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The work that you are doing in this world is so incredible.
What you teach at the Circling Institute is just no match for any other program that's out there.
The container for healing, nurturing and nourishment has been liberating in so many ways and so freeing... I feel like I have just been given new wings to fly…
I think that every single person on the planet needs to be exposed to your work!
A new doorway to living authentically.
I've done countless courses on relationships and communication over the years but the Circling® practice stands out as being unique. I gained some powerful insights on a personal level and am now expanding my repertoire of skills for deepening all my relationships significantly.
I have a whole new landscape to explore and so many new ways of creating more intimate connections.
This will help me in both my personal and professional life. Thank you for this wonderful gift!
As a professional leadership and team development coach I've spent the past few decades as a passionate student (and teacher) of transformational work. After attending just one Circling® event I knew there was something uniquely special about the methods and skills that were being practiced. It was a natural choice to join in the Art of Circling® training.
With one surprise after another, I discovered new insights and depths to my own blind spots, gifts, fears, and desires. I partnered with peers in my training in ways far beyond what I thought possible, and feel connected to myself and others more than I have in my entire life.
I can’t thank the faculty and support team of AOC enough for making this work accessible and applicable regardless of previous experience or training. Truly a magical process and experience!
I have always been drawn to relationships and connection with others. For the majority of my adult life, my interactions focused on soothing and fixing and working through a problem.
I began to be dissatisfied with this approach when a friend introduced me to Circling®. What I discovered changed my life.
Circling® has brought me to a deeper and more authentic way of knowing myself and then being with another. Through the Circling® process, veils of certainty and knowing about another slip away which allow for true listening and discovery and I have witnessed creation of a new reality both for myself and in others. The process beautifully weaves in both our sovereign nature and our connectedness. Imagine the “me” and the “we” space magically dancing together…that is Circling for me.
I was first drawn to Circling® to learn to listen and respond to friends’ stories, feelings and challenges. I found myself very clumsy in this regard. Often when I listened I would become overwhelmed by some feelings but didn’t know how to articulate my empathy and care.I didn’t know how to ask the right questions, or ask with the right tone so I wouldn’t sound critical, contrarian or challenging. Quite often I couldn’t resist the urge to share analysis or advice or reassurance, even though I knew it hadn’t been received well. Often I even thought “it doesn’t make sense, the way they’re thinking and reacting” and I tried to offer more positive viewpoints.
In my first Circling® weekend (May 2019!), I observed the vast difference between my own response (verbalized or not) and the facilitator’s way of responding, and the vast difference in how we impacted the sharer (the Circle). I recalled a recent personal experience, where I was deeply related to, deeply witnessed, and how expectedly but drastically it changed my life. By the end of that first weekend, I concluded that this Original Circling® Approach was the key to that: relating so the other feels seen.
So these days, in the Art of Circling® program, I’m learning to listen to what matters, I’m learning to pay attention to the feeling undertone. To reflect back what was shared and to check my understanding. To ask “deepening questions” (this is hard for me). To be with another’s feelings. To be with my own feelings. To share how I’m touched or impacted. To experience myself impacted. To witness and to hold space. All is still hard for me.
The bonuses of this practice have been: connecting deeply with others, becoming vulnerable, visiting my shadows and even wounds, hearing inner-world reflections that underline the human conditions like in literature, stories that expand my awareness or reflect my own, flexing relational muscles I didn’t know I had, discovering my weaknesses and strengths, being humbled by the finesse of my teachers and peers, becoming more in touch with my feelings, articulating them, doing deeper, being seen deeper, and seeing deeper.
A few years ago, at the ripe age of 63, I decided to join the Art of Circling® Training. I did so because I thought it would be an opportunity to learn how to have deeper and more meaningful conversations with people. Although that is true of the training,
what I experienced was more expansive than I could imagine.
What I started and continue to learn is how to have a deep conversation with myself.
This arose from the first stage of The Original Circling® Approach, called Sovereign.
At first, Sovereign skills helped me to know what I am feeling. That capacity has grown to include knowing the impact that others have on me, what is my truth vs. what has been conditioned into me by my family and society. Everyday I grow stronger in my self awareness. The stronger I get with myself, the clearer and stronger I get in my relationships.
I have also applied my Circling skills to my business world as well. I am currently a National Sales Manager and my company noticed how valuable these skills are and asked to facilitate more conscious culture practices as part of my job. I have been able to bring more harmony and clarity in some strained relationships through the use of Circling™ Approach techniques.
I have learned how to consciously be with others and explore their worlds in a sacred non invasive way (using the second stage of Original Circling® Approach, Explorer-Getting someone’s world). I have had very successful experiences with our brokers, so much so that when I spend days riding along with the reps, the day usually ends with “Wow, Thank You Blessing, I have never felt so seen before!”
At the end of the day what I get from being more vulnerable, more transparent, more communicative and more curious is I get to be and feel more ALIVE. What a Gift!
I really had no idea what I was getting into when I first said yes to a Circling® Intensive Weekend (Deep Dive) in Minneapolis. All I knew was that a good friend of mine had put everything she had on the line to train in this obscure art, and she seemed ever more radiant as the months went by.
It turns out that I had earned an introduction to a practice that has, since touching my life, divinely assisted me in getting out of my own way.
I’ve always had trouble with sitting meditation, and I’ve been plagued by the guilt of failing to discipline myself in that way. But lo and behold! It was just that I was trying the wrong thing. Through this “relational yoga” practice of Circling®,
I was introduced to the invitation to “get another’s world”.
This invitation necessitates a stepping out of my own thinking process in order to be present enough to really get what the other is saying. As I put forth my effort to hear this person, as I really struggle to get what they are trying to communicate, I do not have space left to plan what I am going to say or how I am going to defend, argue or back them up.
For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t interrupting! I felt immediately so relieved that I could indeed be present.
Circling® is a practice and an art. It has theory and skills that are developed over time and much training. I am still at the beginning of the road towards mastery of Circling®. However, I just passed the one yeear anniversary of studying and practicing Circling alongside my beloved companion. We have had the immense gift and, often, curse (of unrelenting intensity) to bring our
avid dedication in this practice to our day to day intimate relationship.
An intimate relationship can be the hardest place to stay present that I have found. Whew, it has been quite a journey! I know for certain that without Circling® we would not be at the depth and breadth of engagement and intimacy that we are now. And quiite possibly we would not have even made it past the hurdles and tests of trust to stand together today.
I am imagining that it is like we have been training with heavy weights e.g. I invite you to get curious when your partner is saying the one thing that scares the shit out of you! Again and again. After failing and still choosing to get up. Even stretching. I am imagining that – as I am unleashed upon the world as a Circler at some point again – I will have a much deeper capacity to hold in centeredness the intensity of the other’s emotional storms and expressions. Let’s see, day by day.
Not coincidentally, I now have a consistent sitting meditation practice as well. Thanks for expanding my view of what focusing my mind and awareness on can look like, my practice has evolved to more of a feeling practice, an effort towards true and expansive embodiment. A deep bow of gratitude to Guy and the legacy of Circling™ for illuminating a doorway through which
I may reclaim my power of presence.
What are you ready to reclaim? Find out at a next Circling® Intensive Weekend.
I’ll hold the door for you~
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