Author: Tenneson Woolf

One of my key learnings at The Art of Hosting on Bowen Island last week was from an Open Space session hosted by Annabelle Oakes. The focus was on the “Language of Resonance.” It was an invitation to explore additional words to describe the experience of resonance. It’s a lot more than academic exploration. Felt more like essential language and tuning for living in a more deliberate paradigm and medium of energetics.

The first part of our discussion was noticing some of what resonance is like. Falling in love, openness, flow, music. It is some of the bridging experiences that many people can relate to.

On resonance and falling in love, I later received an email from my hosting friend Simone Poutnik, in which she wrote this:

Sizzling resonance
falling in love with
not knowing
a possible future
so tender
yet so strong

Love opens my heart
true curiosity is born
exploration can begin
Let’s dance
with the unknown!

A huge gift in sitting with Annabelle and others was noticing that, for me, there are two core competencies or practices that working with resonance calls out.

1)Pointing to the Invisible — Helping to shine a little light on widely shared experiences that are often not seen or are left in a far more nebulous state. These would be the experiences that many people feel as energizing, yet are then often reduced to a background experience in attempts to “get back to the real world.” Ah, the fine art and commitment of daring to name what doesn’t quite fit normative experience. Just the simple pointing so that it can be attended to (and thus, brought into more tangible form).

2)Pointing to the Whole — Helping to see the bigger picture. This has always been a hunger for me. It comes with working from a living systems perspective, a self-organizing perspective, and working with emergence. In working with Margaret Wheatley much earlier in my life, we used to ask three questions that helped do this. First, what is the system? Second, does it know itself as a system? Third, what wants to happen? Replacing system with whole would work well also.

Thanks Annabelle, Teresa, Pam for such a rich learning space. Simone for sparking even more this morning.

These words from my friend Diana Durham, an expert and gifted soul at linking Arthurian legend to leadership, and wholeness to working with groups.

“… When we operate or gather in groups, the same dual set of ingredients is present as when we get together with just one person, except of course, there is more of everything.   More personality types, more roles, more relationship patterns, and also – at least potentially – more of the higher order flow or presence.  The more familiar we become with moving in and out of ‘Avalon’ the easier it is to let the field of collective intelligence work, and become energized.   We know what is common and what is different, we are at ease with both.   We have a detachment from our own patterns, and from the patterns of others, we don’t get hung up on outer structures, we learn to let the flow emerge from the undimensional and to keep things fluid.   

In this kind of setting, leadership becomes like relationship –  it is a kind of balancing act between the known and the unknown, between the space of connection, and the space of differentiation.   It is about allowing or facilitating this relationship in the group.  Its not about doing everything, its not even about delegating, it’s about allowing the conditions to show up, about trusting the invisible.  And whether one is playing the  ‘King Arthur’ role of leadership, or the ‘Peer of the realm’ role of leadership, its about knowing that this relationship is where its at, about knowing that this relationship between inner and outer works and about being at ease within this context.   And one cannot be at ease in this context collectively, if one is not at ease with it in oneself. …”

Most people I know are constantly adapting to very busy lives. It’s work. It’s health. It’s fullness. Yes, full live remains the best description I can offer.

Thursday, my colleagues in planning and designing a conference on creating healthier healthcare systems, spoke to some of this. Steve Ryman from Oregon. Kathy Jourdain from Nova Scotia.

I offered this image of toddlers learning to walk, and later wrote some in email about it. That is below. Steve and Kathy added to the images. Steve talking about his earlier hiking experiences, hopping and bouncing from one boulder to another to come down a mountain. “If you try to think it too much, it is painfully slow and difficult. Too much caution is actually more difficult. If you get in the flow of it, it is faster and easier!” I know this feeling. From skiing also. Moguls are meant to be skied. Faster. Easier. More exhilarating too, though I’ve cautiously slid down many in my time.

All of it is about learning and practicing to be in flow, a seemingly essential capacity for these times.

With gratitude for my boy, toddlers, hiking, and skiing.

“I would like to offer an image that has been very present for me these last weeks. It is for me about relationship to time, the busyness of life, the quickness of pace, the availability of consciousness.

My six year old Elijah is a big kid. He is in first grade. He weighs 92+ pounds. When he runs, he has a bit of clumsyness in him. A bit like he is falling forward. Looks like he is going to fall, but is learning to get those legs underneath his big frame in motion. This reminds me of younger children, toddlers first learning to walk. As a parent, I found this joyful and also hard to watch. I felt, “I know they need to do this, but they are going to fall a bunch and I sometimes need to turn my eyes away.” However, it all happens. In most cases, learning to walk and run happens from the experience of falling forward with grace.

In these times, this image helps me. I feel myself tumbling forward in the saying of yes. Falling forward in the availability of shifting consciousness, and how it changes the game. Learning to find my legs.

With hope, gratitude, and anticipation for all to unfold in helpful and well ways.”

Appreciating these words from Harrison Owen on the OS Listserve. It is all open space. Goes along with the other four basics: When it starts is the right time. When it is over, it is over. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have. Whoever comes are the right people.

The 5th Principle is indeed alive, well, and living all over! Raffi – I think you’ve got it. At the very least you are confirming my experience that all the years of opening space (OS) prepares you well to see space opening wherever that happens. I guess the skeptic could say that when the only tool you have is a hammer, all the world look like a nail. Probably true, but I think this may be the exception that proves the rule. All the world is Open Space – we just didn’t quite notice it before. Of course that doesn’t mean that everything is open, free and delicious, for we all know of closed, dark, nasty places. BUT it COULD open, and that is the promise. This promise is realized in the Arab Spring, and presently in OWS. None of that will last for ever, nothing ever does. So I guess the secret is find a rhythm – open/close/open… Maybe that is what we do?