CHAPTER
8
Activating and Responding in a Social Container

In Western culture, we are trained to focus on communication through words. We study the nuances of language and analyze other people’s communication, from e-mails to major speeches. Yet everyday experiences remind us how much is being communicated beyond words: we sense other people’s moods, we feel welcomed or not walking into a room, we know when to leave a threatening situation. Nonverbal cues of communication are intensified in a circle where we pause and face each other. Understanding and harnessing the circle’s energetic patterns is an essential leadership skill.

Amid the snap of table legs folding and the chaos of moving chairs, the radio on the young man’s belt suddenly crackled into noise and a somewhat garbled bosslike voice boomed into the empty, large, lower-level conference room. “Casey, what the hell is going in 1108B? You there?”

The young man grabbed for the volume control and turned his back as though we couldn’t hear him if he weren’t looking directly at us. “There’s two ladies down here moving all the tables,” he said. “They ordered a chairs-only setup.”

“Do you have the paperwork?”

“No, sir. Can’t find it. Can’t find Lindsay either. She’s got the clipboard, and it’s fifteen minutes to showtime.”

“Are they the facilitators?”

“Yes, sir.” He looked tentatively over at us, as if to make sure.

“How are they going to run their slides in that arrangement?”

“No slides, sir—they moved the projector out of the middle of the room. They want a coffee table. There’s a candle, sir. They say its battery-operated—just an LED light.”

There was a pause that felt like a four-letter word uttered silently to himself, then a final order, “OK, do what they want. I’ll send Tyrone to help you put it back together during lunch.” The radio went dead. We continued moving the tables.

“You just out of the military, Casey?” Christina asked.

“Yes, sir—ma’am.” He blushed.

“You know, a lot of professions are run on a kind of military model. In hospitals, they talk about officers—the chief nursing officer is the big ‘kahuna,’ and the floor nurses are called the ‘front line.’ When you have to trust your buddies—whether it’s in combat or in an emergency on a nursing unit—a lot depends on how you talk to each other during the calm times. All the stories you share about where you come from, who you love back home, what you’re gonna do when you get out or stateside—they help you know each other so that when you just gotta bark orders, somehow everyone knows what to do.”

“Yeah,” he said, eyes lighting up. “It’s like we’re all one body. Like we got eyes in the back of our heads and twenty legs. Like we’re Transformers or something”—he looks to see if we know what he’s talking about—“those toys that turn into robots?” We nod, grateful that our office manager’s son has brought some models to entertain himself on days when he’s out of school and playing in the back room. For a few seconds, we’re hip. “Is that what you’re doing here?”he asked.

“We’re reminding people what that feels like,” Ann replied, “how important it is to tell stories and share information when there’s a little respite—so that we can move as one body when we know what’s needed next. This circle is like when you all squatted in the sand and huddled to talk—only more comfortable.”

“And less dangerous,” Christina laughed, “at least most of the time. It’s what we call ‘making the social container.’” Casey’s radio sputtered again, and he was gone.

Using the word container or containment to talk about social space is a shift in vocabulary occurring as a result of group processes, such as circle, World Café, and Open Space, that work with intention, attention, and practices of listening and speaking. A container is something designed so that something else can be placed within it. A box contains its contents; a circle contains its conversations and relationships.

There is a physical and energetic vulnerability to sitting in circle. We are facing each other, usually without even a table between us. Our soft bellies are exposed, our expressions convey emotional nuance, and our body language is in full view. Our personal energies begin to link up and overlap and influence each other so that even before the first word is spoken, before the bell rings, and before the host starts check-in, we have taken in a lot of information about how we are. We absolutely count on this ability to “read” a group, and most of the time we don’t talk about the intuition or information coming in at this level or even acknowledge that it’s occurring among us.

We’re mammals. We have a finely developed amygdala (sometimes called the primitive brain) that works like a Geiger counter, always testing the levels of danger and safety in our physical surroundings and in our social field. Casey knows what that Geiger counter is like: he’s alive because of it. We sigh, watching him go: we won’t hear his story today—this is not his circle, but we hope he has one. We hope there is a place where his story can be heard and where he feels contained and supported in exploring his truth.

Containment as an Aspect of Group Process

Because the container of circle is both carefully designed by modern-day hosts and attached to the archetypal lineage of circle, the quality of conversation and our expectations of what we can bring forward are intensified. Becoming aware of the social container is a new experience for many people arriving in circle. In the ring of seating and the tangible presence of the center, the imperative to participate hangs expectantly in the air. For some people, circle space is immediately comfortable: when they see the container, they are eager to enter the conversation. We have watched people come into a room where we’ve prepared for circle and sit down, emotional with relief, later reporting that they experienced an immediate sense of “I’ve been looking for this space.” For others, the obvious intentionality and requirements of participation are initially uncomfortable. We have watched people hesitate at the doorway of rooms such as 1108B, looking ready to bolt and mumbling, “I must be in the wrong place.”

