Dear Friends,
As John Lennon famously said, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.”
About a month and a half ago we were intending to start talking about ourselves to the world. We had a plan that was well thought out, one in which we had invested time, energy, and a certain amount of money. COVID, however, got the better of us. So now we have decided to take a step back and reset where we might go.
Who we are. Experience MensCorpore is a teambuilding startup that works for the well-being of those in many different kinds of business and organizational contexts. Our name, MensCorpore, comes from “mens sana in corpore sana,” meaning a healthy mind in a healthy body.
We do what we do through “experiences”—team-building sessions that help participants bring attention to their bodies and senses, and to the social, physical, and natural environments around them. Although experience is an overused term, every alternative we came up with didn’t quite fit what we wanted to express. This was because our approach is based on a conscious, experiential learning process, that kind of learning-by-doing that cultivates presence. Experience just says it all.
The assumption: We believe that individual well-being is derived from six key sources that are interconnected: body, heart, mind, food, relationships, and the environment. The activities that we offer stimulate and cultivate different combinations of these dimensions.
Originally, our communications plan was going to take advantage of the arrival of spring, to launch the birth of all our Experiences. At the ready were many beautiful images, a sheaf of descriptive texts, and some very positive energy. Now, however, our reality is probably quite a lot like yours—a mix of uncertainty, fear, and confusion. (Some of us also experienced the challenges of the virus first-hand, as well as the gratitude from making a full recovery.)
All this led us to reflect and redirect. It makes no sense to continue as if nothing had happened. All our lives have changed, including our future prospects. MensCorpore’s Experiences were aimed at groups of people who are now isolated from each other, hopefully still working, but no longer capable of coming together physically. For this reason, we want to facilitate ways to share our thoughts about what is happening, both with those who are already following us and those would like to start doing so. Let us tell our realities, and those of the people with whom we collaborate. We’ll do so through chats and interviews, and by making them open to everyone’s contributions.
We are still dedicated to taking care of people’s well-being, everyone who is experiencing this unexpected imposition of a virtual/distanced/digital work experiment. We also want to address what comes next—our return to what will likely be a very different set of contexts, though still requiring attention to mindfulness. To that end, we will be proposing some of our Experiences in ways that can be carried out at home and on your own (or with family members), as well as some readings and other sources of food for thought.
By making this new course setting, we hope to steer our collective situation towards opportunity, and to stay present to what is both difficult and exciting about it. We are now ready to move forward, and curious to see what will happen as we adapt to the changes that time always brings.
See you soon!
