Circlecraft: A practical training in the words, structure, and presence that make healing circles work
What to Bring: Snacks, tea and your favorite way to take notes.
Here is a little preview to the course. We will use the five elements image below to figure out what the circle needs.
ROLES: Guide and Participant
What is the role of a Circle Guide?
Your role as a guide is much like being a guide in the wilderness. We think of the prompts as a way to keep us on the trail and prepare for changing terrain. We are not responsible for our participants healing or the content that they share. It's between them and nature. (What is the landscape the circle will be journeying to? How does the terrain evolve? Watching the river and knowing it’s features)
You have curated prompts that are appropriate for building authentic connections. Allowing for emergent wisdom to rise up. The circle solves it’s own problems.
Tools that we invoke as guides: Self care and compassion, grounding ourselves, awareness of matching pictures, levels of responsibility, D-Tool (read the clearing script).
Participants Perspective
What happens in the circle from a Participant's Perspective? They arrive to the circle potentially feeling anxious, fearful of being put on the spot → the medicine of the circle can transform this to a feeling of belonging and healing thru the power of storytelling. From their perspective our prompts are random. There is not much introduction. Sometimes they don't even know who the circle guides are.
Circle Guides Perspective
What happens in the circle from a Guide’s Perspective? (Presence, self-compassion, trust in the circle) You have spent time asking yourself what the circle needs? Using the Five Elements chart, developing prompts to create easeful progress, deciding who will deliver a prompt, how you will deliver it, curating your story telling response and debriefing afterwards.