People are responding to two things: the container, which is physical, and the containment, which is energetic. These two aspects create the field for interaction and the invitation for synergy. The container holds it all—the seen and the unseen, the tangible and the felt experience, the agenda and the mystery. As hosts, guardians, and participants, understanding social containment increases our comprehension of what’s going on and our confidence that we can sustain group process in the midst of circle’s ordinary and profound energies.

Energy, like weather, is constantly shifting and largely visible through action and reaction. Weather can be calm or stormy. Weather contains and releases power. When the wind shifts, when lightning is about to strike—we know it and take cover. When the storm is over, we emerge gratefully into the sunlight. People tend to feel more confident on “good weather” days than on “bad weather” days. Attentiveness to weather is wired into us—and so is attentiveness to energy. When we step into circle, we are bringing our personal energy into collective energy and creating the weather of the circle. The interaction of energy between people is as natural and normal as weather. There’s one difference: not only are we watching the weather—we are the weather.

Becoming Aware of Our Personal Hoop

All living things emit a subtle electrical field that emanates into the space around them. Every person is dressed in an electromagnetic “space suit” produced by our bodies. This suit of space extends to an average distance of one to two feet beyond our skin in all directions and has a permeable and expanding and contracting boundary. You don’t have to go very far down the rabbit hole to consider this; just walk one city block at noon and notice how people dip and swerve around each other; notice the difference between standing in a park and standing in a crowded elevator. Expansion and contraction are influenced by what is around us in our environment—the electrical charges we receive from others—and by the thoughts, moods, and feelings going on inside us—the electrical charges we are sending into the interpersonal space around us. Weather around us, weather within us. Add to that the careful attention to sitting down, facing each other, and turning up the receptivity, and you get the weather of circle.

The first energetic practice of circle is to step into the social container aware of what is going on inside our individual container so that we can be more conscious of what we are contributing to the space around us. We encourage people to see the ring of chairs as a doorway and to step through that threshold intentionally; to put down papers and bags and to pause to take a few breaths. This is the first check-in—with yourself. How are you right now? What do you notice? Are there aspects of your thinking and feeling that you want to alter before engaging with others? Are there thoughts you need to tuck away so that you can focus? Are there feelings you need to share with others so that you can be present?

In certain North American Native traditions, the electromagnetic field is described as a “personal hoop.” People are taught to be accountable for what enters and leaves their hoop. A few seconds’ pause at the rim of the circle allows us to center ourselves in the middle of our own space suit and to be aware of the persons to our left and right who will be our closest energetic partners as our hoops touch or overlap. Energetically, a circle is comprised of a number of overlapping and expanding and contracting hoops. Whether or not we talk about these things, our brains are hard-wired to send and receive energetic signals and to have a very clear spatial understanding of where we are in relationship to each other—energetically and physically. Ten seconds in a nanosecond world is time enough to make a big difference in how we enter the social container, look around, and greet each other. We are the weather in circle—so let’s offer each other the weather we want to enjoy.

Weather rises in us and moves through us. Sometimes we use this metaphor as a check-in question when we want to get a quick understanding of the energy in the rim. “What’s your personal weather?” and around goes the talking piece. People respond in a word or phrase: “I feel partly cloudy.” “Sunny and breezy.” “Overcast and hoping to clear.” “High-pressure zone, looks good on the outside, churning at high altitude.” A lot of information and diversity emerges through this one question.

And circle teaches us that the sun, the fire at the center around which we are orbiting, is always shining beyond the weather. We notice this when taking off in a jet: when we get above the clouds, we enter an eternal sense of expansiveness, a presence of sunlight or starlight that makes weather irrelevant and dwarfs human concerns. While most of our attention is focused on the weather playing out between us, it is helpful to remember that we are never without light; we, and circle process, are always upheld. Our experience is a question of perspective, and when we know this, it’s as Casey said, “we become one body with eyes in the backs of our heads and twenty legs. Like we’re Transformers or something.” If a young veteran is thinking about such things, so can the rest of us.

