The Workshop Leader's Resource

Those of us who do spiritual retreats know that you can and should engineer the energy of the space of an event long before you enter it.  Setting out intentions, creating a physical environment that reflects those intentions, and then creating and holding space to facilitate those intentions into reality are the ways to create a great environment for your event.  Below is a list of elements to consider as you create your ideal workshop space.

Physical Space

The physical space in which you hold an event is critical to its success.  Too big, too small, too loud, or too soft can spell the different between success and disaster.  It’s particularly important when running a spiritual retreat that you have a space that is energetically solid to hold the work you intend to do there.  Picking a site where the owners have done this for you is a great start.   But if you don’t have this luxury, then you can do some work up front to make your event experience ideal.

The Room
The room, furniture, and site are all factors that contribute to the overall impression of an event.  A hotel ballroom is generally cold and cavernous, a stone mansion with a roaring fire will have a warmer feel.  There are emotions evoked from the setting in which you place your event.  A blank canvas (such as the hotel ballroom) can be painted to a certain extent, but there are limits.  You will want to carefully assess what you need your environment to be in order to best create the space you are looking to set.

The Furniture
Once you know your sit, then the furniture will likely come with the space, but consider carefully if you want it.  Some chairs can’t hold over a certain weight.  Others are just plain uncomfortable.  If you know you’re going to be sitting a lot, you’d better make certain the chairs are comfortable.  Then there’s a matter of arranging the furniture.  You’ll want to be certain that your format fits the function of the event.  Remember that round tables are great for discussion, but half of the people will have their backs to you.  Chairs set in rows need to be far enough apart for people to get in and out when others are seated.  There should ALWAYS be a center aisle when you are set up lecture style so that the rows don’t go on forever and for ease of entrance and exit.  If you want people to buy things from you while you are there, then you will want to seat them close together to create a sense of urgency later.

Other Issues
What are you handing out at the beginning of your events?  What are people being asked to carry around with them?  Do they have a sense of their own space within the environment or are they one of the herd?  What temperature are you keeping the environment at – or are you changing it around?  What clothing are you telling people to wear?  Are you asking people not to wear scents?

Clearing The Energy Grid
If you’re going to have a spiritual or transformational event in a space that is used for anything other than these purposes, then I highly recommend clearing the energy grid before you get started.  The last thing you want is to have a bunch of leftover angst from someone’s wedding reception wreaking havok on your sacred event space.  If you don’t know how to clear the grids of a space, then I’d suggest calling in a professional.  I recommend David Franklin Farkas, a.k.a. The House Healer (www.HouseHealing.com).  He does great work for a reasonable price and it’s all remote, so you don’t have to pay for travel.

Workshop Format

The next thing you need to take into account is what you’ll be doing in the workshop.  what exercises are you running and what will you need for those exercises?  For instance, journaling could require either a table or a binder to form a hard surface.  Are you creating a space in which participants will be in physical contact or not?  If so, you’ll want to give them some room so they feel like they can leave if they need to.  Are you having them move around or stay still?  What special effects (ritual tech) will you be doing (if any)?  If you’re doing any sort of challenging or transformational work, you’ll need to know where you’re planning on taking the people who melt down.

Staff Preparation

How many people are you going to need to run your event?  If you’re running a retreat, some of the staff will be yours and others will belong to the site.  Know how much you can depend on site staff and what you need to cover yourself.  If you’re running a smaller event, then you will want to have at least one person to act as your problem solver and greeter so you can stay focused on creating the space you need to create.

Greeting = Creating
How your attendees are greeted will determine the energetic space in which they’ll arrive at the event.  Your staff will need to know how to greet your attendees for maximum efficacy.  A grumpy staff person can mean the difference between a well-set environment and one where some of the people come in rattled and upset.  Not a good start to a day.  Having a set patter will help your staff to know what is expected of them.

Problem Solver
You’ll also need a problem-solver on staff – someone whose job it is to fix whatever is broken.  This person will be the go-to person for the rest of the staff.  They will get handed any problem item or person so that the rest of the staff can stay on task.

Energetic Space

The last item is the one that most people miss.  This is the energetic space.  You create this with your tone of voice, your attitude, your energy level and the cadence of your speech as well as through your choice of words.  All of these factor in.  But long before your attendees arrive, you need to be setting the physical space.  The night before, you should have control of the room and walk through it setting intentions for the day and visualizing a positive outcome for your event.  Look at all aspects of the experience, both for yourself and your attendees and create a positive intention for each aspect.

