exercise · all tools
Guided Presence
People mill, stop in front of someone, and hold eye contact while the facilitator reads a series of noticing prompts — let go of your story about this person, where is your attention, are you looking for validation, what if this were your last fifteen minutes on earth. Shares follow. The manual's habitual way of opening a night.
- Sustained eye contact with a stranger, held while being asked about mortality and validation, can be more intense than its five-minute slot suggests; the manual uses it as an opener, which is a choice about the room rather than a claim that it is light
Practical
- Time
- 5-15 min
- Group
- 2–∞ · pairs, small-group, large-group
- Settings
- in-person
- Mechanisms
- attention-training, dialogic-encounter, somatic-awareness
- Change scope
- state → skill · repeatable
Instructions
- Where
- authrev.org/ar-games-manual — Authentic Relating Games Manual, paid
- Availability
- In the source document — the instructions live inside the material linked, on its terms
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0 (Authentic Relating Games Manual)
Source link checked 31 Aug 2026 — unchanged since we recorded it on 29 Aug 2026
This directory describes and points home; the instructions stay with the people who made them.
Origin
Mike Blas (Austin community) — Authentic Relating (Authentic Relating Games Manual, 2025 edition)
In this directory via Authentic Relating Games Manual
Variation in the manual: Contexted Connection, where people keep moving and try on different frames for how to meet each other's eyes.
status: checked · added 2026-08-31