Preparing the Physical and Energetic Container for Circle

Once we are committed to personally showing up energetically, we need to arrange the literal space for ourselves to show up within. Many public rooms contain an aura of spent energy that’s been unconsciously left there by thousands of previous meetings. The air seems stale, as though everybody exhaled his or her exhaustion on the way out the door. Rows of recessed fluorescent lighting emit a barely audible shrill whine. Windows are barred with slatted blinds. There may be no view, no windows at all, no natural lighting.

OK, it’s not ideal, and we can do circle here. We can do it because the strengths of the energetic social container will mitigate the drawbacks of the physical container. We can do it because the beauty in the process, the ways people become real to each other in even a few moments of authentic speaking and listening, can compensate for the industrial carpeting and the bare beige walls of foamcore and plasterboard sound barriers. After a while, we won’t notice so much where we are sitting so much as with whom we are sitting and the quality of what’s actually happening.

When convening a circle in a new place, especially when we’ve flown in to offer preconference training or a seminar in a corporate setting, we try to enter the room while it’s still empty. We want to notice what the space feels like without people in it and have a chance to adjust the seating and lighting to be as conducive to circle practices as possible. We clear away clutter around the edges—piles of papers, dirty dishes, or distracting boxes. We have been known to throw tablecloths over the whole mess when necessary and to commandeer plants and floor lamps from the halls or lobby. We raise the shades and let in natural light if we can. We open windows or doors and create a flow of air before people arrive. If we are alone, we stand in the center of the room and clap our hands a few minutes to release stagnant energy and make space for the energy we want to call in.

We ask ourselves, What would make us feel welcomed and relaxed in here? Then we prepare that kind of space for others. Surprise is fun: bringing flowers into a sterile environment, offering bowls of fruit and nuts for refreshment, putting on music—upbeat to generate energy, melodic to calm energy down. We work with the chairs or seating arrangement—making the shape as circular as possible and finding something the right size to serve as the center of the energetic wheel.

The first impression of circle is important. We create a kind of interior design of chairs, flip charts, coffee table and talking piece, and possibly a beverage cart at the edge. Once we have the rim in place and the backdrop beautified, we focus on establishing a meaningful center. We carry with us a number of objects that can be placed in the center and ask our hosts to bring things that are meaningful to this particular group. We are thinking about focus—something beautiful and authentic to look at—and we are thinking about the amount of energy that will soon be channeled toward and through the center space. These elements create the physical level of rim and center. What makes a circle a circle is the energetic level of what’s about to happen. The circle is created by everyone’s relationship to self, to the center, and to the rim.

Understanding the Energetics of Center

The essential role of center becomes even more obvious when considering the energy generated within the social container. Energy is an intermediary relating between one thing and another, always in a state of transition and never the same: energy seeks attachment to something and freedom to move on. In circle process, we want energy attached to center to stabilize the wheel, and we want energy to stay in flow at the interpersonal edge, to not accumulate on any one person.

A young PeerSpirit colleague, Roq Gareau, speaks of envisioning the circle as a bicycle wheel where every person is sitting on the rim with an energetic spoke attached to the hub at the center (see Figure 8.1). Roq says:

“In circle, you activate your spoke. There’s no hiding. The wheel depends on each spoke, each person, being energetically present. If I am saying one thing and being another, others can tell. When there is an energetic wobble in me, there is an energetic wobble in the circle—a wheel with a loose spoke cannot turn true. When there is strength in me, there is strength in the circle. I hold my place on the wheel, with the center as the source of strength, and offer myself as the source of balance.”

This is a useful working definition of containment and attachment in circle and defines the energetic work of everyone on the rim.

The center is serving as transpersonal space—a place that belongs to everyone and to no one. It is the space of the collective where the third principle—“Ultimate reliance on wholeness”—is made tangible. Imagine the circle as a tiny village with a center plot of grass. This common ground was used as the safe place where everyone could put their cows for safekeeping so that they were protected from predators by the outer rim of family huts. The ground belonged to the village as a shared community asset. In circle, commentary, instead of cows, goes into the middle. Here we protect each other’s contributions from predation and understand that we form an outer rim of personal hoops contributing to shared intention. We protect this space, we honor it, and we speak to the center.

Sometimes people stare at the center while talking and listening; sometimes people look at one another. Where people look is less significant than where they send their energy. The practice of energizing the center focuses on sending and receiving each other’s words through the space of our common ground. This can be a difficult practice to understand, as it shifts us of out of strictly interpersonal space, a familiar social context that occurs in many settings. In the exchanges of interpersonal space, two or more speakers are perceived as playing verbal tennis: one speaks and serves the ball to the other; the other speaks and serves it back. The goal is to keep the exchange in play until someone wins the point or the volley is complete. We know how to engage in rewarding dialogues. We may need to reimagine how the center and circle allow conversation to go even deeper: we lay the tennis ball down gently in the center.

