WAKA · In Nature We Believewaka.gaiaeducation.org/collection/owl-eyes-and-deer-ears/
Owl Eyes and Deer Ears
Turning the senses up, in about four minutes
Physically change how participants are perceiving, so that a walk that would have been a conversation becomes a walk.
- Duration
- 5–15 min
- Group size
- Any
- Setting
- outdoors
- Energy
- still
Groups arrive in a forest still in the room they left. This takes four minutes and does more than twenty minutes of asking people to please be present.
How it runs
- Owl eyes. Stand still. Hold both arms straight out in front, thumbs up. Fix your eyes softly on a point ahead and keep them there. Slowly move your arms out to the sides, wiggling your thumbs, until you can only just detect the movement at the edge of vision. Hold them there. Notice how much wider the world got, and that details went soft. Walk a few steps holding it.
- Deer ears. Cup your hands behind your ears and push them forward. Turn slowly. Then cup them in front and listen behind you. Then drop your hands and notice how much you can still hear now that you are looking for it.
- Ask for the furthest sound, then the nearest, then one that was there the whole time.
- Walk on without further instruction.
Facilitator notes
- Owl eyes are literally a different mode of seeing — wide-angle vision runs on different pathways from focused vision and is much better at catching movement. Say that once; it stops it feeling like a party trick.
- This is the single best thing to do at the trailhead. It costs nothing.
- With teenagers, “you will be able to see people sneaking up on you” is a more motivating framing than “you will feel connected”.
