This is the game we used to call the Lap Game, back in the New Games days.

To play the “traditional” Lap Game, players first stand in a circle. Ask them first to put their right (or left) hands towards the center of the circle. This gets them all facing the same way. Then ask them to place their hands on the waist of the person in front of them. They may need to tighten the circle up so that they are close enough to each other. Suggest that they get close enough so that their arms are at their sides, their elbows bent at right angles.

To help with the next step, introduce the Zen Hip Swing. Ask them to move the hips of the person in front of them from side to side while at the same time giving control over their own hips to the person behind them.

When they are comfortable, then ask them to slowly bend their knees while moving the person in front of them so that that person eventually winds up sitting on their knees, while at the same time allowing the person behind them to help them sit on that person’s knees.

Give them time until everyone is sitting. If anyone is in trouble, ask everyone to stand up and start again.

Then it got reinvented at the US Forest Service’s Deep Fun session.

Actually, it’s the same as the Lap Game, with the same objective, even. Except that instead of getting everyone into a circle and going through a complex set of entertaining but somewhat tedious instructions, this game starts when someone assumes the “about to sit on a chair” position, and someone else, in an act of social chairity, gives that person the proverbial lap to sit on. And so on and so forth, forming a chain of happy sitters who may or may not wind up sitting in an actual circle, as in the Lap Game of yore.