exercise · all tools
The Stuck Exercise
A Social Presencing Theater practice: one person embodies a real stuck situation from their life or work as a physical shape ("sculpture 1"), stays with it, and lets the body — not the planning mind — move toward whatever wants to come next ("sculpture 2"). Small-group witnesses watch and afterwards share only what they saw and felt, never interpretations. Knowing arrives through the body first, words later.
Prerequisites
- A real stuck situation the mover is willing to work with (content need not be named aloud)
- Body warm-up before embodiment work
- Witnesses describe, never interpret (Inner Pathways' own rule) — interpretation collapses the practice into amateur analysis
- Embodied material can surface feeling without narrative; close with grounding, and let movers keep their meaning private
Practical
- Time
- 30-60 min + 15 landing
- Group
- 3–20 · triads, small-group
- Settings
- in-person
- Materials
- Open floor space; no props
- Mechanisms
- somatic-awareness, creative-expression, systems-sensing
- Change scope
- state · repeatable
Instructions
- Where
- innerpathways.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/IO2-IP-FACILITATO… — The Inner Pathways Guide for Facilitators, open
- Availability
- Open online — published at the link, free to read
- Licence
- CC BY (Presencing Institute)
Source link checked 29 Aug 2026 — unchanged since we recorded it on 28 Aug 2026
This directory describes and points home; the instructions stay with the people who made them.
Origin
Arawana Hayashi (Social Presencing Theater), Presencing Institute — Theory U — Social Presencing Theater
In this directory via The Inner Pathways Guide for Facilitators · u-school for Transformation — Theory U tools
Dual-sourced from the start: an u-school/SPT practice carried into the Inner Pathways curriculum. The body-first mechanism makes it the somatic sibling of the Immunity-to-Change map — both surface what holds a stuck pattern in place, one through language, one through shape.
status: checked · added 2026-08-25