Designing a Session

A good CI session is a curve, not a list. Bodies and nervous systems open in an order, peak, and need to come back down before people walk out the door. This chapter gives you the shape, the timing, and three ready-to-run lesson plans.

The session arc

Think of every session as five phases, regardless of length:

  energy /
  opening   ┌────── PLAY ──────┐
            │        ___        │
            │      _/   \_      │
   ARRIVE _/   WARM/       \    │
         /                  \_ INTEGRATE _  CLOSE
  ──────┴──────────────────────┴──────────┴────────► time

1. Arrive (10–15%). Land in the body and the room. Solo, floor, breath, the small dance. Consent tools taught. Tier ①.
2. Warm (20%). Mobilize joints, rehearse rolling and giving weight solo and in gentle pairs. Prevents injury; builds the alphabet. Tier ①–②.
3. Play (40–50%). The heart. Move up the tiers as far as the group can go today. Partnered scores, then small-group and open dancing. Tier ②–⑤.
4. Integrate (10–15%). Come down from the peak. Slower dances, return to stillness, solo settling. Let the nervous system downshift.
5. Close (5–10%). Circle up. Water. A word or a gesture. Land the group before they re-enter the world.

The cardinal rule: never skip Arrive/Warm to "get to the good stuff," and never end on the peak. A room dropped straight from lifts into the parking lot is a room you've mildly dysregulated.

Timing templates

Sizing for 2–10 people

The form changes character with the count. Facilitate accordingly:

Odd numbers: always have your trio/rotation plan (Chapter 3). Rotating partners is your most powerful tool at any size — it spreads skill, defuses charge, and keeps the container fresh.

The floor & the space

The floor is your silent co-facilitator. Its size sets how many bodies can safely move and how big their movement can get; its surface sets which kind of dancing is safe at all. Choose — or adapt — the floor to the session you want to run, not the other way around.

Surface: match the floor to the tier

Every surface trades cushion against glide, and you can't have both. That single trade-off decides what the floor is good for:

One honest caveat before you plan around this table: the reasoning here is biomechanical and matches how dance spaces are built, but it is not settled epidemiology. Nobody has run a study comparing CI injury rates by surface — most of the "sprung floors prevent injuries" literature comes from people who sell flooring. Use the table as informed judgement, not proof.

The key principle: cushioned floors invite you down; gliding floors invite you to travel. Foam pulls a session toward the lower tiers (floor, rolling, weight-sharing — exactly the trust-building work of Chapter 5); hardwood pulls it toward the upper tiers (momentum, flight — Chapter 8, Tiers ④–⑤). Neither is "better"; they're different instruments.

A worked example: two typical floors

Take two surfaces many facilitators end up with — a small square of foam puzzle mat, and a modest hardwood room. Roughly 12×12 ft of foam and 12×15 ft of hardwood, to make the arithmetic concrete.

• The foam (144 sq ft). Foam means no knee-pads, which removes both the physical bruising and the psychological barrier of gearing up — beginners drop to the floor freely. That makes it near-perfect for a Tier ①–③ trust and fundamentals session: the small dance, melting to the floor, rolling the point, weight-sharing, the counterbalance. Its limits are the flip side: don't program slides, fast spins, momentum studies, or lifts here. The foam grabs skin and gives an unstable base, and puzzle seams shift underfoot. The grab matters more than it sounds: a foot that sticks while the body keeps turning puts twisting load through the knee, and knee ligament and meniscus injuries are the most commonly reported serious injuries in this form. Keep the vocabulary low, connected, and rolling, and it's ideal.
• The hardwood (180 sq ft). This is the dynamic floor — where momentum, spins, gliding slides, standing balance, and (with skilled dancers and spotters) lifts actually work, because the surface lets weight travel and gives a stable base. The cost is impact: program less hard kneeling and dropping, teach soft sequential descents, and have knee-pads available for anyone doing floor work — or use the trick below.

The hybrid trick — if you have both, combine them

If you have access to a cushioned surface and a gliding one, the most powerful move is to place the foam as an island inside or beside the hardwood: a soft zone for floor work and roll-outs, next to a "glide zone" of open hardwood for momentum and travel. Dancers move between them consciously — "take it to the mat" becomes a real, spoken cue. It gives you the full tier range in one session without asking anyone to bruise their knees.

One caution, so this doesn't contradict the rule above: the foam island is for floor work and rolling, not for lifts. Deep foam is the wrong base for anything airborne — an unstable footing under the base is exactly what you don't want when someone is off the ground. If you're working toward flight, do it on the stable floor with spotters, and keep the descent low and rolling rather than treating the mat as a crash pad.

