There is Nothing so Wise as a Circle

There is nothing so wise as a circle.

What is the power of sitting in a circle, of breaking our very Western demand that one person be the focus of all the others?

From insisting that all the kids face the teacher, kindergarten classrooms have Circle Time, when community is emphasized and any issues that affect the group can be brought up.

From our face-front world, retreat center events conduct their events frequently in circles, and people jet or speed home, feeling they’ve communed with kindred spirits.

From the antagonistic, one against one (or many against many) world of street crime, young people may avoid incarceration in part by entering restorative justice circles, where they learn the power of speaking and being heard.

Even much leadership training breaks executives’ reticence down by placing them, too, in a circle formation. Despite their white-hot grip on their cell phones (which they may think invisible in a speaker-forward, kid-at-the-back-of-the-class formation) they must bare their hearts to the group … not through anything they say, but through their very positions, literally exposing the heart area to the whole group at once.

There is nowhere to hide in a circle.

There is also no way to dominate.

The circle demands that you show up, remembering that, as the saying goes, “You are not better than anyone, and no one is better than you.” The circle demands both radical courage and radical humility, the enactment of the noble belief that the singular human being is simultaneously everything and nothing.

In THE HUMAN JOURNEY®, whether our participants are facing the computer to participate with family or support group members from afar, or they are at bedside around a patient, in a traditional support-group circle, or around a dining or coffee table, the trained THJ® Conductor ensures their even participation, softening and equalizing the inevitable power plays, accreted baggage, and habitual ways of relating. With their skill (and yours with just eight hours of small group training), the power of the circle can bring its wisdom as they chart the future they want to have together.

In another post, we’ll share how the eternal form of the labyrinth — a very special kind of circle — found its way into THE HUMAN JOURNEY® … and how participants get themselves into … and out of it.

Related Posts

A stylized portrait of the Founding Fathers at Mount Rushmore
How THE HUMAN JOURNEY® works
Sara K Schneider

So, Who’s the Father?

So, Who’s the Father?” isn’t exactly what a person who’s expecting wants to hear. It can feel like an accusation, like an invasion of privacy, or like a completely irrelevant question, depending on one’s method of conception, key relationships, or plan for childrearing. Even in days when there were fewer methods for conceiving a child or for avenues for getting one to adulthood, Emily Post might have advised just to stick with a hearty congratulations.

Read More »
Group Dynamics
Sara K Schneider

Ostranenie: A Fantastic Russian Word

Learn to pronounce ostranenie and impress your friends with your accent as well as with this cool word.

And what a concept … to learn to re-see, as if with new eyes, those things our eyes think they know so well, they no longer see them at all.

To find wonder again and again in the way our sister-in-law calls company in for dinner without the least hint of anxiety, exhaustion, or sense of the extraordinary event.

To learn anew about the people we think we know best.

Read More »
Activities & Tools
Sara K Schneider

The Creature Comforts Checklist

This is it our “Creature Comforts Checklist.” It’s an odd name, we know.

We called it that, recognizing that grief is a very physical thing and that sometimes what grievers most need (aside from not being asked if they need anything) is not to talk but to be. Just a creature.

When you’re grieving, you miss the physical presence of the person you lost …

Read More »
Distressed young woman in bed, with her eyes closed, her hand high on her chest, near her throat, and a pillow on her lap.
Activities & Tools
Sara K Schneider

Beyond “In Through the Nose, Out Through the Mouth”

You’ve seen it a thousand times on television. Just a bit of momentary drama to set the stage. It’s a medical show. Someone is having an anxiety attack. Maybe he’s hyperventilating. The medical professional or first responder fixes her eyes on this (typically) mouth breather

Read More »
How THE HUMAN JOURNEY® works
Sara K Schneider

How Can Something Be Neither Good Nor Bad?

It’s super fun to watch someone’s thinking shift right in front of you. They might jerk still suddenly, their eyes wide and long, like old cartoon figures in a haunted house or a dark cave, when all you could see was the eyes. That’s part of the joy

Read More »
Healing
Sara K Schneider

Becoming the Witness

  I’m an avid reader of Twitter for its political and epidemiological news, which often appear prior to (and prove more informative than) what can be made available under the rubric of conventional media. I continue to be struck by a story that Pulitzer Prize-winning

Read More »