#learnthecircleway • Tenneson Woolf

March 8, 2018

On Circle — Not Mine, But Ours

Though The Circle Way Advanced Practicum that I’m cohosting with Amanda Fenton is nine months away, I find myself thinking about it much. It’s running in the background and foreground for me, like a song that I’m enjoying and is stuck in me. I find myself humming the tune of the practicum yet to be. Humming it into some choices of form.

That leads me to some reflections on circle this morning. It remains the tool beneath tools for me. It remains the way of being that has most altered my life and authenticity of interaction.

Living as circle is a way of being. It brings us into a requisite vibration such that we can now be in relationship to the heartbeat not mine, but ours. To the thinking and feeling not mine, but ours. To the grander scale not mine, but ours. To the inspired and tangible action not isolated, but integrated.

It’s as if we arrive to circle with our backyard simple stream, only to have it transformed, even for a moment, to the mighty Mississippi. We arrive with crevice created from an overnight storm, yet gain access to the wonder of the Grand Canyon. We come with dripping faucet, yet flow with others, for a moment, to the majesty and drenching quality of Victoria Falls.

Circle is the ultimate amplifier.

Humming, yes. Perhaps some of you will join us in December to evolve the practice, each other, and even the core of our personal being.

March 7, 2018

Famished for Awakeness

The last four weeks I’ve been co-teaching with Amanda Fenton an online class about The Circle Way. Twenty-eight people participated from nine countries. It’s been learning filled and delightful in relationship.

Yesterday’s class, the last in the four part series, was designed around people’s questions and interests — “what do you still want to give more attention to?”

Though it wasn’t a question asked directly, I found myself reflecting on why circle works (a question that is beneath many questions). “The circle working” is the desire that most people have, everything from crossed fingers to unwavering commitment. They want and need a more collaborative and thoughtful way of connecting and working together.

I came up with this clarity that I offered to the classes:

Circle works because people are hungry for it. They may not know it, but what they are famished for is hope, awareness, and awakeness. When they can experience that and apply it to their context of work or community, it is life-changing.

What feels important to me in this is recognizing that most people aren’t that interested in being sold on a process. They are not looking for another “thing” (even though mechanized society has so often taught looking for “things”). The grand aha of it, so often, is that through the structure, the invitation, and the most simple questions to engage, people taste an increased honesty and vitality, that is sadly rare in contemporary organizational structure.

That’s the moment. When famished transposes to fulfilled. Even just for a moment.

What a delight to offer this class, and to strengthen use and practice of circle with these good people.

February 14, 2018

Patterning Encounter — Three Simple Rounds

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.

February 13, 2018

The Circle Way 4 Week Online Class Starts Today

I’m teaching this online class with Amanda Fenton, who is delightful. She doesn’t just do circle. She practices it. She lives it. I learn much from and with her.

Twenty-eight participants will gather for the first class today, offered twice. We capped registration at 14 per class to encourage a kind of intimacy and knowing each other. Delicious people, each who have expressed in writing some of what they care about. Schools. Meetings at work. Situations of conflict and mediation. Family. Community. First Nations. Healthcare. Government. Social work. Libraries. And more. It’s a big list. It’s an important part of the invitation to encourage real purpose and meaning. Today that will shift to voice and video together.

Nine countries in which these participants are living — USA, Canada, India, Australia, Austria, Wales, Bermuda, New Zealand, Spain.

What is exciting and attractive to me that is that each of us comes with a baseline assumption, or hope, that connection matters. We all want meaning and purpose in our gatherings. We are all looking for a simplicity to help that happen more regularly.

I hope, and intend, that together, we all find within us and among us the added witnessing and courage that helps us to be, practice, and live in the best ways in these many environments that we care about.

Ready, go.