nemorathwald (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nemorathwald) wrote2025-01-06 09:41 pm
nemorathwald) wrote2025-01-06 09:41 pm
Authentic Relating And Circling
Two years ago, I started an Authentic Relating and Circling group in my living room. I threw it together without much experience, to be honest. I've been strongly considering renaming what we do. We've been considering "I Can't Believe It's Not Circling." "Intentional Relating" might get across the idea better than the word "Authentic", which carries some misleading connotations.
Think of it like speed dating, except it's "speed friending". We get in some practice at listening, noticing, curiosity, and checking assumptions. I and the other participants have formed some truly amazing friendships in the past two years in this group. Sometimes we also try out meditation, or improv, or yoga nidra, and so on and so forth. It's eclectic. But mainly, we do Authentic Relating and Circling as described in detail at the end of this post.
We meet every alternate Sunday. We usually get ten or fewer people at a time. At this point, we have thirteen members. Over the past two years there have been at least fifteen others who have attended, some semi-regularly, some only once.
A few months ago, I attended another local Authentic Relating group, where I didn't have a good experience. Ours is private and invitation-only, and the other one was for the public, so in this post I'll refer to it as the public AR group. I don't want to be hard on the organizers of that group, though. They took my feedback really well and will discuss it more. It's not a knock on them. My hope in this post is to lay out the things you would need to consider if you want to start something of this nature.
This post is in three parts: First I'll describe the logistical structure. Second, I'll describe the distinctive differences in what we're trying to achieve, with a digression on how this relates to "eternalism, nihilism, and the complete stance". Third, I'll copy and paste the handout that we use for our activities when we gather.
1. Founding.
You can't have a group where it might be just two people who show up, just me and you. To ensure that doesn't happen, I found two people who I trusted a lot, and asked them to commit with me to attending X times (we settled on 10), with an option to re-up. If you keep meeting forever instead of a limited commitment with an option to re-up, people will just drift away. (I got this idea from a tweet by Rich Bartlett of the Microsolidarity Network, which I would link to here, except I can't find it again.)
2. Invites.
You might assume you want to open a group to a pile of random strangers. Give some thought to that. They'll make it into the same things you were trying to build an alternative to. To hold a container is to be intentional. Too many strangers too quickly, & you're not holding anything.
Our AR/Circling group is invitation-only. We try to be thoughtful and intentional in our decisions about what an effective mix of people looks like. Later in this post, I'll go into what that is.
3. Staying in touch.
We meet approximately every two weeks.
Instead of asking for money, we ask each other to stay in touch. Either fill out the every-two-months form (with which we determine which 4 days most of us are available in the upcoming 2 months), or tell the group when you're going to skip a session by replying to our mailing list (which we use only for scheduling/RSVPs, not discussion, so it's not high-traffic). Just telling me personally when you're skipping sessions, doesn't count. The attendees need to act like it's not just my group, it's our group. I'll say "please tell the group, not just me, so you're still in their life because they have all heard from you lately."
Skip as many sessions as you want, as long as you tell us you're doing so. If you go radio silent, I eventually reach out, and if I don't hear back, I remove you from the emails.
4. Money.
The public authentic relating group gathers strangers and asks for 20 bucks. It's what Joe Edelman calls the "pile of strangers" model. In our group, money doesn't change hands. I buy pizza or tacos and you can Venmo me for it or not.
We can say what's really going on for us, without being concerned that we are preventing other participants from getting the experience they think they paid for. If someone needs to step out of the room and cool off their emotions, or they need to leave the session early for the day, they don't feel like they've lost twenty bucks, because we didn't take your money.
It's not that I'm against money or I think it's bad; it's that when money changes hands, it creates a feeling of sunk cost, which tempts us to play along with things that are not alive for us.
5. Handout.
Instead of having to guess what a pile of strangers wants, we share a simple double-sided handout electronically to every invitee, that spells out what we are doing. Listening, noticing, curiosity, checking assumptions. Those who don't want what's on the handout shouldn't be here.
Most importantly, attendees have a say in what goes on the handout. We've changed it multiple times. It's not Matt's handout, it's our handout. If you don't like it, you are expected to ask for what you want. Then we change it, and now that's what we do.
Here's the complete the handout we use, as a Google Doc. And also, like I said at the top, I've copied and pasted the entire Google Doc at the end of this post.
In "The Art of Gathering", in the chapter "Let Purpose Be Your Bouncer", Priya Parker makes it clear why the most transformative gatherings involve actively curating who is at a gathering, toward a clear purpose.
