exercise · all tools
The Systems Game
Everyone silently picks two other people and moves to stay equidistant from both; the room self-organizes into a shifting, settling, reorganizing whole no one is steering. Variations add perturbations and observers. Thirty minutes of moving gives a felt, bodily understanding of open systems and interdependence that no diagram delivers.
Practical
- Time
- 30 min + 15 landing
- Group
- 10–∞ · large-group
- Settings
- in-person
- Materials
- Open space large enough to move freely
- Mechanisms
- systems-sensing, somatic-awareness, behavioral-rehearsal
- Change scope
- state · repeatable
Instructions
- Where
- workthatreconnects.org/resources/the-systems-game — The Work That Reconnects (Joanna Macy & Molly Brown), open
- Availability
- Open online — published at the link, free to read
- Licence
- Open source — "a gift freely given" (Work That Reconnects); acknowledge the source: WTR, Joanna Macy as root teacher, and named adapters
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
Joanna Macy (systems-theory scholar before facilitator) — The Work That Reconnects (Seeing with New Eyes; deep-ecology systems teaching)
In this directory via The Work That Reconnects (Joanna Macy & Molly Brown)
Related: 3D Mapping (Sculpting the Current Reality) (prepares-for)
The rare embodied systems-thinking tool at depth 1 / trust any — a physical on-ramp to T3 that pairs naturally with mapping tools afterwards.
status: checked · added 2026-08-25