Mana Shah - Facilitator

Sunsetting, wind blowing, birds chirping....amidst all this I was on my third round of the jog in a beautiful sports complex near our home. I was happily focused on working my muscles as my son played footie with his friend in the same area. I was happily surprised at how my usually tied up body was open to its third round of a jog and wanting even more. And what enabled this was the fact that I did a mini version of a yoga routine that my sister had been teaching me online. As I was imagining the muscles in my body building and being thankful for the morning stretches, the image of a rolled up chart paper popped up in my head. People who work with chart paper/ flipcharts will relate to this pain point - you open up the chart to write and its sides keep turning in to one side . It is sooo annoying but completely predictable! Happens every time! And then pause and remember to roll the chart the other way, leave it for a bit and voila! The paper straightens out ready to be written/ drawn...

Gathering Genies across spaces met on 27th July at the first Gathering Genie Circle to pause, notice & learn together! We began with a reflection exercise with Genuine Contact™ transfer in cards - relating the card to what we are noticing in gatherings - reflections included sun, sky, joy, collective, authenticity, allowing, wonder, health, humour, vision....aspects that sometimes we miss to experience in work related gatherings.... We then went into a story circle of our recent experiences in hosting gatherings. It was amazing to listen to a variety of gatherings including a quarterly team review, meetings with government, meetings with the community, workshop on education.... stories instead of ppts, starting playfully, vision alignment, sharing life journies, user experience, appreciation all helped to build connection, empathy & deeper learning. We then in smaller groups reflected on our hopes & fears of hosting gatherings... it was again very interesting to see as...

My birthday is around the time of bad air making us run to the hills so I have not celebrated with my friends for the longest I can remember ... last year we were about to leave just a day after, so I thought why not invite all my girlfriends together for a CIRCLE Night - not just about me but about friendship! I have great friends across parts of my life - school, college, my son's school, work, peer facilitators but they do not all know each other.. just the thought of all these amazing women together gave me goose bumps... I anxiously sent the invite message and to my surprise, all of them said they would love to join... just like that... The night came, we all gathered, enjoyed nice home made pani puries and chaat, as in any party people kept strolling in... it was around 9 pm... my dear friend Tulika Mehra asked "aren't you doing the circle?" ... I hesitated ... the evening was going well anyways.... should I.... I took the plunge and said let's do it... I...

Remember a time when we started something new - a new role or a new job….it is a change in our life… with any change there are mixed feelings of excitement and curiosity of new beginnings and also the sadness of what you are leaving behind, the fear, self doubt, anxiety about what is to come. Different people respond differently - some thrive when thrown into the unknown and embrace challenges head on while some may cringe at the thought of shifting from known to the unknown and may thoroughly miss what was left behind - even though mentally they believe they want to make the change. Some unspoken questions one may experience….  Who are these people, really?  What is this organisation really like - are they really as good as they sound or as my friends say? How do things really happen here?  Why am I really here? What sense does this experience make in my life story?  Where am I in this group? How do I fit? How do I belong? How will I relate to all these different pe...

  One of the core foundations of a connected & purposeful community are their  "rituals". They create predictability, bonding and reverence to shared values. For our family, one of our most looked forward to ritual is attending the annual Ishara Puppet Theatre Festival ! We have been watching this since the past 11 eleven years (minus Covid years) It is a pure sensory delight and ignites all those latent childhood urges we have been suppressing since we grew up.  As I sat watching the show last night managed all by one single person on stage - I could not help but wonder what can puppetry teach us about holding spaces. Of course one can learn so much from the stories (the content) themselves - but we can learn so much more from the process and behaviours of the puppeteers!    Orientation helps build ease  First Ishara's founder comes on stage and introduces the festival, how it started, a bit about its journey, what their values are in organising these ...

photo credit   I was seated at one of the lunches at a facilitator exchange workshop recently. I looked around the table and was wondering what interesting question I could ask that could give me a glimpse into people's authentic selves! And then popped the question.. . what makes you comfortable ... We were just talking about travelling so I customised the question as " what makes you comfortable at a new place you travel to....?  This opened the door to amazing and diverse sharing - knowing where to go, having wifi access immediately, a smile, meeting friendly people, a comfortable space to stay, being familiar with the surroundings...each and every person on that table brought a new perspective to the table that was so uniquely them.  I just started imagining what awareness and connection can happen if we ask questions starting with these simple words... * what makes you comfortable at a party? * what makes you comfortable at an internal meeting? * what makes you comf...