Sharing Circle v3

The third round of our sharing circle

Format

Bi-weekly sharing circle, every second Sunday, starting at 14:00. Rotating location. 8 sessions + retrospective.

1. Connecting Activity (eg. Authentic Relating Games)

2. Check-In: how are you feeling right now?

3. Sharing: what is alive for you right now?

4. Check-Out: how are you feeling right now?

5. Next Circle

6. Announcements

During retrospective after round 2 we decided to remove topics and focus on what is coming up for us in the moment.

Bringing New People

We're bringing new people in slowly and gradually. Any current participant can suggest bringing a new person for the next circle. We're aiming to bring no more than 1-2 new people per circle, and not bring people in every time, to allow for slow build up of intimacy between participants.

Progress

We decided to skip one circle as it coincided with our Summer Gathering. We then skipped another circle, as there were not enough people to participate (a few people left for the summer, and a few work in tourism which is very intense during the summer).

We also decided to postpone the retrospective until the end of summer, to ensure more people participate.

Connecting Activities

Here's a list of the connecting activities we tried with a short description.

Noticing Game

Authentic relating game in pairs. One person starts with "Being here with you, I notice..." and completes the sentence with a feeling that is present for them right now. The other replies with either "Hearing that, I notice..." or "Being here with you, I notice". Keep alternating for a given time (eg. 5 minutes). Here's video tutorial (4:27m)

Eye Gazing

Sit in pairs facing each other. Look into each other eyes and maintain the gaze for a given time (eg. 5 minutes). It's okay to blink. If you notice your attention drifting away, bring it back to the eyes or the person in front of you. Btw, it's okay to laugh, but avoid speaking. Here's an article about eye gazing (5m read)

Appreciation Game

Everyone write their name on a piece of paper and put it in a bag. Each person picks one name randomly and thinks about a few things they appreciate about that person. In turns one person shares the appreciation with the circle, while everyone tries to guess who is it for. Space for hugs once the guessing is done.

Blindfolded Walk

Divide into pairs. One person is blindfolded, the other guides them around the space. Swap after a few minutes. This is particularly great if you can go outside and explore. Let the blindfolded people touch, smell, hear...

Gratitude Round

Each person shares around 10 things that they are grateful for, starting with a sentence stem: "I'm thankful and grateful for..."

Aum

Sharing an Aum together.

Few Breaths Together

A moment of silence and self-grounding.

Sharing Yerba Mate

Passing around a traditional South American drink.

Intention Drawing

Connecting with an intention important to you and transforming it into a drawing. Sharing with others afterwards.

Retrospective

It's almost a year since we started our Sharing Circle in Pico, and a few amazing things sprouted from it (Pico Animal Sanctuary, Drum Crew, Winter Gathering, Summer Gathering, and perhaps more things that are not immediatelly obvious). In that aspect, the circle has been a great success, and it did indeed created a feeling of close emotional connection between participants.

Our initial hypothesis that numerous people will want to join us, have proven to be inaccurate. In fact, there are only 8 people actively involved in the circle. Our hypothesis is that a bi-weekly commitment is not something more people are willing to do, and perhaps the format of the circle is not attractive enough for more people to join. With that in mind, perhaps it's not really our goal to keep expanding the circle, but rather use gatherings for that purpose.

The retrospective also brought up two main threads:

• It would be useful to have more variety in terms of activities and less format / structure

• There is a tremendous, although not necessarily immediately obvious value in the sharing circle format and it's valuable to preserve it. This has been particularly obvious in two circles when people really needed this safe space for deep sharing, which wouldn't have happened in a more spontaneous context.

We decided to open up to more experiments with the next iteration of the circle, to see if we can combine the deep sharing space with more variety in activities and less format. See notes for the round 4.