 I could never do that, meaning improvisation, on stage or off, and we're able to come back and say to them, will you do that every day because your life is an script? You've got moves, you've got a set, go! That you can practically use the moment you step out of the conference, plus amazing, like it's a try, so yeah. Sure, the people are just extraordinary, and there's a set of tools, a set of skills, a set of exercises that help us improve how we are connected to the world and how we can rapidly understand what's going on and what can be done about it. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh! Beautiful! Ropes! Stance, try it everybody! That's all we're gonna do! Delicious! My name is Polina Raphi and I helped organize the conference on the programming committee and I'm also on the AIN board. So I was stuck in this weird place because I wanted to make Montreal work, but every time I thought about the process of what I needed to do in reality to make it work, my whole body started crunching in. And so I was in that state for about a year and then one day in February of this year there was this idea that bubbled up in me that was like this billboard size idea that said, I'm done here. I can go now. And instantly my chest relaxed and I thought, okay that's the right answer. When you say yes and to yourself, the universe floods in to help you. So that's what happened. And so I started to be open to this possibility of I'm not gonna try to hang on to Montreal anymore and all of a sudden projects started dropping in going east from London and I got something in Denmark and then I got something in Italy and then liberating the festival that Cori and Zena were putting on, improv liberates was gonna happen and all of a sudden these things started dropping up like I think I'm meant to be in the world right now. I think I'm meant to travel around the world. I think I can do this. At the moment I'm just finishing a process where I went literally around the world and I taught applied improv in 11 different countries in three and a half months so I'm writing a book about that using improv to save the world and then in parentheses and me. It's Denmark and Italy and Greece are on the top on the bottom there I'm in Tehran talking about being a fish apparently. I don't know what I was talking about. And then Singapore and Japan. So those are six of the 11 countries that I was in introducing applied improv. I think it's the best professional development for anybody who feels pulled to use this technology in service of whatever it is they do in the world and I have a personal bet that I feel like it's a real love technology. There's a lot of systems breaking down so one of the things I do is I use it in sustainability and thrive ability realms of how can we really rethink how businesses should be on the planet and I use improv as a way to embody that to help us connect to help us think about things differently. There's another model that I really love it's by a guy named Dr. Steve Fairman and it's this concentric circle one. And he talks about when we do somatic learning when we do embodied learning it's very easy to get stuck in the body emotions bit of it because we're so disconnected often from that piece of ourselves and it's joyful to connect this with that but often the power of our work is lost if we keep it at that pre-rational state. So if we can pull it up to mind hmm how can this improve what I do at work for example then it has a bit more traction. What I like to do is also see if we can pull it up to witness and witness is a piece of us that knows not to believe everything you think. I was pulled to it because I needed it actually I thought you know like those people out there needed it but I really I used to work for city bank as a project manager and I felt like a forest very trapped in a machine and I started teaching I did a pilot in England on applied improv and business psychology having read Robert Lowe's amazing book Improvisation Inc. and I thought I'm a genius no one else is doing this in England and this guy named Neil Millarkey I was connected with him he's part of the comedy store players he said well you might want to speak with Paul said Jackson because there's a lot of us doing this and I did I went to my first conference AIN conference in Finland in 2007 and I was just totally hooked after that and when you're traveling around and you're walking in the unknown like this you have to go in witness because a lot of the thought patterns that you have just don't work anymore and the other phrase, the other billboard that actually has been with me for years in this work is the how is part of the what the how is part of the what so if I'm going into the world to teach improv I need to be in I need to embody it