Okay, that was a lot of logistical structure. But speaking of letting purpose be your bouncer: here are the distinctive differences in what we're trying to achieve. If you want these things, then it's for you.
1. This is not therapy.
The public group has participants who need (and expect) to receive highly-skilled care work from professional therapy experts. Our group is for amateurs. We're not qualified to avoid hurting those who are extremely hurtable.
Many of the extremely-hurtable, exhibit what looks like high woundedness and low willingness. ("High/low woundedness and high/low willingness" is a frame from "Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities" by Diana Leaf Christian.)
(Brief aside, that book has a great section on getting clarity in a group on what they mean by words, so it doesn't surprise them later when they've already invested in each other. "Wait a minute, THAT isn't community!" "Wait, THAT'S not connection!")
We know those who are present are mostly in basic working order, so we don't have to act like caretakers. We attempt to vividly encounter what's alive for us, good or bad, without living inside the limits of extremely hurtable people. Let them go to the group that's for them.
2. A bare minimum of assertiveness.
Our group asks its participants to agree to ask for what we want, and we should not expect to get it unless we ask for it. The public group attempts to assume what people need emotionally, and proactively provide it. I find it alienating when you assume I want something I don't. That's not what I meant by connection.
3. Try not to pretend.
In our group we say, and practice, that the opposite of authenticity and connection is pretending. Malcolm Ocean and I discussed this more on YouTube.
If you have unwanted feelings, you don't have to pretend to have warm and affirming feelings. Allow awareness of them. In addition to connecting to all the pleasant stuff, I want to connect to your mistrust and to mine, if any. To your anger toward me and mine toward you, if any. Connecting to our conflicts, constructively. The real you, the real me, whether we like what we see or not.
"Wait, THAT'S not what I meant by connection!"
It's what I meant by it.
"I just wanted to pretend all the pleasant stuff and feel the warm fuzzies!"
Without pretending, you can get to that stuff too, most of the time. Enough of the time.
In the spirit of a scout mindset, we try to focus on allowing awareness of both the good and the bad about each other, both trust and mistrust, in the hope of getting to know more, so that we can gradually and safely earn each other's trust. Sometimes we only trust partially, or for certain things, as appropriate. You can't get to trust without allowing the mistrust to take as long as it takes. (More from Malcolm Ocean about the Non-Naive Trust Dance.)
Our group focuses on listening, noticing, curiosity, and checking assumptions. This is connecting to the real person, not the person we want them to be.
In the pubic group, they say, and practice, that the opposite of authenticity is not pretending, but guardedness. They encourage participants to skip over the time-consuming steps of earning trust, and instead, offer trust unconditionally.
Personally, if someone asks for my trust but doesn't want to earn it, it's a sign they're probably not trustworthy.
At the public group, there were no authentic relating games of curiosity, noticing, listening so you can repeat it back, and checking assumptions. Instead, they talked AT each other, by projecting a lot of goodness and trustworthiness toward someone they don't even know. Giving a stranger unconditional affirmation erases them and paints over them, by seeing only that which one wants to see.
They don't practice listening, noticing, curiosity, and checking assumptions, because if they did, they might find out a more complex picture, both the things they want to see and the things that are disappointing.
One might say that I need to give people the benefit of the doubt. But ... that's what I'm already doing, when I show up, and I allow that I might find out things I really like about other people. You can't live in denial about the doubt. Then there's no doubt to give the benefit of.
Eternalism, Nihilism, And The Complete Stance
Long-time readers of my blog have probably seen some of my posts about concepts from David Chapman. What I have been describing above is an example of the difference between eternalism and the complete stance as described by Chapman. Eternalism has to fixate a pattern (ex: all participants must like everything about each other and there is nothing to be in conflict about). Eternalism refuses to see nebulosity.
The complete stance allows both pattern and nebulosity. When eternalism sees the complete stance, it assumes it's nihilism, which fixates nebulosity and refuses to see pattern. So eternalism assumes I have made up my mind in advance to be enemies with the people in authentic relating and circling, because I failed to make up my mind in advance to unconditionally support and admire them. Making up one's mind in advance is a tendency shared by eternalism and nihilism.
The complete stance doesn't know yet who's a friend or enemy, or how much, or in what sense, until after there's enough information gathered in a scout mindset to find out.
