IFT AS A TOOL FOR COMMUNICATION

IMPROVISATION FIELD TECHNIQUE (IFT) AS A TOOL FOR COMMUNICATION

Creating value for any kind of caretaker, teacher, business team leader, therapist, priests, or other role.


IFT was developed by Sarah Caroline Kenter, as a navigation tool for actors improvising drama on stage in front of an audience. The theatrical genre of Drama is characterized by the psychological, and emotional dimensions, and layers. For actors to co-create dramaturgy while avoiding confusion, misunderstanding and chaos, they need very specific tools. Other communication situations can easily benefit from these same tools since the fundamental and essential key points are universal: Everything is connected and Everything blossoms in its right time. The consequences of these philosophical, scientific and spiritual notions are crucial to any form of communication.

When Everything is connected becomes more than a notion, more than an idea and a saying; when it becomes a physical and sensory experience, it has a great impact on the way we view our own role in any kind of communication. We then begin to feel and recognize the difference between connection and disconnection, and we begin to notice the emotions, and the actions and the realities we manifest.
IFT training expands the ability to be aware of the now, and to identify the past and the future as something else, something that is not now and not reality, but rather fiction in the shape of memories and expectations. This awareness is needed to understand how one tends to confuse the present interaction with ideas about the outcome of the interaction (“you never understand me”, “you always want it your way”, “I don’t want you to reject me again”, “I will reject you if you don’t change your mind”), which actually means that there is no real conversation taking place.
With IFT, the participants learn to identify when and why they run ahead of them selves and ahead of the actual interaction they are in, and they become able to stay present here and now. It can be shocking and painful to discover our own manipulations, and there can be a lot of physical, mental, and emotional noise standing in the way of our deep listening. This noise (physical tension, nausea, distracting thoughts, anxiety...) is normal and has to show itself when the psychological control system is threatened. There is always a reason for our control mechanisms and we need to look at them with gentle kindness and the belief that Everything blossoms in its right time.
If we get overambitious or (self) judgmental an army of justifications arise, and war erupts. Inner and outer; there is no difference really.
We cannot force the letting go of anxiety and we cannot force the change of our own beliefs about our selves, about other people and about the world. But we can long for that change, and we can accept that we might need help in finding a truer way of communicating, and that is a quantum leap. From there every door is open.