Waking Up Without Numbing Down

A Reflection on an Alcohol-Free Company Christmas Gathering:

There is a sentence I keep returning to, when I talk about our Christmas Party:
Anyone can loosen up with alcohol. But doing it without, and actually going deeper because of it, feels rare.

Yesterday we held my companies’ Christmas gathering, and instead of renting a bar or planning another predictable dinner, I wanted to create something else entirely. Something that aligned with what I explore here on Falsegod: the search for awareness, the architecture of the self, the slow work of waking up. I wanted to build a space where people could open up without numbing anything first. A space that encouraged creativity, openness, and maybe even a hint of spirituality, but without forcing any of it.

So I invited two artist friends, Sabela García Cuesta and Waldemar Wegelin, who then brought a few more artists from their circle. Together they hosted a full-day workshop on creativity, meaning, and playfulness. And slowly, the sterile outline of a company Christmas party dissolved into something far more human.

We began with a mindfulness and vocal energetic release workshop guided by Gwen Thomas, author of Vulva Voice. It was quiet at first, a bit tense. Some people were new to the team, and the setting was unusual. Sitting in a circle, vocalizing, breathing together, feeling the body before the mind had anything to say. It took courage to participate, and you could sense everyone calibrating themselves to this unfamiliar rhythm.

Later, we moved into a charcoal drawing workshop accompanied by the voice and presence of Germany’s Next Top Model and mindfulness influencer Anuthida Ploypetch, whose sensitivity and calmness added something grounding to the room. We drew on candles. We drew on each other’s faces without looking at our own drawings. We sculpted clay while blindfolded. And after each exercise we spoke about our feelings and tried to understand what we had created, and where it might have come from in our subconsciousness.

These weren’t corporate icebreakers. They were small invitations to step outside the protective shell most of us wear at work. Playfulness became a gateway into something deeper. Vulnerability, maybe. Honesty, definitely.

At first, everything felt unfamiliar. The room was quiet, skeptical, polite. But as the day unfolded, something shifted. The space grew warm, unjudgmental, safe. People loosened. They shared stories, emotions, memories. They expressed sides of themselves that rarely surface in office hours. There were moments of silence and moments of unexpected laughter, the real kind that comes from somewhere below the surface.

By the end of the day, the energy in the room was completely different. Softer. More honest. More connected.
It felt like we had built something together that you can’t force and you can’t fake.

For me, this was one of the most meaningful experiences we’ve had as a team. Not because it was unusual, but because it felt necessary. A reminder that the people we work with are never just roles. They are worlds. And when given the right container, those worlds open.

Several colleagues told me afterwards that it felt like waking up. And I believe them. I felt it too.

Why I’m sharing this here

Falsegod is, at its core, an exploration of consciousness. Not in the abstract, but in lived experience. The moments when awareness expands, when masks fall, when something real surfaces. Yesterday wasn’t a Christmas party in the traditional sense. It was a small exercise in collective consciousness. A glimpse of what happens when people allow themselves to feel instead of escape, express instead of perform, notice instead of numb.

We didn’t drink.
We didn’t hide.
We showed up.

And in its own quiet way, that aligns with everything I’m trying to understand here.
How humans change.
How awareness grows.
How consciousness evolves in groups, not just individuals.

Culture doesn’t happen to us.
We create it.
One awake moment at a time.