A couple of years back, on holiday, I tried acro-yoga for the first time. Acro-yoga is this kinda cross-hybrid of acrobatics and yoga that seems to be mainly about the joy and the showing up. I had never done anything like it.

I'd wanted to try it, it looked really fun, and I was fit and strong and capable from the crossfit so I was thinking “yeah, I should do that!”…. but I was sitting in fear.

My fears were all about my stories. So many stories. Stories that went back 35 years….

So we left the last post talking about what I wanted for them when they were making; I wanted freedom,
a judgement-free, agency-creating space for them to play around in and learn about themselves…. I wanted a space where they were free to have a project fail, free to adjust, to pivot, to try other things. I wanted a space where they were figuring out the answers for themselves and because of that learning that they were more capable than they knew.

But how do we do this?

What environment do we need to provide? What do we need to think about? And how does our behaviour - the things we say, the faces we pull, the attention we show - impact them?

I talk about the joy of craft a lot. At the festival and retreat and on this blog I often talk about celebrating the joy. And I believe it. I believe that a craft practice is inherently a deep and solidly joyful experience.

But then, just this week I had a discussion about it that has made me ponder, and want to clarify, what I mean by it. Someone asked me a super interesting question…. they asked whether prescribing joy as part of craft was necessarily helpful.

Such a juicy question…. and here are my thoughts.