What is Circling?

Defining Circling

Circling is a relational-technology based on numerous practices and distinctions that support you in finding what is most true to you, communicating this powerfully and naturally, widening your perspectives and your ability to receive and stay open to others and nurturing a sense of deep personal and collective trust that is both relieving and generative.

It works within the often unseen fundamental ground of communication and relationship that underpins our experience.

That's why we see such strong transformation and development through the practice, because a small change in the areas that most matter can lead to a profound unfolding of potential over time.

It originated from applying meditative awareness onto our connections with others. In the same way a microscope reveals a whole other level of reality, Circling can reveal a new way of being in relationship.

What Makes Circling Different

While it can have similar benefits to meditation, performance coaching or therapy the point of focus with Circling is what is happening in the present moment in our connections with each other.

There is no trying to get anywhere (although we include our longings and desires); we simply open more skilfully to what is here within us and between us.

With a wide variety of tools we effortlessly uncover blind spots, facilitate powerful trusting relationships, and often experience and open to the mystery at the heart of our being and connection.

An Empowerment Paradigm

What makes Circling distinctly different from coaching, therapeutic or other spiritual or developmental based modalities is it is primarily based on a relational context. Connection is the focus and it invites a form of ‘self-responsible adults relating’ at its base.

As a result, we do not try to guide the process in a typical way toward a predetermined outcome—it is always a co-creation of the relationships and group intelligence centred around connection.

Within this context therapeutic things can happen, and therapeutic knowledge can be very useful in order to help us see more accurately what is present. However, the focus is connection rather than on trying to get somewhere.

This invites everyone’s agency and leadership to the foreground which can be incredibly empowering for people unused to this environment. It can also be challenging for people who are used to directing others’ experience towards release, healing, openness, or change. It can also be challenging for people who are used to being more traditionally ‘directed’.

As part of this paradigm shift of—’radically being with’—the leaders are also part of the process. Even while the leaders hold the responsibility for continually helping to set context through ideas, principles and practices, they must also surrender to being just a part of the wider intelligence being generated in the group field.

This makes an elegant dance with uncertainty central to the process . This willingness to be in the unknown and openness to being surprised is part of what cultivates an attitude of wonder that through practice becomes more and more available inside and outside of Circling.

This practice can also be confronting and challenging for people and may reveal deep seated relational patterns or struggles. It may also feel incredibly peaceful and like ‘coming home’.

You’re not a problem that someone needs to fix.

Circling is a practice of meeting you exactly where you, as you are.

We hold whatever arises—both in you and in ourselves—with a degree of wonder and meet it with innocence.

And, we find that doing so usually cultivates nourishing and far-reaching growth.

The Spiritual Dimensions of Circling

There is something about bringing attention to the “WE-space” that acknowledges the universe for one of its wonders—the power of relatedness between conscious beings. Circling has shown us how to recognize and bow to the divinity of human connection, making spiritual pursuits not only more potent and accelerated, but also profoundly rewarding in everyday life.

The meeting of diverse individuals in Circling leads to the mutual discovery of expansions in awareness, dissolution between ‘I’ and ‘thou,’ and even shamanic visions and feelings. In a mutual, awakened space, opportunities arise to draw out deeper territories, to see complexity within and between people, and to create an in-the-moment, broader context of human development and spirituality.

Potential Challenges of Circling

There are of course challenges to the practice. Circling as described above is largely reliant on the leadership's ability to embody the principles, especially when the environment is turbulent and challenging. If this is not the case it is easy for the practice to become one of discussion, and reflecting and processing what is coming up, rather than allowing what is present to live and breathe in the space.

Circling for us is an embodiment practice, but it does not use exercises or experimentation unless there is an authentic desire in the moment for it to happen. The authenticity of a desire is found in connection; usually someone expresses a desire and if others in the group feel resonance with this feeling and are inspired in the moment, the action is encouraged.

It is essential that participants continuously check to see if their inner sense of what is happening is in alignment with their own inner knowing. Therefore, Circling may challenge those who want to be put into their body in an instructive way. Although there are moments of guided meditation, touch, and movement to introduce a practice, we emphasize allowing what is already present to show itself, rather than trying to open the space with other practices.

It is up to Circling leaders to embody and encourage movement, dance, touch, and creativity, from a place of authenticity—which often makes it more powerful. It is essential to understand that in Circling we are more likely to explore what the experience of ‘not being in your body' is actually like, rather than actively trying to move beyond this with other practices. This is a critical point for the practice; to be with this experience of ‘not being in your body’ in service of honoring what is present. 'Honoring what it present' is actually in service of a deeper belief—that the wisdom in the moment will guide us to the next stage of potential embodiment, or even guide us to an understanding of why trying to get into the body is against something more important.

However, the idea of continual acceptance of each layer of experience can be a potential trap. If our acceptance of what is arising becomes a practiced honoring—a technique to make people feel comforted in their story of themselves—we lose authenticity and can end up literally going in circles. Sometimes an authentic desire or longing in the moment can penetrate through to a deeper connection, even if it does not appear to honor what is being presented. For example: Someone in a Circle is sharing a feeling of being detached, and the group is patiently exploring the experience of being detached, with the subtle thoughts and feelings around it. Then one participant gets angry and shouts: "I’m fed up with this, I want to scream and stop looking at you!" With encouragement, this person meets the Circlee in the emotional energy of this expression, and it touches something deep that is significant in his/her life and s/he feels a relief from the sense of detachment.

Being With the Other in Their World and Trusting Experience can be a tightrope; because it is easy to lose connection with a deeper acceptance, and you may try to change what is happening. The polarity between 'acceptance of what is’ and ‘the expression of authentic desire’ has to be navigated in each connection.