FlowingLove (Daniel Siegel) talks about how clown minds make mindsight maps of their minds and the minds of others.
These maps are pictures inside our minds of our own inner mind activities and what we imagine might be the inner mind activities of other clowns. These activities include: thoughts, feelings, perceptions, sensations, memories, hopes and dreams.
FlowingLove suggests there are 3 kinds of maps: “me”, “you” and “we”.
Our “me” map is sometimes called insight, or self-awareness. Our “you” map is our understanding of the inner workings other clown minds, which FlowingLove believes is important for empathy. Our “we” maps deal with what we think and imagine regarding being part of a “larger whole”. We can think of this as our “worldview”.
These 3 types of mental maps correspond to the 3 types of Love Flow: self-love, other-love, and world-love. A special type of mental map allows clowns to better understand their Love Flow: things like empathy and caring for others, compassion, and micro-moments of connection (Love).
[ ] materials, maps
[ ] offer drawings: one person, two, 3, group, Thought
balloons, doodletoons, mindsight and lovesight, in blurb suggest teacher focuses on one of mindsight aspects or lovesight aspects within a suggested situation/experience, have student draw or write in thought balloons.
Variations:
FlowingLove suggests turning the volume off on a TV show or movie or any other such media, and trying to understand what the characters might be experiencing inside their minds.
A variation would be watching a foreign film (in a language you don’t understand), and see if the tone of voice of the dialogue help you understand the inner workings of the characters.
You cut out pictures from newspapers or magazines as well.
In public places you could observe, or have your young clowns observe other clowns and see if you can tell what might be going on in their minds.
Within your family or classroom you could create a pantomime game in which one or more clowns act out a scene with no words spoken, and have other clowns figure out what is going in the others’ minds.
Micko suggests that a great way to expand and elaborate this basic empathy exercise is to help young clowns understand the facial expressions that express different emotions [] link to those materials.
The website below talks about and shows pictures of the 7 so-called universal expressions that happen in all cultures: surprise, fear, disgust, contempt, anger, sadness, and happiness/joy.
This website also talks about more subtle “micro-expressions” that may not last long, but can be seen in the eyebrows, mouth, and eyes.
https://www.verywellmind.com/understanding-emotions-through-facial-expressions-3024851
Micko thinks it would be exciting to create a learning project on these micro-expressions…there is some cool stuff online about them…free tests, training, and other stuff! Use your clown imagination and have fun!