Team Building Exercise

Let’s look at few key areas we highlight in a Taal Inc Drum Talks session to make the participants  experience Group Cohesion through our specially designed art and drumming based activities:

  • Creating a mission, a common goal:
     The most important factor to determine everyone’s involvement is your team’s clarity about the mission. We decide the goals of the group at the very beginning of the session and how we will accomplish those goals. 
  • Practicing Teamwork:
    Team-building exercises are the best way to see how individual members will work together to accomplish a goal and A Taal Inc. Drum Circle is one of the most effective team building activities in pune out there. Before the team has to work on important tasks, we see how they handle something simple like an ice breaker. Who took the lead? Who worked well together? Use what you observe and apply it to the real mission. Plus, your team members will bond with each other in the process.
  • Celebrating Small and Big Achievements:
    When the team successfully accomplishes the missions established at the beginning, it’s important to recognize them for it. We make sure the group knows it and appreciate their work and thank them at every step of the way. 
  • Two way feedback mechanism:
     Throughout a project and after a project is complete, you need to give your team feedback. This can be a combination of individual feedback and for the team as a whole and also ask for feedback. In a Taal Inc. HR engagement session or a Drum Talks Session, we use various mediums for exchanging feedback such as sharing circles, appreciative inquiry and creative writing. This constructive feedback mechanism makes for a more cohesive team for next projects to come.

An organization whose people communicate effectively experience fewer misunderstandings that create friction between people, waste time, and decrease productivity. This module will help your team understand how their work contributes to the organization’s strategy and goals and in turn, help fill in any communication gaps leading to an improved work environment and culture.

Group Activities For Employees Conducted by Taal

We often think of connections primarily out of our workplaces but meaningful connections can do wonders at work as well. Having a strong sense of team and interconnectedness can harness more productivity and joy among the employees and give them a sense of belonging along with boosting their morale and confidence. In these online sessions, we’ll be looking at means of connecting with self and co-workers through creative expression and co-creation and find out how these connections at workplaces can elevate the performance and mental health of the organisation and individuals alike through these Group Activities for Employees

In the words of Alexander Supertramp, ‘Happiness is only real when shared’ and this makes even more sense in times like these when coming together and sticking together is more essential than anything else and these online sessions are our efforts to do our bit towards helping individuals and organisations reclaim, rebuild and retain these connections.

Expressive Arts for Mental Health by Akshata Parekh

No better time than now to prioritise and normalise mental health awareness and working towards it at workplaces. In the Post-Covid world, It’ll be extremely necessary for the organisations to take employees’ mental health into consideration and make it a norm in the work culture for the long run. Taal Inc. sessions have immense potential to work on various factors that impact mental health of the employees.

Along with being a Drum Circle and ArtTalks Facilitator with Taal Inc. and practicing counseling, Akshata has completed courses in Dance Movement therapy, Visual Art therapy and NLP in India. All of which makes her equipped with the tools and activities to curate and facilitate these transformational Expressive Arts Therapy sessions for a diverse range of populations from organisational setups to special needs groups.

This Expressive Arts For Mental Health Session led by Akshata Parekh will not only help participants relax momentarily but also leaves a longer-lasting impact making them want to make such activities a regular part of life. Packed with interactive and engaging expressive arts activities the session will help the employees effectively cope with mental health issues like stress and anxiety caused by the ongoing global pandemic.
If you’re looking for powerful and transformational online or in person team engagement or training programs, Taal Inc.Expressive Arts for Mental Health sessions Led by our expert facilitators is the answer for you. Get in touch with us to know more about these sessions or customise one for your team.

Art Based Therapy at Taal

Over the last two years, our think-tank, the ‘Taal Inc. Research & Training’ division (headed by Dr. Anand Godse) has developed ‘Drum Talks’ our customized Corporate Training Sessions module that follows the ‘Awareness – Assessment – Action – Application’ module also developed in-house. With this one/two-day, or ongoing training module, (that uses not only drumming but various other art forms such as dance movement therapy, visual art, drama therapy, Art Based Therapy and known methods such as focus groups, self-report inventories, follow-ups and more) it is our aim to make behavioural life- and soft-skills training fun, interactive, creative and truly effective. To give people a taste of what Drum Talks is, we’ve developed a special session for groups to identify their current physical, mental and social-health score. Knowing and working on one’s overall health score helps us spread awareness of the importance of the same by demonstrating it’s real-time effects and implications. On the international front, both Anand and I have had the honour of speaking about our work at the Third Asian Rhythm Facilitators Conference in Malaysia and the Drum Circle Facilitators Guild Conference in South Carolina, USA.

Over the next five years, it is our aim to truly deliver the value of these programs across the length and breadth of the country. Through the means of this newsletter we will be sharing with you stories, updates and educative information about how the arts can be a tool to have fun, stay healthy and even have some epiphanic experiences.

Drum Talks by Varun Venkit

Can collaborative music making help build a stronger team?
Can understanding rhythm through different perspectives help strengthen leadership skills and increase motivation within the team?

If these questions intrigued you, Taal Inc. Drum Talks is the experience you’re looking for. Led by the Dynamic Varun Venkit, with an extensive experience in leading and facilitating training programs for corporates using principles of rhythm and ensemble music making.

