07 Fruit Salad

Exercise

Fruit Salad

Synopsis

This exercise can be used at different points in the course to energise participants as well as encourage self-disclosure in a non-threatening manner. Self-disclosure in the area of sex and pleasure enables participants to bust some their own myths and assumptions about people who they think they know. It is also a good technique to help participants realise that they are perhaps not alone in being or doing a particular thing.

Objective

Energiser

To increase comfort with self-disclosure

Approximate Time

15 Minutes

Materials Needed

A chair for each participant

Steps

Explain to participants that this exercise is both an “energiser” and a way of making some tentative steps towards self-disclosure.

Emphasise that participants should only make disclosures with which they feel comfortable.

Ask everyone to stand up and arrange their chairs in a circle in the centre of the training space. Remove one chair from the circle so that there is one chair less than the total number of participants. Ask for a volunteer to stand in the middle of the circle to start off the exercise. Alternatively, the trainer should start the exercise.

Whoever is in the middle of the circle must make a statement which is true for them and which is likely to be true for others in the group.

They should begin:

“all those who …..…………… change chairs”

and all those for whom this statement is true change chairs immediately and as quickly as possible.

The person left in the middle calls out the next statement.

The first handful of statements should be non-sexual to get participants moving: for instance they can relate to appearance “All those with brown eyes”, or “All those who are over 20 years old”.

When the atmosphere is more relaxed, encourage participants to make statements relating more explicitly to sexuality, e.g. “All those who are married” or “All those who like to talk about sex”

Processing – ask participants:

• How did you feel when the exercise began?

• How do you feel about the disclosures you and others made?

• How did you feel when the exercise ended?

• What do you think the exercise did for the group?

Tips for trainers

You can use this exercise at any time during the training. It could be an exercise that you keep coming back to over the course with more and more explicit disclosures, some of which could be points of discussion (in a generalised manner, ensuring that particular participants are not discussed) in plenary.

Be sensitive to any personal or intimate disclosures that could generate shock or judgement from other participants. Set the example by being supportive and non-judgemental.