Introduction - What are the Blobs? A feelosophy
The Blobs are simple. They deal with deep issues using the
primary languages we learn from infancy – feelings and
body language. This is why they are used with children as
young as 4, all the way through to the elderly.
The Blobs are neither male nor female, young nor old, European, Asian, American nor African, ancient nor modern.
They are outside of culture.
Blobs are the best of us and the worst of us. They don’t tell us what we ought to do, or
what we mustn’t do…they merely show us how a variety of people feel.
Without words, the Blobs can be interpreted in a hundred different ways. There is no
right and wrong about the Blobs, which is very important. A leader who uses them in a
‘one way of reading them only way’ will find that the rest of their group become very
frustrated in discussions.
Each picture is a means to a conversation, rather than a problem to be solved or a message to be agreed upon. If the people you are working with read the characters in totally
opposing ways, that’s fine. We each see the world through our own eyes. Allowing others to share their feelings enables group members to understand and appreciate one another.
When we are children our feelings say one thing, sometimes more purely than when we are adults. School is beginning to encourage children to understand their feelings
and to master them. For each of us, emotional literacy is a
journey of self-understanding. We hope the Blobs will
contribute a useful tool to that journey, for all ages.
Questions…without answers
Some questions are designed to produce one or two answers. Many of these are ‘closed
questions’. We may ask them knowing the answer, but wondering if the person who is
with us knows the same answer. An example might be in a maths lesson. The teacher
asks, “What is 7 times 4?” There is only one answer in schools - 28. Most times such
closed questions are essential ways to find out information when we don’t know an answer – such as, “When is the next train due to arrive?”
Some questions are asked to explore an idea, but within defined parameters. We know that the boundaries are limited
and that the type of answers will be ones we may well agree
with. One scientist may ask the question, “How did rocks
form over millions of years?” This excludes answers which
fall outside of their belief system on the age of the Earth.
Blob
YMCA
Training
Manual
You
are
a
beautiful
human
person