Circular Sounds is a creative process that helps individuals, groups and organisations expand into greater and greater versions of their own potential. Taking Einstein’s theory “You can’t solve a problem from the same way of thinking that created it” we use the six elements of Language, Colour, Shape, Sound, Movement and Feelings to access different parts of the brain, which allows new ideas to present themselves.
THE ELEMENTS
These six elements are the principal ways we describe and experience what we term “reality” and are the building blocks of our creativity.
From them and the interaction between them we can create anything we like – art, music, literature, dance, ideas – anything the imagination can conceive. Each is part of our everyday experience, so commonplace that we hardly even think of them, or realize that we are already using them to create every event in our life.
THE TOOLS
GUIDED IMAGERY
If the Elements are the palette we use to clarify and describe our experience, we first need a way to access our deepest feelings and beliefs in order to bring them into our awareness. Not to be confused with hypnosis, Guided Imagery is a process using visualization and relaxation techniques to access the subconscious mind. It’s a great way to get the ball rolling as it can help uncover thoughts and ideas that we never knew we had. The physical effect on the body is to calm the nervous system, slowing the heart rate and regulating the breath. This allows us to drop out of the thinking mind which analyses everything we do, and enter into the heart of the mind’s operating system. Guided Imagery is a tool that empowers us to rewrite our programmes and to erase those that no longer serve us. It’s a great way to help learning, reduce stress and at the same time promote success in what is important to each individual.
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MANDALA
Once we’ve accessed our subconscious thoughts and feelings we need a space in which to play with them. In the creative mandala process, ideas are represented by shapes, colours, and patterns that arise from the subconscious and speak to us through the language of symbols. A mandala is an artwork made up symbols placed within a circle.
Symbols represent not only the name of something, but everything you might associate with it, or feel about it. Symbols are powerful because they say so much more than words alone. For example, a logo is a symbol. Grouping symbols together in a mandala places them in context and reveals the relationships between them. In a mandala, as in life, context and relationship is everything. In CS mandalas are transformed using our Six Elements. Being free to create a mandala without censorship or judgement, it then becomes an excellent tool for individuals to express ideas in a very different way. Creating mandalas in a group is a wonderful metaphor for discovering the place of each individual within a greater whole and can be a very powerful representation of the group purpose itself. The created mandala remains a tangible piece of art which itself becomes a symbol for the individual, or group.
GAMES
CS is fun first and foremost and it is with Games that we really start to synthesize the awareness we have discovered in our mandala and learn to come together with others. Play is the way we learn new skills and assimilate new ideas. When we play and have fun we are far more receptive to learning than when anxious. Games with simple rules can help us approach problems from a different perspective and laughter can relax us enough to allow our creativity to flow. Studies have shown that we are more likely to think creatively when in a good mood – though anxiety sometimes stimulates focus, it doesn’t help us to think out of the box. Playing games brings people together and focuses them on a common goal, often revealing skills they never knew they had. They are also the best way to build teams, as it’s far easier to work with people you can have fun with and enjoy being around.
The combination of the Six Elements and the Three Tools stimulates the natural creativity locked away in the right side of the brain, bypassing the habits of the conscious mind and opening up possibilities for problem solving in new and exciting ways. No matter the challenge, the CS process generates surprising and unique answers to the question – “Is there another way to look at this?” – in itself, the wellspring of creativity.
