Goa Workshop – Day 1

We kicked-off the communication workshop in Goa today. We were 15 of us, including two girls. We started with an informal introduction round by repeating the first letter of our names (Which Jai later told the participants, is called the ‘Bouncing’ technique). Jai slowly introduced us to various techniques like – boucing, pausing, prolongation and eye-contact. He explained the techniques and then we all put it to practice in rounds. Putting those techniques in practice with interactive games like word-association was fun! Practicing pausing technique in a fun-activity where we ask questions and we can only answer after we pick up a ‘masala peanut’ from the table, pop it in the mouth and chew it. Even though the masala peanuts looked tempting, many of us found answering before eating the peanuts more tempting.

We then had an interactive session on Acceptance. Jai played two videos of Dr. Sachin speaking Acceptance, and then engaged us in a detailed discussion of acceptance, beginning with the scary and counter-arguments on acceptance, Jai slowly transited to the deeper aspects about acceptance.

After the lunch, we had Dr. Farida giving a presentation of “The Three As” – Acceptance, Awareness and Attitude. She talked us through how these three A’s can help us look everything in this world (including ourselves) in a different way. The presentation was followed by a fun activity, where we were divided with four groups, and each one had to do story-telling through puppetry. Some of us really came up with funny stories, and we had a hearty laugh. The idea of this activity was to get creative as we speak.

The last activity was also a group activity. We took interviews of each member of our group, and video-shot the same. The videos were then to be reviewed but time was running by. The videos will be reviewed at the beginning of Day 2.

We also had a 10 – year old boy, with whom Jai had a one-to-one session, and also talked to his parents. A local satellite channel – Goa 365 reporters also came to cover the event. Jai spoke to the reporters and told them about stammering, the workshop and its motives.

We look forward to have even more fun on Day 2!