The Role of Center in Conflict Resolution

The practice of talking to and listening from the center allows people to express divergent thoughts, feelings, and opinions and keep on listening. When we are energetically engaged with a strong center in place, the scope of conversation can expand into new territory. We can shift from the comfort of like-mindedness, in which we seek agreement and commonality as guarantees of social safety, to curious like-heartedness, where new perspectives emerge from thoroughly exploring differences. To hear one another through our differences, we need a transpersonal holding spot, a way to spread out the conversation as though it were a treasure map and curiously examine the thoughts, feelings, and stories that carry us forward to the fulfillment of intent.

Understanding how to use the center’s transpersonal capacities has allowed us to help a father and son overcome a major disagreement about the young man’s college behavior, to help church congregations talk about homophobia, and to help staff teams admit to bullying in the workplace and invite new behavior and accountability. Other friends and PeerSpirit colleagues have hosted conversations between Palestinians and Israelis; between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland; and between townspeople, tribal members, and farmers over land use rights. The more highly charged a conversation becomes, the more important the use of the center becomes.

FIGURE 8.1

Most human conflicts arise from a passion that has not had space to be fully expressed or witnessed by the other side. The father and son cannot change their relationship until they have heard each other out; conservatives and gay people cannot let go of their differences until they have each been listened to; the Catholics have to be heard by the Protestants and the Protestants have to be heard by the Catholics; and so on. The literal and energetic presence of the center in circle allows us enough room so that those holding conflicting views can begin to loosen their attachments to their position. Only then can the agreement “We listen to each other with curiosity and compassion, withholding judgment” truly take hold.

Imagine that everyone on the rim has an arrow—not a weapon, but a pointed view—as in Figure 8.1. As people speak, they throw the arrow far as their intention extends. So if they are energetically speaking to the center, their arrow lands there; if they are speaking to someone on the opposite rim, the arrow flies across the room. The goal is to fill the center with arrows—not to fill people’s laps. In the center, arrows feed the fire and build like-heartedness—the sense that we can disagree yet still be respectful of one another.

Because the archetype of circle is present, language that comes from this lineage can communicate the essence of the center’s power. “Speak to the fire,” “Don’t cross the fire with your anger,” and “Feed your story to the center” are all phrases that will work when the circle is energetically hot. These reminders help people direct emotions, opinions, and declarations toward the center and each other.

The core practice of conflict resolution in circle is our ability to anchor our individual reactions in our personal hoops and anchor our intentions to the center. “I don’t understand my son, and I will listen.” “I don’t understand how the Israelis can build a wall through my village, and I can look for something that allows us to reach across that wall.” Anchoring our energy to the center creates a container capable of holding great sweetness and absorbing great tension. This anchoring has a profound impact on people’s experience of subtle and subjective elements, such as a sense of safety, inclusion, spaciousness for story, and the ability to respond appropriately to conflict.

When the circle’s energy is anchored to the center, we can trust each other to be passionate and respectful. And the energy of the arrows goes both ways: we need to honor the center, and we need to stay in our hoops. As we practice this, we can release lots of energy and not threaten the stability of the container.

During a check-in at a gathering of twenty-five leaders in financial planning, we were about two-thirds of the way around the circle, with each person putting an object in the middle that represented his or her relationship to the profession. There were photos and feathers and small stones and meaningful objects from desks back home. Then one man pulled a large, jagged rock nearly the size of a soccer ball out of a cloth bag. He held it over his head as if he were going to throw it from his seat about fifteen feet into the center. “It’s time for us to make a big splash!” he declared boldly. “It’s urgent out there in the world. What are we waiting for?” He waved the rock in the air, and people winced a bit to see what he would do. He paused for a few seconds and then lowered the rock over his heart. “Let me speak for myself,” he said more calmly. “I am ready to make the big splash with my life. I feel urgent. I am here because I want to make the big kerplunk.” Now he lowered the rock to his lap. “I am seeking community. I am seeking courage—and support of my courage.” His voice cracked with emotion. He got up and walked to the center and carefully set the rock down.

He had noticed that his energy was overshooting the center and pulled it back, stabilizing himself in his own hoop, and switching into “I” statements. After this restabilization, he could make a heartfelt contribution to the quality of check-in. Though his words were challenging, we heard him because he shifted his energy.