As a result of this difference of approaches, our AR/Circling group surfaces conflict, attempting to approach it gradually, in a constructive way. Some of our participants only wanted unconditional positivity, and a denial of conflict. In those cases, our invitation filtering system didn't work. Over time, they stopped attending, often saying that exposure to unwanted emotion activated their traumas and made the rest of their week emotionally difficult. The public AR group would suit their preferences better.
Suppose someone can't tolerate interfacing with themselves and with the world. Perhaps what they need is not to open awareness, but to close it, and only open it a tiny crack. I don't know. But if so, in that case, they might benefit from an AR group that's more like health care. I would not thrive in that environment. What I am getting at is that not all things need to be for all people. This is why one single public container can't be held for all people, all needs, all purposes.
Here's the handout we use (as of the end of 2024), so that you won't need to go to Google Docs to read it. It's adapted from The Authentic Relating Games Manual by Authentic Revolution, which is why some of the phrasing sounds the same as in that book.
Authentic Relating Games Agreements
1. Respect yourself
You are your main priority. If you have bodily or emotional needs that are keeping you from being fully involved, please take care of those first. You’re welcome to sit out of one or all of the activities, or decline to answer any question. You may change your mind at any time. The more you take responsibility for yourself, the more freedom you and others have to participate without worrying about others’ unspoken needs.
“Therapy” takes a lot of forms, this might be one form suited for your specific needs, but not before asking a professional. This is practice at building relationships & difficult conversations, which is not a treatment for trauma, & might do as much harm as good.
2. Lean into your edge
These practices are meant to take us places that we don’t often go in everyday conversation. We lean into the edge of discomfort that comes with authenticity, in a space where we request your vulnerability, while still respecting yourself.
If you sit out an exercise, and allow that social discomfort, you are doing what we came here to do! Find your own edge, and lean into new ways of sharing and being together.
Ask yourself, “Am I willing to let this interaction change me?”
3. Stay present
Remain aware of your own sensations, emotions, and needs during our activities. Notice where your attention is. If it wanders away from yourself or your partner in a pair, or from the group in circling, gently bring your awareness back.
The more conscious you are of yourself, the more you’ll get out of this.
4. Confidentiality by request
If you would like something to remain private, ask for confidentiality from those you shared it with. We use confidentiality by request - rather than blanket confidentiality - because it allows us to practice asking for what we need, and because vulnerable sharing can happen inside or outside of an explicit container like this one. It’s easier to remember a specific request than which things you heard in a session and which you heard outside of it.
5. Check your assumptions
We make up stories about others, and the world, to filter the amount of social information we receive in the moment. One of our most powerful tools is to check these assumptions. If somebody seems distant, angry, confused, joyful, etc., checking in can help align your perception with reality, so you can relate with the person rather than your story of who they are. This keeps us from saving those who seem uncomfortable, distancing from those who seem angry, etc. You can say, “Can I check an assumption about you? I imagine you’re feeling/ experiencing/wanting...
Activities
To start off, we spend 2 minutes in silence, checking in with our bodily sensations, emotions, and what’s happening here and now.
Then we’ll divide into pairs for the following:
Curiosity
For 2 minutes, I make guesses and disclose my assumptions about what’s probably true about you, and I ask questions about you based on curiosity I feel in the moment. You may answer or decline to answer, as the object of the exercise is disclosing my assumptions and curiosity.
Then, for 1 minute, you tell me how you felt about the assumptions & questions, including if there was anything you wished I had asked, or anything that struck you.
For 2 minutes, I ask more questions, and you may answer or decline to answer.
Noticing
For 5 minutes, you and I make eye contact with each other. We alternate with “Hearing that, I notice…” about what it’s like being with each other.
Do not just tack “Hearing that, I notice” to the start of a joke, opinion, or memory of something in the past or future or outside the room. Let a long pause linger until you notice something in the here & now.
To begin, I identify an observation, bodily sensation, thought, or emotion I’m noticing in the present moment of being with you.
You respond “Hearing that, I notice…” and say something you are noticing in the experience of the moment of being with me.
Then I respond “Hearing that, I notice…” and we go back and forth for 5 minutes.
Listening
We set a timer for 4 minutes. You say what’s coming up for you, while I remain silent. As soon as I’ve heard all I can remember, I stop you, & repeat back your words, as close as possible, without my judgements, interpretations, or conclusions, while you remain silent.
Then I ask “did I get that right?” If “no”, you reiterate or clarify, while I remain silent. Then I try again. If “yes”, I ask “Is there more?” If “yes”, you continue.
If “no”, (or if the 4 minute timer goes off), I reflect what I felt during the whole process, and/or what I now get about you.
