~Circling

Understanding It:

Circling is an art-form of relational awareness….all of life is relational! We are in relationship and connection to self, other, environment, nature, our bodies, spirits, minds, our sense of place, etc etc. Circling brings all this together in the presence of others.

Because it is so broad and nuanced it is hard to define and describe Circling as a practice that looks any one certain way–it is always changing and evolving and is very much about an emergent presence practice of the moment!

Many different styles and energies show up, and it likely will change from practice to practice because the people present and the various states of being directly affect the experience! We arrive in “a field” of awareness and presence and give attention to WHAT IS, together.

What makes this different than just living life with presence and open awareness?

Well, we agree to enter a shared WE-SPACE intentionally and deliberately which is part of what defines the practice–having an intentional container that is being held often by 1-2 trained facilitators. It is a space of freedom, mutual respect and ‘safety’ to express and explore with curiosity, and to stay connected to ourselves while in the active presence of others.

We bring as much radical honesty as possible (even if just sitting silent) and in ways that represent the truth of our experience in present-time moment to moment unfoldment. It is often described as a relational meditation (although it can be VERY animated) for it is based in real-time-experiencing with deep observation and care being brought to conscious awareness.

Our world and these modern times (at large) appear to be in both communication and connection-crisis. Any energy we give to learn and grow conscious relational skills and capacities helps ourselves, our families/friends, and the larger whole. Come join the practice of RE-membering, RE-collecting and connecting our individuated selves and experience of being into a community of greater wholeness, coherence, and loving resonance. Come learn, heal, celebrate, liberate, and up-level in togetherness!

There are 5 key principles in Circling outlined below:

Commitment to Connection
Owning Your Experience
Trusting Experience
Staying With the Level of Sensation
Being With the Other in Their World

1. Commitment to Connection

This principle is an invitation to increase the level of commitment you have to stay in connection with whatever is arising between you and other people.
This means remaining in connection while feeling resistance or impulses to break it.
But this is not to be mistaken for a commitment to have to stay and not separate (as we recognize the importance of individual time away from relating with others). The key is to distinguish between an authentic desire to move away (which could be communicated and then done), compared to an avoidance or habitual impulse to break the connection because it feels difficult.
Commitment to Connection involves revealing yourself to the other. The more you are willing to reveal your in-the-moment embodied state that you know to be true, the more Commitment to Connection you have.
It also involves receiving the other’s expression. This does not mean tolerating passively, it means receiving fully before responding with your authentic expression.
The practice is to stay with difficult connections in the same way you would stay with difficult sensations during a sitting meditation.

2. Owning Your Experience

This principle is about communicating your most truthful experience in the moment.
It involves taking responsibility for what is most personally true for you, rather than making assessments or assertions about others.
It is clear when a feeling is owned, as it is something that is being directly felt by the person expressing themselves.
Assessments, projections, and assertions are always arguable, but the truth of one’s own experience in the moment is unarguable, and is easier to relate to.
It is this level of truth that creates a rich space in Circling. It can be a subtle distinction, but it can make all the difference in a connection between people where responsibility is being taken through the expression.
In owning experience there is also an acknowledgement that what is being felt is coming from one’s own interpretation, and is therefore influenced by conscious and unconscious perspective.
By taking this responsibility there is an open space for others to respond from their experience, leading to a higher potential for deeply seeing what is happening in the moment.
Part of owning experience is a willingness to be vulnerable.
It means being open to face difficult emotions within oneself, and to potentially face something unconscious being revealed.
Owning unconscious feelings is a challenge because it is likely to show ambiguities, inconsistencies, and uncomfortable revelations of former behavior.
The polar opposite of owning experience is making someone else responsible for what you are feeling. You might call this a form of aggression.
Some simple examples will illustrate this:
- ‘You’re being aggressive’, compared to ‘I’m feeling fear’.
- ‘You betrayed me’, compared to ‘I feel alone’.
- ‘I hate how the room feels’, compared to ‘I feel tension sitting here’.
- ‘This should be done for longer’, compared to ‘I’m feeling alive and excited from this’.