The Energetic Roles of Host and Guardian

In the social containment of circle, the role of the host and guardian is a seamless collaboration—like a Möbius strip—in which each person assists the other in tracking the energy within the group process. A Möbius strip is a one-sided three-dimensional object (see Figure 8.2). The simplest way to make one is to cut a strip of paper, twist it once, and paste the two ends together. Voilà!—a circle, and an environment, where there are no leader or follower positions: all is in motion—host, guardian, and all participants.

FIGURE 8.2

By sitting across from each other, the host and guardian carefully watch the other side of the circle. They provide a compass of leadership that tends to activate others around the rim to step into their own leadership. Just as the guardian’s bell is a voice in the circle, energy has a seat in the circle, and the host is hosting it.

Hosting Energy

This doesn’t mean that the host is in charge of energy, only that the host is attending to energetic attachment and flow within the circle as well as the attachment and flow of conversation. The host is volunteering to tune in to the larger, invisible hoop, using the personal filter of his or her own experience as a test for the collective experience, and to test these perceptions verbally: “I’m thinking we’re done with this topic. Do you agree?” “I need a break. How about you?” Or, as is modeled in Chapter 4, the host may openly ask the guardian or the group for assistance when stymied by group process: “I’m not sure what to do next. What do you think?” In the Möbius strip of interaction, the three principles of rotating leadership, shared responsibility, and reliance on wholeness are always in play.

Our colleague Roq expresses his understanding of hosting energy in the following way:

“When I am hosting, I practice using my self-experience as a barometer for group experience. I give special attention to my own hoop, tucking away as best I can whatever doesn’t serve the circle. I register what’s going on with others through body language, voice tone, and sense of engagement. By asking questions, I learn how clear I am—or not—and so my practice improves.

“As host, my response to what is happening is different than other participants’ as I am asking the center, ‘What is most needed?’ And sometimes what’s needed is not my usual way of participating. For example, if people are staying in their heads around an issue that requires that we move to our hearts, I will take the risk to shift into vulnerability to break open the pattern for the rest of the group. Or sometimes I have needed to go sharp, to show up with my clear anger. This is not my personal style at all, but I’ve chosen fierceness when it seemed we needed to relight the fire. This anger has been an arrow to the center—naming something that we were avoiding or trying to help the circle get in touch with productive outrage.”

Roq’s clarity is important here: the host’s focus is to preserve the intention, and sometimes for that to happen, the weather has to shift. If a group has been stormy, it needs some calm; if a group has been languishing in the sunshine, it needs a lightning bolt to wake it up to purpose again. Hosting at the energetic level requires a willingness to shift moods, to detach from comfort and help the energy attach at the center and flow at the rim. The guardian is a partner in this practice, and so are all the participants. Everyone is moving around the Möbius strip.

Guardian of Energy

The role of a guardian and the use of the bell as an interceding voice modulate the energy in the circle’s social container. As the guardian watches over the energetic level of group process, he or she holds the bell, (chime, singing bowl, or other neutral sound maker) and rings it to pause interaction. When the bell rings, everything stops. The purpose of the pause is to give all participants a little time and space to inquire what is happening inside themselves at this very moment. It is an invitation to regulate one’s own nervous system: Am I agitated or calm? Withdrawn? Paying attention? Taking responsibility for myself? When the bell stops action, we have time to check in with our personal hoops, to recenter the self and then recenter with the center. The group becomes a living embodiment of the rim-and-center diagram. When the guardian rings the bell a second time to release the pause and speaks to why the pause was called, the guardian becomes the spokesperson for the circle’s energetic needs. Remember that anyone can ask the guardian to ring the bell and announce the reason for the pause.

The time to normalize and support the practice of pausing is when the circle is moving along smoothly. To establish this, we often ring the bell during a check-in or other round of talking piece at the quarter turns and say something like “We’re a quarter (half, three-quarters) of the way around. Let’s take a breath, hold the center, and prepare to hear the remaining voices.” In this little ritual, people learn not to react personally to the bell. We notice what it takes to self-regulate: to be a little surprised, perhaps to feel a little interrupted, and then to choose to come back to self-center. We can choose to be curious about what’s happening instead of immediately jumping into judgment of self or other.

When the bell rings in a moment of calm or ceremonial marking of transition points, we have an opportunity for tapping into spaciousness. The group comes to expect and often enjoy both the sound of the bell and the experience of the pause. In addition, ringing the bell at transition points, such as completing a round or shifting from one topic to the next, honors the energy that has been generated, anchors it, and marks the shift into the next thing.

