Illustration of a group of people sitting on a couch blindfolded. © Recipes for Wellbeing

Dialogue in the dark

Don’t you know yet? It is your light that lights the world. ―Rumi

👥 Serves: 11-25 people, 2-10 people

🎚 Difficulty: Medium

⏳ Total time: 61-120 minutes

🥣 Ingredients: A quiet place with no distractions, blindfolds (1 per participant)

🤓 Wholebeing Domains: Community, Discomfortability, Liberatory Learning, Radical Care

💪 Wholebeing Skills: Authenticity, Closeness, Empathy, Honesty, Hosting conversations, Inquiry, Listening, Reflection, Vulnera-bravery

Dialogue in the dark

📝 Description

A bonding experience to increase openness and trust in a group.

Using the idea of “Dialogue in the Dark”, participants experience a blindfolded dialogue of the heart. When a person is blindfolded, it can foster a deeper sense of empathy, self-awareness, and inner reflection. Dialogue and communication flows in a different way without body language to distract you, and allows trust and openness to emerge.

All participants will be blindfolded, and will sit in a circle. There will be one facilitator without a blindfold who is responsible for keeping time and asking the questions. After asking the question, the facilitator leaves space for participants to answer and reflect out loud to the group on the questions asked.

As an optional addition, low relaxing background music can be played if it is not a distraction to the group.

👣 Steps

Step 1 – Question 1 (30’)

What is your understanding of Love?

Step 2 – Question 2 (30’)

How can I be more loving to myself? And to each other?

Step 3 – Reflection (15’)

Participants now take off their blindfolds and each is given the space to share any reflections or lessons from the experience.

Step 4 – Variations

If repeating the exercise again at a later point with the same group, alternative questions can be asked, e.g.

Q1: What does friendship mean to you? Q2: What do you value most in a friendship?
Q1: What does courage look like in today’s world? Q2: What can you do to embrace it more?
Q1: What is stopping you from stepping into your own greatness? Q2: What could you try to overcome this obstacle?