Author: Tenneson Woolf

The 5 ‘Breaths’ of Design

When we notice the diamond, we can see that it forms the basis for entire projects. This map shows five diamonds linked together, each one leading to another. These five diamonds represent five major stages in project design. In practice it feels like these are breaths, each one leading to the next.

Birth of the callers – The first breath is the birth of the callers. When a person or group is inspired to create a project, the calling breath happens. The callers come together and decide whether or not to act on the sense of things. If there is a need to go ahead, the callers often form the core team for the project and hold the intention all the way through.

Creating the ground – If the project moves ahead, the next stage is to create the ground of principles, process and people. In this breath, the chaordic stepping stones can be used to help guide the planning for the rest of the process.

Giving form and structure – The third breath is the active design of the project, be it a meeting, an initiative or a whole new organization. In this breath the core team designs what is needed and begins the invitation process.

Conversation – It is finally in the fourth breath that stakeholders come together and begin to work. This breath might be one meeting or a years-long engagement. This is the meat of the work.

Practice – As the project becomes a way of life, the core team might start to fall away and the legacy is released to the community. Founders leave, new leaders emerge and the original project’s intent is met. From here, a whole new breath can begin, and the cycle continues.

This week I have found myself in a lot of conversations about fear. In them, I have recognized my own fear, the way that it can grip me so easily, and often block me from my best work. I have recongized others’ fears. Fears of specifics, and with some, fear of fear itself. It has opened up rich learning for me. And vulnerability. A bit of that hit is below.

Two days ago the conversation was with a long-time artist friend, Bruce. He is establishing himself as a free-lance artist. His fears included not being good enough. Not having enough connections. The economy. Truth is, Bruce is a great artist, and has some connections / artist friends who are each finding their way.

A couple of days ago the conversation was with some from the Tampa Bay Art of Hosting team. We were updating information on registrations for our November event. One from our team, Harold Aldrich, spoke something that really landed with me. He talked about the “drumbeat of fear.” As he was approaching people about registering for our event, most places he turned, people were hearing that drum. The beat of fear of economic collapse. The beat of fear of retirement portfolios that were disappearing.

Yesterday the conversation was with long-time friend, Meg Wheatley. Together we shared noticings in some of the community groups we are in. Meg spoke of community recovery groups that are just asking her to bring peace. Yes, there is consulting. Yes, there is coaching. Yes, there is community engagement strategies. But what they really wanted was to feel a bit of peace — a bit of release from the relentless drumming. Meg brings a lot of things. Her presence and the peace that people feel in her groundedness is one of them.

So, I think all of us are in some kind of practice of bringing peace amidst the drumbeat of fear. It is the work deep down at several levels. I feel this as invitation and challenge. I feel this at all levels of scale — the system that is me, the system that is our families, the system that is our places of work, of community, and the system that is the planet. It is what my colleague and I talk about it as a bit of order to the chaos. This might be what is even more called for now in these times. For me it is found first in our presence that stills a space. Even better, opens a space. It seems that fear often contracts, masking the reality of choices. Peace and presence can restore some of the expansiveness and flow that brings us back to awareness of choice and creation.

Maybe in some places we are just breaking the pattern / habit of contraction found in the drumbeat. Maybe it is shifting the drumbeat. Maybe it is opening ourselves and others to the gift of the drumbeat of fear, because fear is calling us to transform what and how we are being together. Restoring choices through the fear feels essential in these times.

Space-holders needed.

What can humanness be? Also be? What can we discover as we are in collective inquiry? What can we invoke? Create? Co-create?

These are all questions that feel central in my work. They are the kind of questions that are a couple of levels down deep. Beyond methods of participation. Beyond maps and models that support methods of participation. I feel in my heart an evolution of what being human is and can be. Some of it is me, a forty something trying to make sense of life and the shifting world that is personal. Some of it, I feel, is the ever-increasing rate of change in major systems — healthcare, education, government, economics. It is as if these shifts are calling human beings, individually and collectively, to move into next levels. To be more artful and deliberate in our human being, again as individuals and as collectives trying to do something about the major shifts present in society now.

Maria Scordiolou and Sarah Whitely are friends working with much focus on these questions. They are taking these and other questions like them to new levels, particularly as they steward a land, Axladitsa Avatakia near Pelion, Greece. One of the things I see often with Sarah and Maria is their fierce commitment to presencing and letting a source come through them. A tuning fork is an image that comes to mind. Below are a few questions they harvested from a spring gathering of Axlatditsa Guardians. The complete harvest, with more description is here.

What we have sourced – what is at the heart?
Unless we engage our authentic selves, we cannot live the future now
Unless we engage our fullness, we cannot take the leap individually and call in collectively
Unless we tremble collectively, we cannot presence the new
Unless we take a leap together, we cannot access and live the next level of our humanity
Unless we are willing to hold the space open long enough for our collective clarity to emerge, we cannot shift our systems and behaviour for the better
Unless we fuse the streams of practice and inquiry, we cannot see what else is possible and be prepared to meet our chaos
Unless we acknowledge our collective identify, we cannot co-create our real work
Unless we unlearn our complicatedness, we cannot find the simplicity of the next elegant step
Unless we share our new insights immediately, we do not serve evolution
Unless we live through our collective identity, we cannot become whole