The bell also reminds us of the intermediary nature of energy as we move through the pattern of a circle meeting and helps keep the social container clear. When the host or any participant asks, “Could we have the bell?” it gives everyone a chance to take a breath, to stretch, perhaps to have a break before moving on. When we are so focused on speaking intentionally, listening attentively, and tending to the well-being of the group, we need a little release of attention—the way coughing moves through an audience between movements of a symphony or songs in a set. It’s mostly nervous energy. The release is not dismissive; it creates a boundary, a way to set one thing aside and welcome another.

If you’re on the water in a kayak, there are times to paddle and times to rest. The voice of the bell calls us into a little eddy, to rest in the swirl that’s not rushing downriver or caught in the current. Participants know that the guardian is watching the waters; that the rest of us can stretch, relax, take our paddles out of the water, look around, and then start paddling again, refreshed.

Holding the Container in a Storm

As a highly skilled kayaker, Ann is a great student of weather. She knows the first faint changes in wind, current, and clouds can mean the difference between getting safely back to shore or being caught in high seas. When paddling, she is our weather guardian, attuned to nuances that the rest of us don’t yet notice. We may have started out on a calm, sunny morning, and then conditions start to change. There’s no stopping the weather. It is by its very nature changeable: the winds will come up and the tides will ebb and flow and the calm will return.

When looking back at on the weather of circle, there is often a similar sense of inevitability: energy will intensify and subside, we will feel incredibly connected in heart and mind, and we will feel nearly torn asunder. As long as we keep leaning into the conversational structure and tending the social container, we will find our way back to calm seas. What makes these experiences of weather and wobbliness worthwhile is that successful self-governance is ours to celebrate. Circle is an experience of being truly grown up, capable of managing the impulses of our own internal reactions and handling the impulses and reactions of others—not perfectly but satisfactorily.

Throughout this book, the illustrative stories focus on conversational infrastructure so that we learn to trust our capacities when the weather changes, when the Geiger counter suddenly starts clicking, when our hearts race with the bigness of what’s occurring—and we’re right in the middle of it. Energy shows up in the circle because it is a container. Energy shows up in us because we are containers.

Though it had been accumulating and dissipating in a project team for several months, there was a moment when tension between Diana, the human resource representative, and Doug, the technology expert, came to a head. Diana had the talking piece at the end of a round of idea generation, and Doug interjected a comment just as she was making her point. “I get it, Dee. Can we just move on?”

Diana stopped, disconcerted and surprised. “Dammit, Doug. You’ve interrupted me every time I’ve talked for the past week!”

“No, I haven’t,” Doug countered.

“Well, you just did it again. The purpose of this thing is to give me a chance to finish my thoughts without interruption.” She shook the talking piece, a chunk of polished agate the host had brought for use that day, at Doug. She took several deep breaths and went red in the face. The host and guardian looked at each other across the circle. Several people stiff ened a little. Group energy shifted into “level orange.”

Doug, not noticing, plowed on with his next comment. “I don’t get why you’re so touchy. I’m trying to get something done in this circle process, not just process!” He pushed back his chair as though wishing to eject himself from the rim. The invisible arrows had just been thrown with force across the space—and the guardian and host had been caught off guard in the few seconds of heated exchange.

Mike, the host, recovered and asked for the bell. “Hey, Susan, ring that thing!” he called out. She did. Everyone paused and looked to him for guidance. “OK,” he said, “I think there’s an issue here we’d better talk about—and I’m not sure what it is. Are you two willing to go there?”

Though it may seem counterintuitive, it is most helpful to slow down when tension rises instead of speeding up. Tension is a yellow light—if everyone speeds into the intersection, there’s going to be a crash. Pausing the action allows everyone a chance to put on the brakes and let the momentum roll to a safe stop. Energy is rolling around like a loose hubcap. People need to take a breath and make sure they are grounded in their own hoops so they can hold the rim, hold the center, and see how to contribute to whatever is going to happen next. Mike may not know exactly what’s going on, but he is wise enough to call the conflict forward, to see the tension as something that requires group attention.

“I’m willing,” said Diana. Her voice shook with emotion, and she started to tap her foot nervously on the carpeting, looking increasingly agitated.

Agitation is a signal that a lot of energy is running through someone. Diana may have been agitated before Doug interrupted her; maybe no one noticed, not even herself. This is not group therapy: this is business. We have an expectation—or at least a tendency to hope—that whatever is going on in the background for Diana, for Doug, and for any member of the group will be pulled into their hoops and tucked away so that we can proceed with the anticipated topics. Sometimes this is possible; sometimes it’s not. We all have in our personal hoops a little trash bin where we can deposit the imperfections of interaction and our reactions to them and keep them out of the way so we can move forward. Even if it is business, or the Parent-Teacher Association or Monday night at the League of Women Voters, our histories and vulnerabilities are with us—we need to get the banana peels out of the way. And then something happens, a slipping point, and the trash bin turns into a careening Dumpster that breaks out of our personal hoop and into the space of the group.

