Musical introduction to the emotions

• Welcoming our emotions
• Learning to feel and to name them
• Highlighting how different are our perceptions.

Duration: 45 minutes

Set the room in a cosy way: put carpets on the floor and create a peaceful atmosphere, with smooth light.

Distribute to the participants the Wheel of emotions of Plutchik as well as a grid where they will write down the emotions they will recognize in each song played and the intensity of it.
Give them 3 minutes to get familiar with the 8 basic emotions the wheel of emotions includes (fear, joy, sadness, anticipation, trust, anger, surprise, disgust).

Invite then the participants to lay down on the floor and take 2 minutes of focusing with their eyes closed.

Start the music.
After each extract of a song (around 1 minute - 1 minute 20 seconds), give 40 seconds to the participants to acknowledge the emotion(s) they felt when it was playing and to write them down on their grid and precise the intensity of it (with a “+” and “-”) They may use the Wheel of emotions to remember the 8 basic emotions.

To conclude the session, invite the participants for a short debriefing:

• How did they feel during the exercise ?
• Were there music samples they had difficulties sorting out ?
• Where there music samples that generate very strong reactions ?

You can also pick an example to illustrate the diversity of emotions the same sample can generate depending the person.

Examples of songs you can include in your playlist:

• Beethoven - The storm
• Nicola Piovani - La vita è bella
• Beirut - Ederlezi
• Amy Winehouse - Back to black
• Cesaria Evora - Sodade
• Dvorak - Dies Irae
• Cumbia Sobre el mar
• Eminem - Lose yourself
• Bob Marley - Could you be loved
• Estrella Morente Soundtrack “Volver” Pedro Almodovar
• Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Orchestra - In the beginning - Life is a miracle VOST
• Anger Burning Fears / Just say no
• Threat Signal Faceless
• Inuit throat singing
• Mussorgsky - A Night on Bald Mountain
• Prokofiev - Dance of the Knights
• Nina Simone - Ain’t got no

• A playlist with the songs you want the participants to work on
• A good sound system (computer + loudspeakers)
• Carpets (for people to lie down on the ground)
• 1 Wheel of emotions (by R. Plutchik) and a grid per participant.