3. Trusting Experience

This principle points to having a fundamental trust in the embodied experience of ourselves and others, and in the natural flow of attention.
It is a willingness to stay with embodied experiences that may not make rational sense, or would normally not be shared.
Importantly, it includes keeping an openness to your experience so you are not fixed or attached to anything being right or wrong.
By trusting what is present at an embodied level and owning it, unexpected levels of understanding and connection can emerge between people.
This means all previous conceptions of what is not good in relationship become accepted and included in intimacy.
For instance, someone being distracted, confused, in a subtle trance, sleepy, jealous, or distant, can all be explored within the connection.
It is common for a feeling or state to arise that can be seen as not appropriate to the situation rationally, and so it is not brought into presence.
By bringing it into presence it is more possible to see the deeper truth of what is emerging, and this can often lead to deep learning for everyone.
For example: In one Circle the group were restless and getting ‘distracted’ by another group. This was trusted until finally someone in the group shouted from a deeper anger that he was upset with everyone looking to the other group. From here a group field of presence filled the space, there was no more ‘distraction’, and the Circlee felt deeply empowered—as he’d never been able to command attention in this way.
In another example: Someone once became frozen when they had the group’s attention. Some of the group were frustrated and wanted him to be more expressive, which increased the frozen state. Then one person asked, with acceptance, what it was like to be frozen, and a connection was made. Within five minutes the frozenness turned to a deep expression of grief.
Trusting Your Experience, and the ability to discern your experience with increasingly complex distinctions, are both keys to powerful Circling and connection.

4. Staying With the Level of Sensation

For those with a strong meditation practice, staying at the level of sensation will be familiar, but this is also about ensuring that when speaking you are in resonance with what is being felt.
It means having the intention to bring attention to, and stay in the sensations and subtle feelings in your body while being in connection with others.
This does not mean that conversation has to be limited to feelings in any way, just that connection at the level of sensation in the body is not lost like it can be through descriptive telling of the ‘story’ of experience.
This leads to powerful connection and can be taken further by sharing what is happening at the level of awareness; this could be an expansion of emptiness, stillness, and/or Eros.
As with meditation, the more this is practiced, the more opens up and is revealed—and what lives and breathes within the ‘we space’ is uncovered.

5. Being With the Other in Their World

Walking in someone else’s shoes is taken to the next level in Circling.
It involves a radical curiosity which assumes nothing, but has distinctions available for understanding. For example, it is possible to have many assumptions about what sadness is and what it is like to feel it. Common assumptions include: That it is difficult, lonely, that the person needs sympathy, and that it feels awkward. When making finer distinctions the reality of sadness in the moment can be explored in many ways, such as: ‘Is the sadness difficult?’, ‘What kind of sadness do you feel?’, ’Do you want us close?’.
It is being curious about the individual’s in-the-moment experience at increasingly subtle levels, without assumptions of knowing what it is actually like.
Another example: If someone says they are frustrated, we can enquire; ‘How do they know they are frustrated?’. With this question, the actual sensations and subtle experience can be explored deeper. Asking questions like this must come from a place of curiosity, otherwise they are likely to limit connection.
It involves always leaving space for the individual to communicate what they are actually feeling after you have shared a perception. Remember to check how your perceptions, assumptions, or intuitions of the other land for the Circlee. This is such a simple thing to do but is absolutely key to Circling.
What the Circlee is saying can be explored, but how they are saying it may lead to more connection. Even deeper is exploring why they may be saying the things they are saying and enquiring into that, for example; what kind of person must they be to say the things they say and feel the things they feel?
As mentioned earlier, in distinguishing Circling from most therapy and coaching, there is no intention to take the individual anywhere other than deeper into where they are, in order to gain a greater shared understanding, even if it is an uncomfortable place for the individual.
From this presence there is a whole new level of seeing the world as the other.
Often body sensations, images, and thoughts start to emerge while the connection is developing.
It is also often the case that higher spiritual states can be revealed in this space, but equally, so can deep shadow emotions.
‘Shadow’ means the emotions that are unconscious within us and are not able to surface into our awareness. Circling is a powerful way to bring unconscious emotions into conscious awareness.
Shadow emotions can be ‘light’ or ‘dark’. Common dark shadow emotions are anger, loneliness, disgust, rage, fear, grief, and sexual desire.
We continually experience how profound it is to feel the pain and difficult emotions with someone who has rarely (or never) been welcomed to just be in that place while another is present with them. This staying with painful sensation is a powerful way to release shadowed emotions.
Light shadow emotions also often arise from the acceptance of pain, and are most associated with lightness in our being. Common light shadow emotions are love, joy, erotic feelings, innocence, and spiritual acceptance. These light aspects can be pushed out of awareness just as much as those associated with the dark.
Being present together gives a deeper access to own our pain and struggle, and this can be the dark or the light in us wanting to emerge.
We find that both dark and light shadow emotions feel nourishing, and bring gifts when fully accepted, integrated, and allowed in connection.
Being With the Other in Their World is also an opportunity to join the dots; to explore and enquire into the individual’s deeper perspectives and belief systems, that are underlying and perhaps creating the in-the-moment experience they are having.