Mary, the woman seated next to Diana, reached over and squeezed her forearm gently. “It’s OK,” she said. “It’s OK.”

The woman doesn’t actually know whether it’s OK or not. She’s made a calculated choice to try to help Diana ground her energy by offering a comforting gesture and phrase. She’s hoping to interrupt the circuitry of agitation and invite Diana to compose herself.

Doug turned to Mike. “Can we do this in five minutes?”

“We can try.” Mike paused to gather his thoughts. “We’ve got a basically good circle process going here. I don’t know what’s really irritating the two of you; maybe it’s a bigger issue—maybe it’s the tension between thinking and doing. So, first Diana and then Doug, let’s see what—”

Mike’s sentence was cut off by a throaty cry from Diana, who exploded into an angry diatribe about how circles are manipulative, cults of personality, how she feels like a pawn, how the men take all the space. People sat shocked, surprised, and unsure what to do next. Adrenaline was pumping through everyone’s veins. Alert level went to red. Susan’s hands twitched holding the bells: when to ring? Should she interrupt? This felt horrible, but maybe Diana was “asking for what she needed” by dumping her load. Mike gave her a nod. She rang the bell loudly—jarring their ears, but the sound penetrated Diana’s harangue. She stopped talking and burst into tears. “Whoa,” exclaimed Mike. “I’ve got no clue here, guys.” The group sat frozen in place listening to Diana cry, totally uncomfortable.

Nevertheless, the circle is holding. Everything is happening in the only way it can happen—even though all kinds of impulses are firing off in people’s minds and bodies, even though “fight or flight” is pumping through the amygdala, people are hanging on to the infrastructure while they figure out how to restore the social container.

The flash flood of Diana’s trauma is contained, has moved through. What feels threatening is the unknown. The wisdom of recovery from this event has not yet emerged. The only thing that can get this group in trouble right now is if people jump out of the energetic presence into judgment: being critical of Diana’s falling apart, of Doug’s insensitivity, of Mike’s clumsiness, of their own ineptness and the stupidity of trying this circle stuff anyway. …

The guardian rang the bell again, more gently in the stillness, leaned in and spoke clearly and firmly, looking around the group and making eye contact with anyone who would look back at her.[“Everyone in this circle has a job: hold the center, stay on the rim. We’ll figure this out together.” There was a palpable energetic shift as people calmed themselves through Susan’s instruction.

Meanwhile, Diana hunched over her lap trying to pull herself together. “I’m so sorry … I’m so embarrassed … I’m so sorry … Don’t look at me …,” she recited.

“Gosh, Dee,” Doug exclaimed, “I didn’t mean to bring on anything like this.”

“Can I touch your back?” Mary inquired. Dee nodded, and Mary placed a hand between Diana’s shoulder blades. “It’s OK,” she whispered again. “Truly, it’s going to be OK. Is there a story behind these feelings?” Diana nodded but did not look up. Mary continued, “We need your help, Diana, to put the circle back together. Can you tell us what’s going on inside you?”

Leadership has rotated, responsibility is being shared, and the group is relying on its wholeness being restored. There is a host, a guardian, and a friend. Diana’s agitation is lessening, and now a sense of electrical discharge is floating around looking for where it needs to land next. Grounding out. Energy wants to attach: so the guardian’s instructions are helpful reminders to put the lightning in the center—don’t take the hit.

First Diana and Doug took their arrows from the center and threw them at each other. When Diana exploded, all the others took their arrows and threw them up in the air. Mike and Susan have caught their arrows and reattached them to the center. Susan’s instructions invite each participant to catch his or her own arrow and reestablish the stability of the wheel. Diana’s arrow is broken in her lap; Doug’s is behind his back—he’s not sure he’s coming in until he knows he’s not the scapegoat.

Mike was breathing again, drawing from the center to steady himself. He looked around the group. “OK, people, let’s take a minute and do an energy check. I think Mary’s right: hearing the story will put the circle back on track. I am willing to listen to whatever Diana has to say as long as she doesn’t shout at us. Everyone can make a choice: stay if you can, leave if you need to; the rim will hold, and we’ll call you back later.” Everyone stayed.

As host, Mike’s decision to let people choose to stay or leave was a risk. What if everyone had left? How then would they have put the circle back together? But the choice itself was significant, and now that things had calmed a bit, they were curious, and supportive. They did have a pretty good circle process going—and they wanted it to keep going.

