Appreciation shower
Always remember people who have helped you along the way, and don’t forget to lift someone up. ―Roy T. Bennet
👥 Serves: 11-25 people
🎚 Difficulty: Medium
⏳ Total time: 61-120 minutes
🥣 Ingredients: A quiet place with no distractions, 4-5 chairs, soft meditation music, pretty things to create a beautiful altar (e.g. candles, flowers, pebbles, colourful scarves…), 1 co-facilitator
🤓 Wholebeing Domains: Community, Positive Emotion, Radical Care
💪 Wholebeing Skills: Caring, Celebration, Closeness, Compassion, Gratitude, Holding space, Joy, Reciprocity, Relating to Others, Trust
Appreciation shower
📝 Description
A deep activity to cultivate gratitude and touch people’s hearts.
Many changemakers (and many people in general) struggle with receiving nice words of appreciation for something we have said or done. We tend to shrug it off and focus the attention back on the other. Whilst this altruism is noble, it is important that we learn to receive appreciation because it can boost our self-esteem, life satisfaction, and connection to others.
We experienced the following activity during a ChangemakerXchange summit where Jacklina Eshaya, a compassionate and soulful facilitator, guided us through an extremely touching and enriching journey into appreciation. We recommend this activity for teams who want to take their connection to a deeper level, or at the end of particularly powerful trainings or summits where participants connect in a meaningful way.
👣 Steps
Step 1 – Preparation (30’ – in advance)
Find a quiet space (and ask participants not to enter it) while you set it up. It is best if the space has some privacy and is not too bright so you can create a more intimate feel. Place 4-5 chairs in a circle and at the centre create a beautiful altar using pretty objects such as candles, flowers, pebbles, colourful scarves. Set your imagination free! Once the room is ready, start playing some soft meditative music and gather your participants. If you need any suggestions, this is the music that Jacklina played for us..
Step 2 – Invite participants (5’)
As you gather the participants outside the activity room, ask them to form a queue and close their eyes. They are to place their right arm on top of the shoulder of the person in front of them and your co-facilitator will lead them (with their eyes open!) inside the room and in a circle until everyone is standing outside the circle formed by the chairs.
Step 3 – Appreciation shower (15’)
Ask 4-5 volunteers (depending on how many participants you have – if it is a smaller group, have 4 chairs, if it is larger, 5) to sit down on the chairs and invite them to close their eyes. Explain that the people who are standing can move around the space and approach (one by one) the people sitting on the chairs to share their appreciation for them. Ask people to whisper their words of appreciation so that you maintain a very meditative and reflective atmosphere. The people sitting on the chairs with their eyes closed are only to receive these words of appreciation, without making any comments or answering. Once people have shared what they wanted to share (it is important that nobody feels rushed) or when 15 minutes have passed, ask participants who are sitting down to take a deeper breath to fully absorb the appreciation received and invite them to open their eyes and leave their chairs whenever ready.
Step 4 – Repeat (60’)
Invite 4-5 new volunteers to sit on the chairs and repeat the experience until everyone has received appreciation (yourself included, so you may want to have a co-facilitator).
Step 5 – Closing (5’)
Invite everyone to stand around the circle and take a few deep breaths together. Now give participants some free time for them to absorb the experience (some of them may need quiet time alone, whereas others might need to talk to someone or write in their journal…).