Building on Sandra’s story, circle practitioner Tenneson Woolf offers five tips for cultivating powerful presence in circle.
Five Tips for Cultivating Powerful Presence in Circle
What I love in Sandra’s observations, both of the tangible and the intangible, is that she points to what is alive in circle — “everything living has a rhythm, movement, energy, and a core.” Therein lays so much of what is powerful in circle. It may be a bit of methodology that brings people in, but I would suggest it is a moment of quickened presence that keeps people coming back. It is my experience that most people seek and welcome powerful and meaningful experience — circle has unique way of helping this be possible.
Over my years of circle practice and participation, I’ve noticed myself speaking a few common invitations, particularly when a group is first gathered in circle to begin, that help set the context for both contributing and benefitting from powerful presence. I’ve sought simple enough invitations so that the circle itself comes alive in the way that Sandra describes from her experience.
See with soft eyes. So many of us have been rewarded for seeing only the objective, obligated to a paradigm of concrete measurement. I often invite people to see “the thing behind the thing behind the thing (which turns out not to be a thing).”
Listen for what is under the words. Or between the words. It isn’t analysis and summary that is the primary skill. It is giving ourselves to the flow that circle helps to organize. Listen with the ears of story that seeks to make sense not just of one moment, but of many moments strung together.
Be with what is arising. Be willing to follow it with deliberately slowed pace rather than defaulted speed. “Being with” is different than directing or controlling, which is the skill valued in so many contemporary forms of meeting. Circle gives us light structure to enjoy being with what arises, rather than limited only to what was planned.
Welcome circle as a “composite being.” Always direct energy to the center. It is where we place and contribute our words and our insights. The center is where we draw meaning from. Think of the center as a participant in the circle, that just like those sitting on the rim, also has something to say.
Celebrate. So many of us live in complex times, in which the instinct is to isolate, fragment. and turn away from each other. Turning to one another is in fact, a radical act to cultivate presence in ourselves, among us, and in the group as a whole. I often find myself invoking an awareness of celebration that sounds like, “in circle, we as humans are returning to something very old and very needed in our species in these times.”
Here’s to any of us experiencing the depth that circle invites, found in simple and repeated invitations for how we can be together, deepening our practice and our presence together.
Tenneson Woolf is a facilitator, workshop leader, teacher, blogger, and coach committed to improving the quality of collaboration and imagination needed in groups, teams, and organizations — to help us be in times such as these with consciousness, kindness, and learning. He is a long-time steward of The Art of Hosting, and long-time student and practitioner of presence in circle. He posts a daily blog, Human to Human, in which he offers reflection on varied aspects of participative leadership practices, insights, and human to human depth. Tenneson lives in a small town where urban meets rural, Lindon, Utah, at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains. He is originally from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.