieces that are involved in the game, the better.
It is not at all necessary to disassemble the “party”, but we say: if a person wants, he can tell who was who. When Dasha said that the fragile girl is her husband, the group gasped. For the second time, she gasped when the fragile girl admitted that for some reason she was very afraid of “this man No. 2” — that is, her son. But in Dasha’s life, everything is like this: the son-accelerator is fighting for his place, and at the same time, his mother is on the side of his son. The sexual mother-in-law really turns out to be an unmarried woman with a very active character, who arranges her personal life, is engaged in construction in the country, delves into everything and participates in everything.
The fifth character is a great-grandmother, mother of a young mother-in-law. Her role in the game was characterized by the fact that the husband of the main character, her grandson, took great care of her, because his mother, the mother-in-law of the main character, did not take care of her mother. Great-grandmother watched the situation from the side, and was such a gray cardinal.
And still they couldn’t get Dasha to answer a simple question: why, when everything doesn’t suit you, do you have a field of passivity? After all, if you just take one step to the side, you will already change something (and we even showed it clearly), the situation will not remain the same, but your inaction contributes to the fact that the crisis is aggravated.
Does changing characters change the result?
Well, my dear readers, did I manage to draw an observer-fan into this gambling role? Let’s try again!
Ivan played the next game. He wanted to consider the situation at work. There were only four figures. One is slightly ahead, three are behind her in a row. It’s all. what we now know. The person who is at the head of the group, figure No. 1, says: “I feel energy, responsibility, desire to act, I want to move …” And steps forward. Three after him declare that they also want to move, and again reproduce the previous configuration. And all of a sudden character #2 says, “I feel the tension and I want to move over there!” And he stands face to face with character No. 1. At that moment, Ivan’s face is written with indescribable excitement. Character #3 says, «I feel resentment and want to move over there.» And he becomes, as it were, an arbiter between character No. 1 and character No. 2. Character No. 4 says: “I feel disgusted and want to move to the corner of the hall!” He goes to the corner of the hall and becomes his back. At this moment, Vanya already has tears in her eyes from recognition and laughter. Character No. 1, meanwhile, with a feeling of indignation, moves to character No. 4. Also with his back to these two. They are moving again. The game turned out to be bright, dynamic and short. How did the situation end? The same with which it began, only the characters were turned in the other direction. Character #1 is in front, characters #2, 3, and 4 are exactly behind him, and everyone is fine. When we asked: “Vanya, what was that? Would you like to comment?», Vanya associated himself with the character number 3.
As it turned out, at work, Vanya began to ferment, associated with the arrival of a new boss. “I have described to you the situation that has been developing for three weeks already,” he said. — And you showed me that it will end exactly the same. Apparently, when emotions subside, everyone will line up in this position anyway, because everyone loves work and understands that the boss is a professional. But here everyone has their own hysteria. That’s why do you think character #4 ran to the other end? The rest are all men, and this is the only woman who shows her character to everyone. And we are engaged in the revaluation of funds, and since she is a unique specialist, then, naturally, everyone ran after her. Then we meet in Moscow a month later: “Vanya, how is it?” Everything turned out to be so: the boss was in front, all three were behind him, calm was restored!
And so every day, party after party, we lived different lives, learned to be aware of our feelings and see other people’s intentions.