Speak with your eyes
Listen with your heart
WordTrails is a tool for engaging in powerful, heartfelt, authentic conversations.
WordTrails is a game that simulates the experience of going on a wilderness expedition together. Players navigate the adventures that arise, having a good time moving through shifting conditions and handling whatever the day may bring, ending up at the campfire sharing s’mores and stories, safe in the joy of having gotten real together, and come out the other side.
Players create paths together using word chips and action cards, following a few simple agreements: Work together, doing what feels like the right next thing; no take backs or explanations; notice and mark points of resonance. As people take turns adding to the trails, everyone holds a few special trinkets. When someone plays a word or action that feels important to you, you can place your trinket on it – a quiet voice saying “this matters to me too.”
The magic builds when all the trinkets have been placed and the game moves to the next phase: building the campfire and making s’mores, each to their own satisfaction. The trinketed pieces that carry special meaning are brought together and each player gets to tell their unique story using those elements. You might tell the story of how the pattern speaks to you, or let the pattern speak for itself.
As 8-year-old Presley put it, “I like this game. I can tell people how I’m feeling without having to say it.” It’s a game that lets everyone discover and share what’s real and what matters for them while witnessing the same in others – in a space where you are freed from needing to know or explain why.
What is happening here?
WordTrails provides the opportunity to slow things down and consider aspects of life that could use some attention. Everything is back on the table: all the possibilities, all the questions and all the actions that might be taken. Players get to re-enter the world as it is, and as they are, right now, with all options reinstated.
What is on offer?
Playing WordTrails, whether by yourself or with others, can feel like getting to walk and talk with a trusted friend. Spend some time together in a space where there is no shame, blame or judgment, but rather curiosity , wondering and exploration. Almost as if by magic, players are invited into a place where there is space enough and time enough for considering, taking it all in, sorting through and getting back in touch with what really matters.
In this space, all the history of who we have been, who we are supposed to be, who we have to be – individually and together – is no longer the focus of concern.
We are free to begin from right here where we are, with everything on the table. Accepting conditions as they are, we get to move forward a step art a time. Learning and growing together as we go.
Is it really a game?
Like any other wilderness experience, this is both play and an opportunity for a life changing experience of learning. It is a tool for being able to move past your own unconscious blocks and fears, to learn things you cannot experience without diving in and going there. WordTrails gives a space to go there – to experience and explore what it is to be fully yourself, safe in the freedom of deep quiet without having to be alone.
Is there science behind this?
Yes. You can explore the science behind it here.
MORE ABOUT THE
WORDTRAILS®
EXPERIENCE
Learn more
here
WHERE DID
WORDTRAILS®
COME FROM
Why & how the game came to be; the results of five years of testing
WHAT PEOPLE ARE
SAYING ABOUT
WORDTRAILS®
First-hand accounts about connection and communication
5% of proceeds of WORDTRAILS® Founder’s Edition will be donated to Playa Viva’s community initiatives and the Tortuga Viva Sea Turtle Sanctuary.
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