The morning of the event, gather your staff together to create a group vision of a positive event.  Get everyone’s energy involved.  Then get them moving – chanting, singing, dancing, clapping, stomping, whatever it takes to amp up the energy in the room to prepare it for your attendees’ arrival.  It will also get your staff’s energy in the right place to model the energy you want from people as they walk in the door.

Summary
Everything you do affects the energy of your event.  From the moment you conceive of the idea until you put it in motion, you are adding to the energetic of it.  If you put the time into planning and the thought into the design and then the energy into the event, you’ll have a successful program in no time!

Holding Space
When you run any event, your job is to create the environment for that event – from the physical space that you hold it in, to the experience that the attendees have of your event staff, to the interactions you create for them to the energetics of the room – the way it feels – it’s all your responsibility.

Creating the Energetics
Everything I’ve listed above gets done in advance in the layout of the space, the training of your staff and the design of your event.  But one thing is done on-site in-the-moment and that’s the creation of the energetics.*  All of the elements I’ve listed play into a person’s experience of the space and the event, but you are the final harbinger of that experience.  How you speak, the tonality you use, the cadence with which you deliver your words, the words you choose, all of these things, combined with the energy with this you deliver them creates an experience.  This is the space that you hold for the people attending your event.  Holding this space takes planning, good design and good facilitation.  It also takes a lot of energy.

The Flow of Energy
Have you noticed that there is a flow of energy that takes place in a room when you are training?  Some groups offer a lot of energy back to you, others suck you dry if you’re not careful.  It’s all about how engaged and how energized they are.  If they are excited and interested, then the room just flies – and you fly with it.  If they aren’t then it’s like dragging wild horses up a hill backwards, in the mud.  Ugh.  And the more people there are in the room, the more significant this effect is.  It’s easy to get worn out quickly if you don’t take action to change things.

Follow The Leader
You are the leader and therefore they will follow you.  If you show up without any energy then they will come down to meet you.   You have to be the one with the almost stupid-looking amount of energy to get things moving along.  You have to give them permission to be excited with you.

Getting People Involved
Once they have permission to be excited, then it’s time to get them involved.  Ask questions and show them that you expect them to participate.  I often even say to them “Oh, ho, you thought you were going to skate through this and make me do all the work?  I don’t think so!  Sit up and tune in guys, we’re going to be working hard together today.  I’ll make it fun if you’ll do the work – deal?”  This sets their expectations that I’m not just another talking head that’s going to lecture at them for the next few hours.

Designing Interaction
I don’t have time to go into all the elements of good workshop design in this post, but suffice it to say that you need to make sure that once you’ve told them that they have to do the work, that you then give them work to do.  Don’t talk for more than 10 minutes without asking some questions that they have to answer.  Give them exercises to do as a group.  Facilitate some brainstorming.  Have them put skills you’ve just taught them into action with role playing.  Get them involved.  People learn more when they do, but they won’t do it unless you make them.

Your Energy Levels
No matter how much you get the audience to interact with you, there’s a limit to what they can give you.  It will take some of your energy to move things along and keep you rolling.  You’ll have to really pay attention to your personal energy level because if you have to start pushing, they’re going to feel it.  If I’m teaching a small class for a couple of hours, I don’t have to worry about a thing – I’ve got plenty of energy to spare at the end of class.  But the larger the group or the longer the program, the more I have to manage my own energy.

Develop a Routine
Before I go into any program of size or length, I have a routine that I go through.  It involved calming myself and getting focused – visualizing a positive response at the end of the event and energetically connecting with the crowd before I even say hello.  All of this is important, but the single most important thing I do before I head out is that I open myself up to universal energy.  I tap into the energy field around me so that I am channeling that energy rather than using my own to create the space.  This way, I don’t find myself falling down from exhaustion at the end of the day.  In fact, I find myself often more energized than when I started.

Make a Plan – Work Your Plan
In short, it’s important to know what you are creating and then to make a plan to make sure you reach your destination.  Happy presenting!

*Energetics don’t have to be done on the spot, but most people don’t plan for them and thus it is how it happens.  For more information about consciously designing the energetic into the process, please see my article “How Do You Want It To Feel?”