Circling
Everyone sits in a circle. For 2 minutes, we sit in silence checking in with what we’re feeling and sensing.
Then we all do the Curiosity, Noticing, and Listening activities simultaneously with everyone as a group, until the pizza arrives.
Think of it like speed dating, except it's "speed friending". We get in some practice at listening, noticing, curiosity, and checking assumptions. I and the other participants have formed some truly amazing friendships in the past two years in this group. Sometimes we also try out meditation, or improv, or yoga nidra, and so on and so forth. It's eclectic. But mainly, we do Authentic Relating and Circling as described in detail at the end of this post.
We meet every alternate Sunday. We usually get ten or fewer people at a time. At this point, we have thirteen members. Over the past two years there have been at least fifteen others who have attended, some semi-regularly, some only once.
A few months ago, I attended another local Authentic Relating group, where I didn't have a good experience. Ours is private and invitation-only, and the other one was for the public, so in this post I'll refer to it as the public AR group. I don't want to be hard on the organizers of that group, though. They took my feedback really well and will discuss it more. It's not a knock on them. My hope in this post is to lay out the things you would need to consider if you want to start something of this nature.
This post is in three parts: First I'll describe the logistical structure. Second, I'll describe the distinctive differences in what we're trying to achieve, with a digression on how this relates to "eternalism, nihilism, and the complete stance". Third, I'll copy and paste the handout that we use for our activities when we gather.
1. Founding.
You can't have a group where it might be just two people who show up, just me and you. To ensure that doesn't happen, I found two people who I trusted a lot, and asked them to commit with me to attending X times (we settled on 10), with an option to re-up. If you keep meeting forever instead of a limited commitment with an option to re-up, people will just drift away. (I got this idea from a tweet by Rich Bartlett of the Microsolidarity Network, which I would link to here, except I can't find it again.)
2. Invites.
You might assume you want to open a group to a pile of random strangers. Give some thought to that. They'll make it into the same things you were trying to build an alternative to. To hold a container is to be intentional. Too many strangers too quickly, & you're not holding anything.
Our AR/Circling group is invitation-only. We try to be thoughtful and intentional in our decisions about what an effective mix of people looks like. Later in this post, I'll go into what that is.
3. Staying in touch.
We meet approximately every two weeks.
Instead of asking for money, we ask each other to stay in touch. Either fill out the every-two-months form (with which we determine which 4 days most of us are available in the upcoming 2 months), or tell the group when you're going to skip a session by replying to our mailing list (which we use only for scheduling/RSVPs, not discussion, so it's not high-traffic). Just telling me personally when you're skipping sessions, doesn't count. The attendees need to act like it's not just my group, it's our group. I'll say "please tell the group, not just me, so you're still in their life because they have all heard from you lately."
Skip as many sessions as you want, as long as you tell us you're doing so. If you go radio silent, I eventually reach out, and if I don't hear back, I remove you from the emails.
4. Money.
The public authentic relating group gathers strangers and asks for 20 bucks. It's what Joe Edelman calls the "pile of strangers" model. In our group, money doesn't change hands. I buy pizza or tacos and you can Venmo me for it or not.
We can say what's really going on for us, without being concerned that we are preventing other participants from getting the experience they think they paid for. If someone needs to step out of the room and cool off their emotions, or they need to leave the session early for the day, they don't feel like they've lost twenty bucks, because we didn't take your money.
It's not that I'm against money or I think it's bad; it's that when money changes hands, it creates a feeling of sunk cost, which tempts us to play along with things that are not alive for us.
5. Handout.
Instead of having to guess what a pile of strangers wants, we share a simple double-sided handout electronically to every invitee, that spells out what we are doing. Listening, noticing, curiosity, checking assumptions. Those who don't want what's on the handout shouldn't be here.
Most importantly, attendees have a say in what goes on the handout. We've changed it multiple times. It's not Matt's handout, it's our handout. If you don't like it, you are expected to ask for what you want. Then we change it, and now that's what we do.
Here's the complete the handout we use, as a Google Doc. And also, like I said at the top, I've copied and pasted the entire Google Doc at the end of this post.
In "The Art of Gathering", in the chapter "Let Purpose Be Your Bouncer", Priya Parker makes it clear why the most transformative gatherings involve actively curating who is at a gathering, toward a clear purpose.
Okay, that was a lot of logistical structure. But speaking of letting purpose be your bouncer: here are the distinctive differences in what we're trying to achieve. If you want these things, then it's for you.