These online or Covid-Compliant In person Group Activities for Employees are designed or can be customised for objectives ranging from dealing with new systemic changes post Covid-19 or prioritising mental health and motivation for the employees through theoretical and practical interactive tools of collaborative music making that are also used in Taal Inc. Drum Circles or Djembe Circle. The sessions are going to be followed by fun, engaging and measurable group assignments quantify and understand the shifts that the sessions brought among the employees. Along with being extremely engaging and impactful, these sessions also feature a mini performance by Taal Inc. Rhythm Ensemble.

Expert Therapists, Counsellors, Expressive Arts Facilitators and Psychologists

The Therapy Room welcomes you to experience an inward journey in this safe space filled with music, color, and warmth. Through a steady process of counseling, art-making, movement, and more, we encourage clients to reconnect with fearless joy while dealing with anxieties.

Taal Inc. is committed to spreading awareness of the use of arts in the field of holistic health and wellbeing. The Taal Inc. Therapy Room is a space that is available to psychologists, counselors, mental health professionals, art based therapists, occupational therapists, facilitators, NLP trainers (and more) for rent / hire to conduct their 1 on 1 sessions.

Creative Art Therapy-Taal Inc.

Along with being a Drum Circle and Art Talks Facilitator with Taal Inc. and practicing counseling, Akshata has completed courses in Dance Movement therapy, Visual Art therapy and NLP in India. She is a certified ‘Rhythm-to-recovery’ facilitator (a program using rhythm in therapeutic settings) and is currently pursuing her master’s in Clinical Mental Health psychology specialization in Expressive Arts Therapy from Lesley University (Boston). All of which makes her equipped with the tools and activities to curate and facilitate these transformational Expressive Arts and Creative Art Therapy sessions for a diverse range of populations from organisational setups to special needs groups.

Taal Inc School of Rhythm – November

The Taal Inc School of Rhythm drummed a lot in November. We started new batches of our West African Djembe and Drum Classes in Mumbai & Pune. While our beginner djembe batch performed in public for the first time at our community drum circle at Paper tells, we also started a series of introductory Djembe workshops at ‘Happy streets’ an initiative by the Times of India Group.

To celebrate Children’s Day we conducted a West African Dance workshop for our Djembe students at the DLRC school. This workshop for the students of our Drum Classes led by our fabulous dance teacher Akshata Parekh along with our Djembe teachers not only gave the students an insight in to folk dance and West African traditions but also got students of all age groups & staff to move the groovy beats of the drum.

The highlight, however, was the TTMDA (Tam Tam Mandingue International Djembe Academy) Djembe workshop by Kelvin Kew, a senior certified Djembe instructor based out of Singapore. His wonderful energy, simple but fun & challenging teaching methods left the participants of this Drum Workshop awestruck and craving for more. His ability & sheer skill as a teacher quickly got students into the groove and spirit of West African Music and African Drumming Groups with a lot of drumming, singing & dancing.

An interactive ‘Show and Tell’ on Leadership, Motivation and Communication

What does the world look like to you post covid? To me, I sense a lot of fatigue as much as I sense a renewed inspiration. I notice a general anxiety, people dealing with mental health issues and uncertainty. I cannot help but witness how privileged I am in addition to many of the readers of this blog and how this pandemic has really affected a gross majority of people hailing from more economically difficult situations. How can we deal with these problems that are facing us today as we gradually step out and rebuild ourselves, our economy and society?

To me, the answer is the only way I know, I.E. Using rhythm and by focusing on community. It takes a tribe and even more so now. It is time we looked back at our lifestyles and changed our depleting and destructive ways. The future is about building connections, living sustainably and giving generously.

Deep within our collective cultural inheritance is an innate ability to be in sync with one another. And this is demonstrated in how we make music with people. Be it two people playing drums or a hundred piece orchestra perfectly synchronizing together, to ‘entrain’ (be together as one team) IS human nature.

Taal Inc. Drum Talks is an Online Session or (wherever possible) a Covid-Compliant In-Person Session. This session will draw from age old ensemble music making principles and make explicit some basic takeaways that will be tied in to very relevant behavioural competencies or concepts such as leadership, motivation, communication, team building Pune or group cohesion, mutual trust and more.

Creative Art Therapy and The Magic Of Creation

Hope you all are at home, safe and  keeping well physically and mentally during these times when a pandemic is hovering over us. Talking of pandemic, How are you guys keeping yourself occupied in these times? Can you imagine being in this situation without Art and Creativity? If your answer is a resounding ‘No’,  you just realised the power and healing potential of art, And that right there is Creative Art Therapy for you in a nutshell.

Now, let’s understand it with a little more depth. Creative Art therapy is the umbrella under which the modality specific therapies fall. It is the area of mental health that uses art based interventions, other creative processes and modalities to explore emotions, reduce anxiety and stress, increase self-esteem, encourage self discovery and resolve other psychological conflicts. Through experiential methods,these Creative Therapy Sessions engage the mind, body, and spirit in ways that are distinct from verbal articulation alone. 

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