Namaste Day

Italy Humanity’s Team Namaste Day

Contact person : corazza56 [at] gmail [dot] com - Italy

This is a full day event aiming to nurish body, mind and soul, educate & connect members of Humanitys Team Italy

Namastè Day takes place on Sunday, usually from 10 to 17: it has a regional/national target.

Purpose

The purpose is:

To give visibility to Humanity’s Team movement and message;

To deepen the participants’ understanding of the New Spirituality’s messages, and to help them to apply these principles to everyday life;

To create a safe and loving place in which we can experience Who We Really Are and our Oneness;

To feel the joy, and to confront the challenges, of working in team to prepare and run the event. Every member of the team who wishes so, has a specific task according to her/his skills and preferences, e.g. leading a meditation or an exercise, giving the lecture and/or facilitating the discussion, or simply welcoming the participants when they arrive, taking note of their names, e-mail addresses, and collecting the money of the contributions.

Everybody sits in a circle; usually we put objects (e.g. candles, crystals, incenses, etc.) in the center of the circle, to remind us the sacredness of the event.

PROGRAM

Welcome

The facilitator (the country coordinator or a local coordinator) welcomes the participants and explains what we are doing there, the spirit and the purpose of the event.

Introductions

The participants take turns to introduce themselves briefly, just saying their name, where they come from, and something, little, taken from their life experience, that have brought them to the present moment, here. Sometimes it is better to explain people that they are not invited to tell the whole story of their life.

Meditation

A short meditation (about 5-10 minutes) is aimed at quieting the mind, centering in the heart and feel the connection with others, e.g. visualizing a ray of light from one heart to another, running all around the circle.

Lecture and discussion

This is the main part of the morning program. The facilitator presents the topic of the event, usually a concept taken from the messages of CwG books. Before the discussion the facilitator presents the agreements: confidentiality, privacy, no teaching in the room, no cross talk, I-statements, respect for everybody opinion and sacred space of sharing, checking the time and the focus of the talks.

The discussion includes questions, points of view and sharing of personal experiences about the topic; it goes on until time of lunch.

Lunch

Having some good food prepared by someone of the team, or brought by the participants, who have been asked to do so in the invitation to the event, has resulted to be preferable to go outside to a restaurant, that implies higher costs and losing of time and focus.

Afternoon activities

The second part of the event is meant to be lighter and dedicated to celebrate.

In this part of the program we have intended to give attention to body, mind and Soul.

Body

Dances (Sacred Dances, Biodanza, dance-therapy), games (e.g. Findhorn Games, playful self-discovery to build trust in groups) or exercises (yoga, dahn-hak, chi-kung etc.) are offered to move the body and the energies, release the tensions, let the mind rest. Also singing songs together is joyful, better if someone can play an instrument and the participants are given printed lyrics of the songs, chosen for their spiritual content.

Mind

To experience a functional use of the mind we have used “The work” method created by Byron Katie, inquiring the thoughts that cause stress: the participants are invited to fill the work sheet “Judge your neighbour”, then the facilitator does the work publicly with a volunteer.

We have also used the Law of Attraction and the Process of Personal Creation to consider together personal and global issue and create new versions of ourselves and new visions sustained by the energy of the group.

Soul

The exercise that we called “Namasté Experience” is dedicated to our Soul. The participants form couples, better if they don’t know very well each other. They are guided through a meditation to meet their Inner Divinity and then, opening their eyes, to acknowledge and welcome God in the other. This exercise is often very moving and is meant to experience our Oneness.

Closing Ceremony

Closing Ceremony includes singing some OM in the circle; after that, a team-mate goes around the circle where the participants are with their eyes close, and read spiritual messages, usually taken from CwG books: everyone knows that the words are for her/him, because the facilitator is gently touching her/his shoulder.

Other activities

The program, especially for the afternoon part, may include a wide range of other activities, e.g. those used in Celebration of Life events, according to the preferences of the team-mates.

We use printed text for some activities, like “Meditation of the Circle” and “Namasté Experience”: this allows everybody to lead the exercise, being progressively more involved in the running of the event. It is possible, if useful, to translate the texts from Italian into English.