1. This is not therapy.
The public group has participants who need (and expect) to receive highly-skilled care work from professional therapy experts. Our group is for amateurs. We're not qualified to avoid hurting those who are extremely hurtable.
Many of the extremely-hurtable, exhibit what looks like high woundedness and low willingness. ("High/low woundedness and high/low willingness" is a frame from "Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities" by Diana Leaf Christian.)
(Brief aside, that book has a great section on getting clarity in a group on what they mean by words, so it doesn't surprise them later when they've already invested in each other. "Wait a minute, THAT isn't community!" "Wait, THAT'S not connection!")
We know those who are present are mostly in basic working order, so we don't have to act like caretakers. We attempt to vividly encounter what's alive for us, good or bad, without living inside the limits of extremely hurtable people. Let them go to the group that's for them.
2. A bare minimum of assertiveness.
Our group asks its participants to agree to ask for what we want, and we should not expect to get it unless we ask for it. The public group attempts to assume what people need emotionally, and proactively provide it. I find it alienating when you assume I want something I don't. That's not what I meant by connection.
3. Try not to pretend.
In our group we say, and practice, that the opposite of authenticity and connection is pretending. Malcolm Ocean and I discussed this more on YouTube.
If you have unwanted feelings, you don't have to pretend to have warm and affirming feelings. Allow awareness of them. In addition to connecting to all the pleasant stuff, I want to connect to your mistrust and to mine, if any. To your anger toward me and mine toward you, if any. Connecting to our conflicts, constructively. The real you, the real me, whether we like what we see or not.
"Wait, THAT'S not what I meant by connection!"
It's what I meant by it.
"I just wanted to pretend all the pleasant stuff and feel the warm fuzzies!"
Without pretending, you can get to that stuff too, most of the time. Enough of the time.
In the spirit of a scout mindset, we try to focus on allowing awareness of both the good and the bad about each other, both trust and mistrust, in the hope of getting to know more, so that we can gradually and safely earn each other's trust. Sometimes we only trust partially, or for certain things, as appropriate. You can't get to trust without allowing the mistrust to take as long as it takes. (More from Malcolm Ocean about the Non-Naive Trust Dance.)
Our group focuses on listening, noticing, curiosity, and checking assumptions. This is connecting to the real person, not the person we want them to be.
In the pubic group, they say, and practice, that the opposite of authenticity is not pretending, but guardedness. They encourage participants to skip over the time-consuming steps of earning trust, and instead, offer trust unconditionally.
Personally, if someone asks for my trust but doesn't want to earn it, it's a sign they're probably not trustworthy.
At the public group, there were no authentic relating games of curiosity, noticing, listening so you can repeat it back, and checking assumptions. Instead, they talked AT each other, by projecting a lot of goodness and trustworthiness toward someone they don't even know. Giving a stranger unconditional affirmation erases them and paints over them, by seeing only that which one wants to see.
They don't practice listening, noticing, curiosity, and checking assumptions, because if they did, they might find out a more complex picture, both the things they want to see and the things that are disappointing.
One might say that I need to give people the benefit of the doubt. But ... that's what I'm already doing, when I show up, and I allow that I might find out things I really like about other people. You can't live in denial about the doubt. Then there's no doubt to give the benefit of.
Eternalism, Nihilism, And The Complete Stance
Long-time readers of my blog have probably seen some of my posts about concepts from David Chapman. What I have been describing above is an example of the difference between eternalism and the complete stance as described by Chapman. Eternalism has to fixate a pattern (ex: all participants must like everything about each other and there is nothing to be in conflict about). Eternalism refuses to see nebulosity.
The complete stance allows both pattern and nebulosity. When eternalism sees the complete stance, it assumes it's nihilism, which fixates nebulosity and refuses to see pattern. So eternalism assumes I have made up my mind in advance to be enemies with the people in authentic relating and circling, because I failed to make up my mind in advance to unconditionally support and admire them. Making up one's mind in advance is a tendency shared by eternalism and nihilism.
The complete stance doesn't know yet who's a friend or enemy, or how much, or in what sense, until after there's enough information gathered in a scout mindset to find out.
As a result of this difference of approaches, our AR/Circling group surfaces conflict, attempting to approach it gradually, in a constructive way. Some of our participants only wanted unconditional positivity, and a denial of conflict. In those cases, our invitation filtering system didn't work. Over time, they stopped attending, often saying that exposure to unwanted emotion activated their traumas and made the rest of their week emotionally difficult. The public AR group would suit their preferences better.
