Page 5 - HERE AND NOW Dec 2022

If there is a place….

By AMITA JALAN

Someone had asked me a few years back – “When did you last feel
most alive?”

The first response seemed obvious to me – It was the first time I had
fallen in love with my now husband.

When I recall the same question now, it is the second response that
surprises even me. I felt most alive during my 2 human processes labs
– my BLHP and ALHP at ISABS in 2015. I remember digging deeper into
this second response and realized how the lab room setting, my two
facilitators, the group members, the conversations, the breakdowns,
and the breakthroughs were some of the things that created new life
in me. I remember how my body felt in the lab setting - the increased
fidgeting when I had to share feedback with a group member that
would have possibly invited hostility, the lump in my throat when I
called out my own bluff, the palpitations of my heart when I received feedback which I covertly denied,
the butterflies in my stomach when I diagnosed a group process, the rolling tears in my eyes with the
sadness of an epiphany and the insentient eye contact with the facilitators more than the group members.
I recalled my evening conversations with my family when I was at a loss for words explaining to them what
a “lab” is. You know well that to discuss it, to appreciate it or to critique it, you must experience it. ISABS
had ignited my dormant seduction of understanding self and others. Before ISABS, words like “self-
awareness”; “group processes”; “blind spots” weren’t even part of my vocabulary.

It was this cocktail of memories that surfaced that became the reason why, after a 7-year pause, I was
back like a child in a candy store for my repeat ALHP before I could move along my PDP journey. During
this 7-year gap, I had furthered my self-exploration through other means. So, I was keen to witness my
own changed self between 2015 and 2022 – especially the dance between the “here and now” and the
“then and there”.

The lab of 2022 was a unique place for me…

If there is a place where concepts and frameworks like Johari Window and Emotional Intelligence come
alive in a highly unstructured way with strangers - then this is the place.

If there is a place where the looming question is “But, how are you feeling?” and I tap into my body to
diagnose my feeling while differentiating it from thought – then this is the place.

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