Circle facilitation & flow

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<aside> <img src="/icons/feather_red.svg" alt="/icons/feather_red.svg" width="40px" /> MY INTENTIONS AND COMMITMENTS

All GW circles are currently organised and facilitated by me. As a GW guest circle member, you can hold me to the following intentions and commitments:

To hold each circle member as unique, whole, complex, and of equal worth.
To balance holding guest circle members, the social field, and the intention of GW in my awareness, as much as possible.
To hold my roles as GW’s host and producer in a way that doesn’t reduce guest circle members’ humanity (i.e. where guest circle members are reduced to being a means to an end.)
To keep the group focused on ecological enquiry if the group becomes too analytical, wanders off from personal and collective enquiry into practical tools or other people’s teachings, stays in the details as opposed to diving deep into what’s most alive, or stays at a surface level.
To be reasonably available before the recording, to support guest members in feeling equipped to be a GW guest circle member, and after, to support completion. </aside>

<aside> <img src="/icons/water_red.svg" alt="/icons/water_red.svg" width="40px" /> THE FLOW OF AN ECOLOGICAL ENQUIRY CIRCLE

In an ecological enquiry circle, we ‘investigate’ our lived experiences, ideas, worldviews, and blindspots so that we can start to discover just how much we are informed by each other, place, social constructs, relationship, interbeing, social systems, the natural world, the more-than-human, current events, histories, ancestral lines, and possible futures (and more!).

Through this discovery, we can start to know just how deeply relational and complex we are as individuals, groups, communities, and organisations. This knowing can help us better understand ourselves and each other, while also igniting a desire to live our lives with more sensitivity and response-ability as members of this multispecies, multigenerational world.

The way that I facilitate ecological enquiry is mostly unfurls like this:

Check in and introductions.
I open up the enquiry circle by asking if anyone in the circle has a lived experience they would generously bring into the group as a springboard into shared ecological enquiry, with the lived experience being something that they are at the centre of, that matters to them, and that they’re lacking insight into.

For example, this could look like: ‘I have a worldview that troubles me and I don’t understand where it comes from’. Or, ‘I was in a meeting the other day and I was really confused about what happened and why I behaved the way I did’. Or, ‘I feel like I’ve never found a place that makes me feel like I’m at home, and I don’t know if I ever will’. Or, ‘I don’t have a clear ancestral heritage and I wonder how this affects my sense of who I am and my place in the world’.
When in a circle with members that haven’t practiced ecological enquiry before, which is most GW circles, I will then ask the group to hold space and pay attention while I facilitate the start of the process, as though the other person and I were in a 1 - 1 session.

I’ll start by opening up the situation. This might be through questions, such as: ‘Could you tell me more about this aspect?’, or ‘That sentence you just said there, let’s dive into that more. What did you mean by … ?’, or ‘It sounds like there’s an underlying story there about how the world works. Are you happy to explore that more with me?’

I might also start to share what’s alive in me as I engage with the guest circle member, such as: ‘As I was listening to you, I noticed that a memory came up for me …’ , or ‘I’m feeling so much empathy for what you’re sharing about a lack of sense of self. I notice my own lack of clear ancestral heritage and how I hold questions about what it means for me to be a so-called white, middle class woman in the UK…’.
When it feels right, I’ll invite the rest of the circle members to join in the enquiry, inviting them to ask questions if they need more information to help ‘investigate’ the lived experience, as well as inviting them to start voicing what they notice is alive in them.
I view enquiry like a river: it meanders where it needs to, going left, then right, then widening, then narrowing. The same is true for ecological enquiry. The attention therefore doesn’t need to stay on the person who started us off. Perhaps someone’s response to the original enquiry really intrigues us, and so we follow that intrigue as it takes us in a new direction.
Near the end of our circle, I’ll bring our attention to the close of our circle and ask us if there’s anything that feels important to share before we head into check-outs.
Check outs.

Throughout, my role as the facilitator is to:

When useful, share information about the ecological enquiry process to help us deepen our enquiry. This could be sharing about what ecological enquiry cares about (and why it matters), or inviting us to be with each other in a certain way (and why we do it this way instead of another way).
Keep our attention on our experience as we experienced it, i.e. dropping assumptions, guesses, and stories, especially when speaking of others. For example, staying in ‘I’ language and perspective: ‘I found their behaviour confusing because I didn’t understand what they needed at the moment and when I asked, they said they didn’t feel comfortable telling me. I imagine that was because of …. ’, instead of ‘They were being really confusing and shut me down.’
Help hold the container for the ecological enquiry meanderings, so that the cohesion can give rise to emergence.
If relevant, invite us to be in the intelligence of stillness and silence together.
Keep an eye on time, so that guest circle members can be as fully in the room as possible. </aside>

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