Suppose someone can't tolerate interfacing with themselves and with the world. Perhaps what they need is not to open awareness, but to close it, and only open it a tiny crack. I don't know. But if so, in that case, they might benefit from an AR group that's more like health care. I would not thrive in that environment. What I am getting at is that not all things need to be for all people. This is why one single public container can't be held for all people, all needs, all purposes.
Here's the handout we use (as of the end of 2024), so that you won't need to go to Google Docs to read it. It's adapted from The Authentic Relating Games Manual by Authentic Revolution, which is why some of the phrasing sounds the same as in that book.
Authentic Relating Games Agreements
1. Respect yourself
You are your main priority. If you have bodily or emotional needs that are keeping you from being fully involved, please take care of those first. You’re welcome to sit out of one or all of the activities, or decline to answer any question. You may change your mind at any time. The more you take responsibility for yourself, the more freedom you and others have to participate without worrying about others’ unspoken needs.
“Therapy” takes a lot of forms, this might be one form suited for your specific needs, but not before asking a professional. This is practice at building relationships & difficult conversations, which is not a treatment for trauma, & might do as much harm as good.
2. Lean into your edge
These practices are meant to take us places that we don’t often go in everyday conversation. We lean into the edge of discomfort that comes with authenticity, in a space where we request your vulnerability, while still respecting yourself.
If you sit out an exercise, and allow that social discomfort, you are doing what we came here to do! Find your own edge, and lean into new ways of sharing and being together.
Ask yourself, “Am I willing to let this interaction change me?”
3. Stay present
Remain aware of your own sensations, emotions, and needs during our activities. Notice where your attention is. If it wanders away from yourself or your partner in a pair, or from the group in circling, gently bring your awareness back.
The more conscious you are of yourself, the more you’ll get out of this.
4. Confidentiality by request
If you would like something to remain private, ask for confidentiality from those you shared it with. We use confidentiality by request - rather than blanket confidentiality - because it allows us to practice asking for what we need, and because vulnerable sharing can happen inside or outside of an explicit container like this one. It’s easier to remember a specific request than which things you heard in a session and which you heard outside of it.
5. Check your assumptions
We make up stories about others, and the world, to filter the amount of social information we receive in the moment. One of our most powerful tools is to check these assumptions. If somebody seems distant, angry, confused, joyful, etc., checking in can help align your perception with reality, so you can relate with the person rather than your story of who they are. This keeps us from saving those who seem uncomfortable, distancing from those who seem angry, etc. You can say, “Can I check an assumption about you? I imagine you’re feeling/ experiencing/wanting...
Activities
To start off, we spend 2 minutes in silence, checking in with our bodily sensations, emotions, and what’s happening here and now.
Then we’ll divide into pairs for the following:
Curiosity
For 2 minutes, I make guesses and disclose my assumptions about what’s probably true about you, and I ask questions about you based on curiosity I feel in the moment. You may answer or decline to answer, as the object of the exercise is disclosing my assumptions and curiosity.
Then, for 1 minute, you tell me how you felt about the assumptions & questions, including if there was anything you wished I had asked, or anything that struck you.
For 2 minutes, I ask more questions, and you may answer or decline to answer.
Noticing
For 5 minutes, you and I make eye contact with each other. We alternate with “Hearing that, I notice…” about what it’s like being with each other.
Do not just tack “Hearing that, I notice” to the start of a joke, opinion, or memory of something in the past or future or outside the room. Let a long pause linger until you notice something in the here & now.
To begin, I identify an observation, bodily sensation, thought, or emotion I’m noticing in the present moment of being with you.
You respond “Hearing that, I notice…” and say something you are noticing in the experience of the moment of being with me.
Then I respond “Hearing that, I notice…” and we go back and forth for 5 minutes.
Listening
We set a timer for 4 minutes. You say what’s coming up for you, while I remain silent. As soon as I’ve heard all I can remember, I stop you, & repeat back your words, as close as possible, without my judgements, interpretations, or conclusions, while you remain silent.
Then I ask “did I get that right?” If “no”, you reiterate or clarify, while I remain silent. Then I try again. If “yes”, I ask “Is there more?” If “yes”, you continue.
If “no”, (or if the 4 minute timer goes off), I reflect what I felt during the whole process, and/or what I now get about you.
Circling
Everyone sits in a circle. For 2 minutes, we sit in silence checking in with what we’re feeling and sensing.
Then we all do the Curiosity, Noticing, and Listening activities simultaneously with everyone as a group, until the pizza arrives.