You may be thinking right now, if this is what’s going to happen in circle, I don’t want to be there. Well, this is what happens anyway, with or without circle. People get their feelings hurt, old patterns break through, resentments mount and never get resolved; five years from now, Doug and Diana could have no idea where the enmity between them started. Without a container for a conversation that never happened, maybe they’ve built up factions and polarized the office environment. Maybe they’ve become less than their best selves and don’t even know it, though their coworkers gossip about their dysfunction, how they don’t seem suited for the positions they hold, and why administration doesn’t replace them is anybody’s guess. Circle didn’t cause this eruption: it is simply dealing with it openly, and something important is being cleared in the moment.

People are learning to be present during another’s volatility and not get into the drama, not take it on. As they integrate their experience in the circle this morning, they will be able to apply it in other areas of their work and lives. Diana blew up: nobody fought back. Diana crumpled: nobody tried to fix her. Even in her emotional state, Mary and Mark are working with Diana as a colleague, asking her to tend to the well-being of the social container, to help mend what got torn, to bring her story forward so that people might understand and move on.

“Let’s have another breather,” said the guardian. She rang the bell softly. A kind of relief and readiness settled over the group.” Energy alert deescalating. The bell rang again.

Diana sat up and stared at the center. She spoke of her high school girls’ volleyball coach who used the circle to create a cult of personality around himself. “We were like followers. We would have done anything he asked,” she said. “It was so scary. He took all that adolescent intensity and fed off it. He never touched me, but I wanted him to, and that scared me even more. I thought I was going to hell. He said we were going to state.” Mary kept her hand on Diana’s back.

This is not business as usual. No one came into the meeting that morning anticipating tension, disruption, time-out from the agenda, or being asked to witness human suffering; it just happened. It happened because the circle was strong enough for it to happen. The web between these people will be even stronger as each person has a sense of increasing interpersonal courage. Circle calls us to show up and be ready to witness the troubles that collect in each other’s hearts. And so the clouds break open, it thunders, it rains. The storm goes into the center—and the rainbow eventually comes.

The host and guardian did not immediately know what to do—and that’s all right. There is no formula. Slow down. Pause. Focus on the center. Make a helpful gesture. Discover the way forward by trusting the wisdom in the room.

Ten minutes passed from the first exchange over Doug’s interruption to the end of her story, and then Diana was able to look up from the center into Doug’s face. “First of all,” she said to Doug, “you are not him. It’s not anything you did wrong, I just got triggered. I’m sorry.”

Doug exhaled. “Well, I’m glad you don’t think I’m like him. But I am kind of a control freak, and I coach my youngest daughter’s T-ball team. I’m impatient. I’m the guy who likes to get things done. It makes my day to have a long to-do list in my Blackberry and just tick those items off like a speed demon. This circle process is way out of the box for me. I wasn’t expecting this.”

“Me neither,” said Diana. “It’s taking everything I’ve got not to run out of here and resign from the team because I’ll feel foolish for the rest of my life.”

Mary spoke. “No way, girl. We need your perspective. And every single person in this circle has something inside them we never told. I can think of two of them myself right now.” Heads nodded. “You just went through the wash cycle for all of us.”

“You OK then, Diana?” Mike asked. “Let’s take a ten-minute break, stretch, open the windows in here, get a cold drink. Then we’ll come back and see what we need to do next.”

“Can I say one more thing?” Diana unfurled her fingers from the smooth, round stone. “I still have the talking piece,” she said, and this time she smiled. “First of all, thank you. Thanks for just listening. For not making me feel weirder than I’m making myself feel. And Doug, I don’t think we’re going to have ongoing tension, but if I do frustrate you, just have the guardian ring the bell, and I promise to get to the point.”

Doug laughed with relief. “I can do that,” he said. And everyone rose up, eager for a break. Now they are all in current time. Now they are reattached to spaciousness.

This is a vulnerable moment in circle process. The breakthrough is so fresh that it needs everyone’s consciousness to hold it honorably. During the break, tension will turn into relief to have found a way back to camaraderie. However, too much joking or raucous energy can restimulate or minimize the situation. Diana will most likely need reassurance for a while that people still see her as a fully contributing member of the circle. She will need support not to turn her emotions into shame, and right now, she may just need a little space. The group members will need to reference this moment and to speak their individual lessons from it, but that will be done better after the energized weather settles a bit.

As host, Mike will resume hosting the conversation planned for the morning. Everyone will be present, and the work will go more smoothly. He will take a bit of extra time for check-out, knowing that the usual question, “What is the primary lesson you will take away from this session?” may elicit more profound reflections than usual.