Sex, Sexuality and Gender

A safari to your youth
(NB: THIS IS AN EXERCISE FOR ADULts ONLY)
Session objectives:
Session overview:
Time:
To provide participants with the opportunity of remembering their youth as
the beginning of the process of exploring their own sexuality.
In this session the facilitator takes participants on a journey back into their
youth through a story-telling exercise, where participants close their eyes and
relive a day in the life of their youth.
30 minutes.
Introduction:
As an introduction to this session, explain the following to the participants:-
• zWe all have a lot of memories, good and bad, from our adolescence, even though
we tend to forget, or to hide these. We might think we have forgotten, but with a
little help we can revisit our feelings from that period in life. It is so easy to adopt
an adult perspective on sexuality and to neglect thoughts of longing, being vulnerable,
love at a distance, affection and about falling in love.
• zWhen working with sexuality education we also have to remember that love and
emotions of different kinds are as important to talk about and to confirm as talking
about physical sex, reproduction and other factual issues.
• zStories about love, mixed emotions and feelings; good times and bad times; good
choices and terrible choices; and success and failure also help us to identify ourselves
with the situation of being an adolescent today. This will in turn assist us to
open up for a more personal approach when sharing experiences on love and sex,
and to talking about sexuality with our children.
• zAs adults working with young people, we have an advantage if we get involved in
the realities of the adolescents, understanding their lives, thoughts and feelings.
• zIf we can meet adolescents at their level, by remembering our own teenage period
of life, we might get closer to communicating effectively with them.
Activity
© INERELA 2012
• zAsk the participants to sit as comfortably as possible on their chairs
and to close their eyes. You can help people to relax by asking them
to take a deep breath and then exhale slowly.
• zInform the participants that you are going to provide them with an
opportunity to remember their youth; especially when they began exploring
their own sexuality, their physical attraction and emotional
feelings for another person.
• zInform the participants that you are going to facilitate a reflection
focussing on being young on an ordinary day during the middle of
the week.
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