In yesterday’s The Circle Way Online Class with Amanda Fenton, one of the contexts I shared with participants was when they went into small groups. They would have 25 minutes in groups of four or five. One person would host. One person would guardian. There were three “rounds” that we encouraged.
- Check-in (How is it that you are arriving to this small group circle now?)
- Main Question (Tell a story of when you have experienced The Circle Way components to be helpful — or challenging when missing.)
- Check-out (What was one thing you appreciated from your small circle?)
These three steps are a deeply engrained pattern for those of us that practice circle. With of course, a few assumptions tucked beneath them. Yesterday we highlighted “center” — the third space in which we contribute our thinking, feeling, and wondering. It is from willingness to attend to center that emergence becomes more visible and flavored. Yesterday we also highlighted “talking piece” — the act of creating more deliberate and uninterrupted sharing and listening.
I spoke these three rounds as engrained and entrained, just as it is for some of us with our morning habits — brush teeth, shower, cup of coffee. I also spoke what I see as underlaying purpose of each, that contributes to animating awareness and connection through circle.
Check-in invokes presence. It is the shift from social space to the deliberate attending in circle. Or to shift even from one form of circle to another. In our class it was from the group of 14 to the groups of four or five. Even a “mini check-in” matters. It’s like re-stabilizing our psyches to a new configuration of humans gathered. Each configuration benefits from a weave to animate the wholeness of that particular group. Check-in is what helps us get to that.
Main Question is animated by story. Circle is not presentation. Nor is it one person at the front of the room. Nor is it dumping data. Many things can be shared, including core facts and strong opinions. But circle uniquely invites us to a different quality of interaction together. I’ve learned this is often because of inviting people to be in the spirit of sharing story that shows a bit of how they relate to the main question. Sharing experience, even a tiny bit, that relates to the main question. Sharing story is itself a learning strategy. And yes, story creates delight — even the challenging ones.
Check-out invokes witnessing. It creates just a bit of deliberateness to notice what just happened. It’s difference than just racing away. It’s like being deliberate to tidy the dishes before rushing out of the house. Check-out tends to more of the energy and more of the experience in the group. It’s powerful and important to hear an individual express what they experienced, sometimes even in just a word. It’s powerful and important to notice how that is shared, or unique, in the group. We so often live in contexts that skip over the witnessing and even momentary sense-making together. Check-out is what helps us benefit from these qualities together.
Patterns. Aren’t we all learning these. To make conscious or change the unconscious ones. To claim and give light structure to the new ones.
Patterns of encountering. Well, isn’t this at the heart of it all. Daring to lean into the possibility of the whole and what is uniquely created in the middle. Daring to create added life and awakeness in who we are and what we try to do or be together.
Tenneson, circling together as a way of mindful attention becomes richer through your blog post. I found myself revisiting especially the mini circle. I didn’t get the chance to share that in our mini-circle, we naturally wanted what seemed to go beyond the 3 steps: we wanted to find the threads that we felt belonged in the center, too. I.e.It felt like we wanted to be sense-makers even in the short time we had. This felt natural to do. I’m curious how you would respond to this … isn’t it a natural drive to want to weave and harvest? To have something we’d woven together emerge with more clarity? If so, wouldn’t that mean a 4th optional step? Thanks!
Thanks Jeremy. Glad you all found this together. Yes, of course, it is this natural step to want to make sense — that matters also. To write the three that I named here is not to exclude a fourth. These three are for me, one pattern that I’ve noticed makes a big difference. The harvest round is where I find some of what you are speaking about. That harvest round in our context was brief — “name one thing…” With some more time, the flavor of that could be, “are there commonalities here in our center, shared threads…?” It all points to consciousness together, doesn’t it. And I’m glad for the ways that circle uniquely structures a pace and form for this kind of consciousness together.
Was part of the class and it was excellent!
Thanks Karen — good to be in it with you and exploring the nuances together.
“what ist it we do?” thanks for pointing at that Tenneson. it appears to me that those three I do only now, in circle, in the relations I’m engaging with at that particular moment – or they don’t happen. Every further step can build on that or lack that concious foundation … and for me it’s that presence thing and taking time and space for all the layers of meaning and interaction before I make sense of it. It just seems like a good thing to experience first and do the “and what I make of it” later.
I appreciate your thinking Felix — and appreciation for the profound found in the simple.