If you have read “My Grandmother’s Hands” by Resmaa Menakem, or if you are a fan of somatic healing, you will be familiar with the practice of making sounds or music together in a group as a form of regulation and centering.
Playing music is also one of the ideas we outline in our Micro-Practices for Self Care Spark Deck, so in a recent workshop on the topic of self care/collective care, I decided to “fail forward” and try a new activity. Afterwards, I asked participants for feedback, and the comments and enthusiasm were unanimous. If you are looking for new ways to open up a virtual session, this can be done in under 10 minutes. (And if you are interested in the concept of facilitating with a trauma-informed lens, click here).
Preparation:
1. Before the session, go to plink.in and set up a set of “go private” spaces. You will need to set up one private space for every four participants. I chose to give my spaces names like “somatic_resonance,” “healing_sounds,” beautiful_noise,” etc. But you could just as easily name them “room_one,” “room_two,” and so on.
2. When you are ready to start the activity, let participants know you will be sending them into breakout rooms in groups of four people. Explain that each room will have it’s own Plink link to click on. I labeled the hyperlinks and put them into the chat at this point so it was easy for participants to access, as in “Room 1: [somatic_resonance url]; Room 2: [healing_sounds url],” etc.
3. Make sure people understand that to make a sound using the app they will need to either right click or use their track pad to click, and that to change the sound they are making, they can click on the colored boxes on the left hand side of the screen, and move their icon up and down. If they are not wearing a headset, they may need to keep themselves muted to avoid feedback.
4. Send groups of four into the breakout rooms to play music together. I let them play for four minutes. They all came back saying they could play all day.
I think part of what makes the Plink interface special is that a) it has a steady rhythm that sounds like a heartbeat that runs underneath the other sounds participants make, b) it is super easy to figure out, and c) it actually sounds good!
Try it out and let me know whether your participants experience a similar sense of joy and cohesion after having made music together.