Size: how many bodies, how big the movement

Square footage per dancer is a safety number, not a comfort preference — too little space and rolling bodies collide with dynamic ones. Rough guide by movement intensity:

Applied to the two example floors:

Reading these: a group of 8–10 doing dynamic work needs far more than either floor offers at once — so on floors this size, big or fast work happens in shifts, one duet in the space while the others witness from the edge (which is itself part of the practice — see the Round Robin Jam, #24). A small floor doesn't shrink what you can teach; it shrinks how many move at once.

Making a small or hard floor work for you

• Constrain the vocabulary, not the depth. On 144 sq ft with 8 people, program stationary and slow-traveling games (the whole Tier ①–③ trust arc fits beautifully) and save momentum for shifts or the bigger floor.
• Use the edge as structure. A foam mat's perimeter is a natural, visible boundary — dancers at the edge witness and rest. This turns a space limit into good jam culture rather than a constraint.
• Rotate active dancers. Fewer bodies moving at once = more space each and easier witnessing. Half the group dances, half holds the edge, then swap.
• On hardwood, design floor-work-light. Favor standing and traveling games; when you do go down, teach soft sequential descents (as in Melt to the Floor, #2) so knees meet the floor gently — or drop the foam island in.

Mark the hazards specific to your surfaces

• Foam: press down and check all seams before you start — lifted puzzle edges are a trip-and-pinch hazard. The perimeter where foam meets hard floor is an ankle/roll hazard; keep dynamic movement center-mat and warn dancers the edge is a hard drop-off.
• Hardwood: sweep for dust and grit (slip hazard) and check the finish isn't sticky. Confirm overhead and wall clearance — lifts need generous height and margin; know where fixtures, radiators, and corners are.
• Both: re-run the Chapter 4 floor scan every session — clear margins, no shoes, empty pockets.

Sequencing the games

• One quality at a time. Each game isolates a sensation (weight, momentum, the point). Don't stack three new ideas at once.
• Adjacent tiers only. Move ①→②→③, not ①→④. If a game lands hard, drop back before pushing on.
• Alternate effort and rest. A demanding weight game followed by a soft floor game. Bodies and attention both need troughs.
• End the Play phase with free dancing. Games are doorways; give the group open time to walk through with everything they just learned.

Three ready-to-run lesson plans

Plan A — "First Contact" (90 min, absolute beginners, 4–10 people)

Goal: get an awkward room to the point of comfortably sharing simple weight.

1. Arrive: The Small Dance (①) → Melt to the Floor (①).
2. Warm: Body Weather Report (①) → The Rolling Point (②, solo version).
3. Play: Give Me a Pound (②) → Back-to-Back Rise (②) → The Leaning Tower (②) → short free dance in pairs with light contact.
4. Integrate: Listening Hands (② slow) → return to The Small Dance.
5. Close: circle, one word each.

Plan B — "Following the Point" (90 min, some experience, 4–8 people)

Goal: continuous dancing led by a rolling point of contact.

1. Arrive: The Small Dance → solo spine rolls.
2. Warm: The Rolling Point (② → ③) → Give and Take (③) intro.
3. Play: Rolling Point Duets (③) → The Counterbalance (③) → Surfing the Table (③) → Follow the Blob small groups (③).
4. Integrate: slow Rolling Point Duets, half speed.
5. Close: circle + gesture.

Plan C — "Flight & Trust" (2 hr, experienced, 5–8 people)

Goal: momentum, off-balance, and entry to weight-taking/lifts.

1. Arrive + Warm: full warm-up, rolling, Give and Take (③).
2. Play: Off the Vertical (④) → Momentum Studies (④) → Taking Flight (⑤, spotted) → open jam.
3. Integrate: long slow duets, coming to stillness.
4. Close: extended circle, water, aftercare reminder.

A planning checklist

• [ ] Space cleared, floor safe, hazards marked (seams pressed / dust swept / edges noted)
• [ ] Surface matched to the tier of today's session (foam for floor & trust work; hardwood for dynamic) — knee-pads or foam island ready if going hard
• [ ] First-aid kit located; emergency number known
• [ ] Music/playlist queued (see Appendices)
• [ ] Consent tools scripted for the opening
• [ ] Games chosen — adjacent tiers, one quality each
• [ ] Odd-number / rotation plan ready
• [ ] An easier "drop-back" game in your pocket if the room needs it
• [ ] Integrate + close protected in the timing (don't let Play eat them)

→ Next: Chapter 7 — Grounding, Breath & Energy