November 12, Saturday.

Another wonderful training/retreat day. In the morning we opened it up to have people share insights and questions, and that led to a very deep discussion. Then after another deep listening activity in pairs where we had the talkers talk about a problem and go into reflection about it, back in the full group Gabriela asked the talkers to talk about their experience of reflection, and that led to an even deeper discussion, with an even more enhanced feeling. So we were flying high, and Gab and I had a great talk over lunch, then we went to rest– for me, after I tried to buy yoga pants and a Spanish leather belt.

Then when we met back at 5:30 PM, I realized that I had forgotten to arrange the AV stuff with Katja because we were going to play a recording of a real live counseling session, and then have people give feedback. Because I forgot it, and Gabriela was a little late, I started the session off with asking for questions, figuring that we would use our guinea pig that had arrived today to do a live session with her in front of the group. But the questions took over the evening and I’m not sure how it happened but people started getting into their heads and the feeling and their minds got lost. I felt like I let it go on about a half an hour too long, but once I caught on I made a unilateral decision to stop the discussion in its tracks, and we just called it a night and ate dinner in my favorite Japanese/Asian restaurant where the food just keeps coming. By the time the dinner ended. It seemed as if the feeling was back. So now we will do the sessions tomorrow. It was a good lesson in preparation, or lack thereof.