You are leading a Study Abroad program to a significant ancient city (e.g. Athens, Rome, Alexandria) and one morning, midway through the trip, you usher your students onto a small platform at one end of the room where you have breakfast in the hotel where you are all staying.
In the room are chairs arranged in an intimate setting. You ask the students to relax in their chair, and let out whatever sound they could from their breathing. You lead them in this action, making short shouts, and then subsiding into long sustained hums.
You then ask the hotel staff to blindfold the students, asking them to stand up, hold each others’ hands and form a line. The person at the end of the line is asked to move forward, blindly, to find their place at the head of the line feeling their way through space by touching.
You then divide the students into several trails (lines) and follow the same directions. This action is to be continued silently for one and half hours, after which the students can take off their blindfolds.
You then lead them out of the hotel and walk out into the streets of the city, looking at each other, the sights, sounds and ancient sites as they go. The experience of being cut off from sight will awaken the students to new ways of perceiving and experiencing the interplay of trails through the ancient topography of the city.
